4 Stars
This is a thorough overview of feminist sex-toy stores beginning in the 1970s with a strong focus on the ideology and challenges of the business and how it affected American culture and society. It is presented chronologically and emphasizes the organic nature of how the the feminist ideas of female sexuality and sex-positivity expanded and grew.
From Betty Dodson, a sex positivity activist and early proponent of masturbation as an equal sexual act and advocating it as a way for women to understand their bodies and to forget the myth of the vaginal orgasm. Essentially: Learn your body, learn your pleasure. There was a ripple effect in which Dodson's activism led to Dell Williams entrepreneurial enterprise, Eve's Garden after attending one of her body positive meetings. Williams also jumped into the woman's movement, but her viewpoint was only one perspective, and Comella does a good jump framing both the strengths and limitations of Williams' business model that reflected her personal tastes and comfort zones.
This grows with Joani Blank and Good Vibrations, circa 1980s-early 90s. Blank's focus was on education--promoting various permutations of sexuality as healthy and normal. Encouraging clientele with honest talk, accessible displays for testing vibrators, and non-skeevy merchandising and knowledgeable employees. She fostered a slew of entrepreneurs who followed her business model, and advocated the goal of an accessible sex toy shop in every town. Blank shared all her business data from profits to sources to educational materials. Money wasn't the motivator, rather changing the representation and culture of female sexuality, Her Briarpatch business model was an open-source retail model. Blank eventually transitioned Good Vibrations from a sole ownership to a worker-owned cooperative in 1992. This struggled as the company grew and it transitioned again to a company with shareholders. Eventually, the realities of the changing marketplace played a significant role in Good Vibrations being sold to a mega-store.
Experiential retail. It was a big marketing point for newer stores.Toys in Babeland in NYC, Sugar in Baltimore MD, and others were the seeds of change sprouting across the US, spreading safe spaces to discuss sex and sexuality.
Product development. Quality assurance became a focal point as did responsible sourcing and supporting conscientious product developers. The feedback and demand in stores helped drive development of everything from dildos to anal sex how-to videos. This eventually becomes a symbiotic relationship between porn and product placement. By encouraging sexual freedom they began to embrace they role of sexual consumption.
Identity politics is a quagmire. And in many ways, Comella demonstrates this through the myriad of viewpoints on feminism, queer, and gender. The initial emergence of predominately white, middle class feminists, many lesbians to the trending inclusivity of sexes and gender as the nineties progressed; intersectionality came into focus. The queering of heterosexuality, allowing men into the walled gardens, and schisms in ideology---BUT, at the crux of it all there is a definitive, conscious deconstruction of binary heteronormative expressions and the understanding that their business is a community resource. Yes, capitalizing sexuality is their bread and butter, but most of those drawn to sex-positive shops due so out of the need to provide an alternative to what existed.
Social entrepreneurship with the focus on social change as a driving force for the company is a hallmark of early feminist sex-toy stores. A dysfunctional relationship with money is evident in the earliest stores. Money is a tool, but many of the women coming from moderate to privileged backgrounds seem to have the idea that money is dirty, unwholesome and taking it was contrary to their goals of a social revolution. The predominant overriding viewpoint of feminism and capitalism as antithetical to each other surprised me. This friction is discussed in-depth and by the end I felt like I knew much more than when I began. I recommend it for readers interested in both the changing face of the adult industry and feminism. They do make for interesting bedfellows.
Overall, this focuses on sex positivity and how it came to include the entire spectrum.
No comments:
Post a Comment