I am asking this question seriously. I don't know the answer.

[snarp]

Do people ever use little plastic massager things for their stated purpose? Does it actually help a stiff neck to hold a vibrator to it?

I've always just assumed that phrases like "relaxes tense muscles" were just code - WalMart requiring that the packaging refer to the vibrator's true use euphemistically. But sometimes people review them online talking about using them for a stiff neck. And while these people might all be speaking in code, the International Feminist Conspiracy honestly isn't usually quite that together. (And we really do need to raise the bar a little, guys.)

I was pretty much raised by the internet, by the way.

Comments

Tonight on Comment Thread Derail: Horrors of the Savage Lovecast

[vass]

It might be safer to use them as a massager.

Because in lots of places it's not legal to sell them for sexual use, and they're printed with 'novelty item' or 'for entertainment only' or whatever, they don't have to meet any safety standards. There are PVC ones that are as much as 60% phthalates. By contrast, children's toys have to be .1% phthalate or less.

There was this sex toy manufacturer talking about it on the Savage Love podcast, and how a lot of people who use dildos get this burning sensation, and they think they must be allergic or something. Turns out it's not an allergy. D: Metal, glass, silicone, stone, they're all okay, but PVC isn't.

Re: Tonight on Comment Thread Derail: Horrors of the Savage Lovecast

[snarp]

Yeah, I'd read that in several places. I guess the moral is tha you can buy sex toys at WalMart, but you probably shouldn't do it as an impulse buy? Which is a problem, because I suspect that a great many vibrator purchases are done on impulses.

Maybe the moral is actually that the United States regulatory environment is, in fact, problematic in a manner entirely different from that which Mr. Romney asserts.