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Shelly Ronen Properly THRESHOLDS 44 ProPerly Selling The imProPer WORKSPACE 117 PROPERLY PROPERLY SELLING THE IMPROPER THE SELLING SHELLY RONEN SHELLY 05-01-2015 16:06:07 05-01-2015 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00119 by guest on 27 September 2021 11-ronen-ProPerlySellingTheimProPer-FinAl.gDoC VERSION 3 LAST MODIFIED ON JANUARY 14, 2016 7:45 AM THRESHOLDS 44 ProPerly Selling The imProPer WORKSPACE 118 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00119 by guest on 27 September 2021 119 SEX TOYS AND SYMBOLIC PURIFICATION It’s a warm day in spring in Southern California, and I am at THRESHOLDS44 the offices of Wild Child,1 a decade-old company that makes sex toys. I sit at the conference table with the art and marketing departments, discussing next quarter’s advertising campaign. Elliot, head of marketing in his early thirties, leads a brainstorm for product videos. Dalia suggests we learn from popular videos. Someone says all the best online videos feature cats. People laugh loudly and the conversation turns playful. Elliot gleefully admits he considered proposing videos that show people “testing” Wild Child products on kittens (i.e. “pussies”) and chickens (i.e. “cocks”). Several of us laugh at this idea and generate silly details. Pro P Testers could wear white lab coats, as if this were a serious The Selling erly experiment. They could hold clipboards and appear confused at the indifference of the animals. Most of us enjoy this tangent. But Guy, the art director, is frowning. He interrupts our banter i m P and says gently, “Can I just say: there are just two rules. No ro P children and no animals.” The group is quieted by his caution, er a little embarrassed because obviously using children would be unthinkable. Elliot gives a shrug to suggest Guy is right; Tara sighs and tilts her head to the side, as if to say, ‘well, obviously we were joking.’ This team won’t be selling sex toys with videos of people in lab coats administering vibrators to cats and chickens. DD in Sex toys have come a long way since their invention in the late 19th century, when 10, 2016 6:25 PM 2 H vibrators served as medical implements for the treatment of hysteria. Today, vibrators and c -ronen. AR other sex toys are diverse and widely available through both brick-and-mortar stores and DS 3 WORKSPACE hol online retailers. These products include electronics (in the case of vibrators, TENS units S 68 hre 1All names are pseudonyms. T - T 2Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” The Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). 09-mi VERSION M ON MODIFIED LAST 3TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation, otherwise referred to as “electro-stimulation” or “e-stim.” Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00119 by guest on 27 September 2021 LAST MODIFIED ON JANUARY 14, 2016 7:45 AM 7:45 2016 14, JANUARY ON MODIFIED LAST 3 VERSION 11 11- 120 or oscillators), while others (dildos, bisexual men have used a vibrator with a ronen “strokers” and anal plugs) are rubbery partner.12 Nevertheless, the work of selling -P THRESHOLDS44 forms designed to be inserted vaginally sex toys requires delicacy. As Guy reminds ro P or anally, or else to accommodate the us, there are rules: not all marketing is erly S insertion of a penis. Some sex toy com- created equal. The design and appropriate elling panies also make other accessories (such marketing of these products is the result of T as lingerie, apparel, whips, restraints, and social labor among sex toy makers, which heim P pillows) for use in sexual acts including will be the focus of this essay. ro P 4 er role-playing, costume-play or BDSM. While it is commonly said that, “sex -F in Sex is very big business. Precise sells,” selling sex commodities has not A l . g D numbers are elusive, but one (highly cited) always been acceptable. In the first half o estimate5 suggests the “adult industry”— of the 20th century, sex toy makers C including pornography and strip clubs encountered both moral and legal along with sex toys—generated more than challenges, and the adult industry has only $10 billion6 in 2010 in the US alone. By recently been shedding its taboo status. comparison, condoms were estimated Prominent distributors of adult materials to generate $400 million in the US in once faced frequent raids by police,13 7 14 Pro the same year. In 2011, Trojan claimed expensive lawsuits, and for some, time 15 P the market size in the US for vibrators under house arrest or in prison. Selling erly Selling The The Selling erly was $1 billion, double their estimate of sex toys remained illegal in some U.S. the condom market.8 Another report in states until 2008, under laws prohibiting Scientific American estimated a market the distribution of “obscene materials.”16 size of $500 million.9 Sex toys have wide Sex commodities cut across what Viviana appeal: surveys