How male sex toys became the last bedroom taboo

In the past decade, women’s sex toys – and pleasure at large – have become couched in the language of empowerment, wellness and self-care. It may not be mainstream, but it’s hardly shocking to see a female character on screen using a vibrator or dildo.

The same can’t be said for straight men.

Granted, men’s pleasure is still largely privileged over women’s. Yet straight men’s use of sex toys still feels taboo. What gives?

Why the taboo?

Male masturbation tends to occupy a double position in our cultural consciousness – at once assumed and seen as inferior to sex itself, says Dr Andrea Waling, an honorary adjunct at La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society.

“There’s a stereotype that even if men are masturbating, they should always be seeking out sex with women,” she says.

Cam Fraser, a sexologist and men’s sexual health expert, thinks male masturbation is often talked about as a “bit of a joke”, while male sexuality tends to be thought of in simplistic terms.

“It’s like, men are able to get an erection, ejaculate and that’s satisfying enough for them. So if you need anything more and you have to deviate from the norm in any way, you’re somehow seen as weird,” he says.

“That discourse really flattens men as human beings. It reduces them down to either function or their physiology and it doesn’t consider the fact that, as it goes for all human beings, so many things go into our experience of pleasure and sexual arousal.”

On the other hand, women’s pleasure has been seen as overly complex and even “mysterious” (the clitoris wasn’t fully mapped until the late 1990s). In some ways, this has contributed to phenomena like the orgasm gap in heterosexual partnerships.

But it’s also rightly fuelled the recent focus on female pleasure. Which in turn has meant eroticism, pleasure and sensuality have become “culturally coded as feminine or for queer folks,” Fraser says.

“And so a straight, cis dude exploring this is seen as going against that heteronormative way of expressing your masculinity.”

This is particularly the case for toys designed to stimulate the prostate, or be used for pegging (anal sex in which a woman penetrates a man with a dildo).

“The assumption that anal pleasure is exclusively the domain of queer men – that’s just not how bodies work, and not how sexual orientation works,” says Fraser.

“But the social and cultural stories we have around these things inhibits many straight men’s experiences of pleasure.”

Then there’s the association between needing sex toys and impotence – something which carries negative connotations despite erectile dysfunction being common, not just among older men.

Not just sex dolls: A changing market

According to sex toy company Lovehoney, the oral simulation toy segment is the fastest-growing category for men, experiencing over 200 per cent year-on-year growth to date in Australia.

It says hyperrealistic products – designed to replicate the look and feel of skin – is another growing category.

In the week following the introduction of age verification for adult content in March, Australian sex toy retailer Wild Secrets reported a 30 per cent spike in men’s sex toy sales.

Tobias Zegenhagen, chief technology officer and head of research and development at Lovehoney, sees the men’s sex toy customer base as threefold: those with performance issues like erectile dysfunction; those looking to simulate penetrative sex; and finally, those with a view of pleasure as a part of wellbeing.

Historically, the market has focused on these first two camps. It’s why the products on offer have been rather crude and dominated by Fleshlights, the trademark name often used to refer to masturbation sleeves, sex dolls and cock rings.

Indeed, while the market for women has expanded rapidly beyond dildos, toys marketed to men tend to focus on “hyperrealistic” products, including dolls and torsos made in the image of female porn stars.

“There’s an objectifying nature to them,” says Waling, who connects this type of toy to porn culture.

“That is going back to that idea that a ‘proper’ heterosexual man should be interested in, and wanting, the porn star kind of woman.”

“So it also limits their capacity to think about fantasy or to feel confident trying other things that don’t fit in with that narrative.”

But things are changing, with a growing bevvy of “gender-neutral” toys, like those from Japanese brand Iroha, Australian brand Normal and Lovehoney’s Arcwave, designed specifically for penises.

Rather than the purely mechanical, friction-based function of traditional toys, Arcwave’s use tiny air pulsations, similar to some clitoral vibrators, to provide stimulation, including to the frenulum, a part of the foreskin.

Zegenhagen believes there’s a growing market for toys like this. “These [male] customers are also not looking for very ‘explicit’ toys. You can have nicely designed, almost lifestyle items [too],” he says.

Expanding our view of male pleasure

For Fraser, working with male clients often involves starting small and encouraging them to experiment.

“When you start to explore, it can almost feel like there is no sensation there because you haven’t conditioned your nervous system to feel pleasure in those parts of your body. It takes a few moments to slow down, pay attention and develop an awareness.”

Learning to understand your own desire can improve partnered sex too, says Fraser, who adds sex toys aren’t a necessity, just an aid.

“The principle of not being open to exploring and experimenting with your own pleasure sensations is going to put a limitation on how you can express that with another person,” he says.

Elisabeth Neumann, head of user testing at Arcwave, says a big part of her work has been in educating the consumer and prompting curiosity. “[Encouraging people] to not just go straight into orgasm but experience pleasure or masturbation as a journey, maybe involving other erogenous zones, maybe not watching porn on the side,” she says.

“Trying to really focus on what’s happening in the body.”

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