Category Archives: Sex

Why Older Men-Younger Women Relationships Make People Uncomfortable

Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood in "Whatever Works."

Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood in “Whatever Works.”

Neighbor: “I saw your father walking your dog.”

Me:  “That wasn’t my father. That was my boyfriend.”

So goes a typical day in the life of a gerontophile. I’m not upset when people mistake my boyfriend for my father. In fact, my boyfriend and my father do share the same name and ethnicity, and while my boyfriend is 11 years younger than my father, he is 56 years old, the same age as my mother.

No, it’s not this type of honest mistake that bothers me. It’s the assumptions that come with our age difference that bother me. My boyfriend refers to the age difference as our dischronicity, which is a combination of the Greek chronos, meaning time (from Chronos, the god of time), and the Latin dis, meaning apart.  Saying that your relationship is dischronic or “apart in time” lends it a poetry that relationships with wide age differences are rarely given.  But it’s an appropriate term for my relationship because part of what makes it so appealing to me is the delicious strangeness of it, the taboo of it. There’s an eroticism to the violation of norms, a separate, tangible eroticism unrelated to my own gerontophilia.

And my recognition of this eroticism leads to another level of problems.  This actually wouldn’t be so much of a problem except that people I barely know question me about my choice of boyfriend.  They want a reassuring answer as to why my boyfriend is 24 years older than I am; they want me to fit into the standard narrative of the gold-digging younger woman. They want to make sense of the abnormal. I disappoint them when I say that I’m just attracted to older men. Even though I am careful never to mention the inherent eroticism of dischronicity, I still get a side-eye because they want to see an ulterior motive driving us together. They find it difficult to believe that our relationship could be based, like many relationships, on sexual attraction and love. (Gerontophiles! They’re just like us!) Continue reading

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The History of Sex Toy Humor

The Delighter

Sketch of “The Delighter.” (Circa 1920s) From the National Museum of American History Archives Center Business Americana Collection

For as long as sex toys have been around, we’ve been laughing at them. But why we think they’re funny is difficult to explain. If you asked a group of people to explain why they laugh at dildos, you’d be met with blank stares. (Or you’d be forcibly removed from your family reunion. Don’t ask).

In an attempt to understand the mechanics behind sex-toy humor, I recently read Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke. In the book, Legman argues that one of the functions of humor is that it allows us to discuss taboo subjects in polite society. We can joke about sex in venues where we can’t talk seriously about it because the humor “absorbs and controls… by means of laughter, the great anxiety that both teller and listener feel in connection with certain culturally determined themes.” Following this logic, we joke about sex toys because it’s the only way that our society allows us to discuss them without facing societal repercussions.

One of the earliest records of dildo humor  is from the Greek poet Herodas, who was writing in the 3rd Century BC.  In a bawdy sketch titled Mime , a woman (Metro) is asking her friend (Koritto) where she bought her dildo. Koritto responds to Metro’s question with a rhapsodic description of her sex toys: When I saw them, my eyes swam at the sight—men don’t have such firm pricks! Not only that, but its smoothness is sleep, and its straps are like wool, not leather. As is typical of much dildo comedy throughout history, the humor is related to men’s fears of penile inadequacy, a fear that given a choice, women would prefer the smooth, perpetually hard dildo to the flawed and fallible penises of their partners. Continue reading

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Let’s Give Female Masturbation a New Name




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What is a Sex Toy?

Wahl 2-speed all-body massager

Is this a sex toy or a therapeutic massager? How do we make this distinction?

It seems ridiculous to ask this question, nearly a year into writing my blog and my dissertation. But it’s an important one because what is and is not a sex toy is not readily apparent. Sure, you could confidently state that the devices sold on a sex-toy site like Good Vibrations, are in fact instruments that are designed to stimulate the genitals. But not all sex toys are sold in sex toy stores. Nor are all massagers that are marketed to “relieve pain and fatigue,” actually used for back massage.

So how do we judge whether something is a sex toy or a therapeutic device? Do we accept a company’s marketing claims at face value? Or do we factor in how the consumer actually uses the device?  Take the Wahl Two-Speed All Body Massager  for example. Wahl makes vague claims that the massager: “Increases circulation,” “Relieves aches and muscle pain,” and works well for “facial” and “deep tissue” massage. But nothing indicates that the massager provides women with incredible orgasms. You have to look to’s product reviews to find that information:

“Best. Thing. Ever. No clue how it does at massaging sore muscles, but as a vibrator it’s definitely in my top 3. Most of the time the low setting is perfect, but for an extra little something there’s a way to hold it so you can flip it to high right before you have a orgasm [sic] and I have to say it’s better than anything else I’ve experienced. A definite must for anyone.”- Anonymous

Not all of the reviews are like this, of course. But enough of the reviews are like this that there should be no doubt in any consumer’s mind that the Wahl provides an amazing clitoral massage. Continue reading

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How We Should Write About Sex

If only more academics followed Stacia Kane’s advice.
Image from




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