find that 73% of straight Zelizer calls “hostile worlds” of sex and the i 17 m women and 80% of lesbians have used market. Building on the work of Mary P ro a vibrator with their partner.10 Numbers Douglas,18 Zelizer writes that these two run P er for men are lower but still substantial: the risk of “cross-system contamination 44% of straight men and 50% of gay or [when] sex becomes commercialized and commerce becomes sexualized.”19 For 4“BDSM is the consensual exchange of power for pleasure” according these sex toy makers, total purity—or the to Margot Weiss. “BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadomasochism),” in The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexual- absence of symbolic contamination—is ity, ed. Patricia Whelehan and Anne Bolin (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 1. 11It is very likely that sex toy use among men is higher and these 5Though some refute this figure, it is nevertheless widely considered numbers do not capture use because the survey asked specifically about the best estimate by makers in the industry. “vibrators” rather than commodities more commonly used by men such as 6Lynn Comella, “Remaking the Sex Industry: The Adult Expo as Micro- dildos, anal plugs, cock rings or strokers. cosm,” in Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry 12Michael Reece, Debby Herbenick, Brian Dodge, Stephanie Sanders, ed. Ronald Weitzer (New York: Routledge, 2010), 285. Annahita Ghassemi, and J. Dennis Fortenberry, “Vibrator Use Among Het- 7Lisa LaMotta, “Most Embarrassing Products: Trojan Condoms,” Min- erosexual Men Varies By Partnership Status: Results From a Nationally yanville (November 10, 2010), accessed February 10, 2015, http://www. Representative Study in the United States,” Journal of Sex & Marital minyanville.com/special-features/articles/condoms-Trojan-Trojan-con- Therapy 36 (2010), 389407. doms-most-embarrassing/11/10/2010/id/30516. 13Schlosser, Eric. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in 8Oliver Chiang, “Trojan: US Market Size for Vibrators 1 Billion, Twice the American Black Market (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004). Condom Market Size.” Forbes (January 7, 2011), accessed February 10, 14Philip D. Harvey, The Government vs. Erotica: The Siege of Adam 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/01/07/trojan-us-mar- and Eve (New York: Prometheus Books, 2001). ket-size-for-vibrators-1-billon-twice-the-condom-market-size. 15United States v. California Publishers Liquidating Corp., 778 F. Supp. WORKSPACE 9Regina Nuzzo, “Good Vibrations: U.S. Consumer Web Site Aims to 1377 (N.D. Tex. 1991) Enhance Sex Toy Safety,” Scientific American (May 24, 2011), accessed 16Reliable Cons v. Earle, 538 F.3d 355 (5th Cir. 2008). February 10, 2015, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/good-vibra- 17Viviana A. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (Princeton, NY: Prince- tions-us-consumer-web-site-aims-to-enhance-sex-toy-safety. ton University Press, 2009). 10Clive M. Davis, Joani Blank, Hung-yu Lin, and Consuelo Bonillas, 18Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of “Characteristics of Vibrator Use Among Women,” Journal of Sex Re- Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 2003). search 33 (1996), 313320. 19Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy, 23. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00119 by guest on 27 September 2021 121 THRESHOLDS44 Pro P Office space at a manufacturer's office. Reprinted with the company's permission. The Selling erly unavailable a priori by virtue of their work keep users emotionally safe by promoting task. So how do they go about the work relationship satisfaction; second, they of selling sex given the symbolic risks of keep users physically safe through the commercial sex? stringent quality control maintained by the i Drawing from participant observation at producers. I find that as workers advocate m P a sex toy company and seventy interviews for these proper qualities of their products, ro P with workers across the industry, I they simultaneously produce themselves as er explore the interpersonal and discursive proper workers and sexual subjects. These work of claiming a purer purpose and two objects—the commodities as products position. In particular, I draw on evidence for sale and their own identities as workers from companies that make sex toys responsible for making and marketing of for heterosexual consumers.20 I argue these commodities—act as alibis for one that workers make use of “boundary another in the task of claiming symbolic work”—ideological efforts to demarcate the purification. attributes of group members in contrast to DD 21 in non-group members. Workers assert that FEWER NUDES, LESS WILDNESS 10, 2016 6:25 PM H the products they make keep consumers On my first day visiting Wild Child, the c -ronen.
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