Autostraddle Strap Week 2021 – All Images by Demetria.
In this series, two babes chat through both sides of one strapping topic — sharing personal narratives with you on their perspective at this point in their queer story. Next up — Do you get a new strap for each partner or do you say “Baby…just boil it”?
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Carolyn Stransky (she/her) is a queer software engineer and freelance journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She writes about the intersections of technology and sexuality for outlets like Future of Sex, Autostraddle, Curve Magazine and elsewhere. You can find her most places on the Internet @carolstran.
Carolyn Stransky has written 1 articles for us.
Hi! I’m Arese Sylvester and I’m a freelance writer from West Africa, Nigeria. I’m a also a Youtuber, crybaby and wine connoisseur. I enjoy eating food that I neither cooked nor paid for while writing thought-provoking articles and fighting bigotry on social media.
Arese Sylvester has written 0 articles for us.
Comments
There’s also the environmental costs. I find that as I accept (celebrate?) a partner having a history before me, I can also accept not replacing something like this for emotional reasons alone.
I completely agree with this.
When I first heard in USA’s media or from people I followed on social media that they would change sex toys every time they changed partners my mind went “what’s your budget? I could barely afford one…” and then it was like “and what do you do with the old ones??” I understand that sometimes the emotional connection can be too much to keep them. But I also think that it is too much waste, specially if you change partners with certain frequency.
Anyway, thanks for the opinion Carolyn and Arese!
Yeah exactly! As long as things can be properly desinfected for safety I’m all for reusing.
I can barely afford one of them, let alone a whole bunch of toys, if I were to be more active. But I find it more upsetting that all of these toys that are perfectly functional are ending up in landfills and in the environment.
I know that in Australia, where I live, there are a few companies that are now recycling sex toys! You can send them to Nikki Darling, who will recycle them for you (https://nikkidarling.com.au/pages/recycling-and-safe-disposal) or to It’s Normal who will recycle them and even send you a voucher for their own sex toys in return (https://itsnormal.com/pages/recycle-your-sex-toys-and-get-paid-doing-it). I’m not being paid by either of these companies haha, I just have done a fair amount of Googling into this previously because I’ve been curious about it.
Obviously, from an environmental perspective, it’s better to just not buy new toys at all (recycling is overhyped in the late stage capitalist hellhole we live in, and there needs to be much more emphasis on reducing and reusing).
BUT for anyone reading who feels that it’s deeply emotionally important to them to get a new toy… first, your feelings are valid! Sex toys can have extremely strong emotional connotations that you might not want to be around anymore. And second, it could be worth looking into whether there are any sex toy recycling programs in the country where you live – online sex toy shops and companies are good places to start.
Oh thanks for that! I actually have some toys that need to go and I will look up if I can recycle them here.
I’ve bought all my strap-ons myself and I find that avoiding making a sex toy a relationship purchase avoids a lot of the weird feelings. They’re my toys. If a partner wants to bring their own, of course that’s fine, but to me either a toy is one-person (it’s mine or yours and only gets used on us) or any-person. I can’t sanitize my genitals between partners, and I certainly can’t replace them! Toys can be cleaned, and should be, but just the fact that someone else has touched them doesn’t seem like a problem to me.
yes, absolutely! I prefer having toys not be a relationship purchase (but then again I’m deeply commitmentphobic and prefer not to make any relationship purchases at all when I’m in one, so take that as you will lol)
I think the two presented points are both valid, but they miss something that I find very important – I’m genderqueer and derive gender euphoria from my strap-on, so there’s one particular toy that actually feels like part of my body. I couldn’t consider getting rid of that toy any more than a professional musician would just get rid of their favourite instrument.
I had the same thought as genderqueerQueer. My strapons make ME feel good totally apart from making my partners happy, and can feel like an extension of my body. While I will use a strap on that feels comfy for my partner, my fav strap is my fav for me before anyone else.