I learned of this petition through the Tumblr account of adult retailer Babeland, and immediately felt an angry rant boiling up inside me. I decided that rather than divide my thoughts into approximately one hundred 140-character Tweets, I’d instead post them here. The petition, which comes to us from a website called One Million Moms.com, is aimed at forcing major drugstore chains Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS to remove “v*br*tors, d*ld*s and other s*x toys” (censorship theirs) from their websites. Here is the text of the petition.
Adult Toys Sold on Pharmacy WebsitesThere is a problem when websites for drug stores start looking like adult fantasy stores instead of a place for medical needs. We are highly concerned when adult toys are being sold online in the least likely places. Online filters may not catch this, and children are stumbling onto these sites by accident.One of our supporters reported that her child found this on Rite Aid’s website. After checking around, our research proved Rite Aid is not the only offender. Walgreens and CVS (not nearly the quantity as the other two) are also at fault. When is it ok to sell v*br*tors, d*ld*s and other s*x toys on a drug store’s website? (An asterisk ‘*’ is used to ensure our emails get through to those who have signed up for our alerts. Otherwise specific words referenced would be blocked by some internet filters.)At these sites, there is not a warning of any kind. These websites have online shopping available, and under “Sexual Wellness” or “Sexual Well-Being” there are pages of adult toys offered on the Rite Aid and Walgreens sites. CVS had one, and you have to type in the search box to find it.TAKE ACTIONPlease send an email letter to Rite Aid, Walgreens, and CVS requesting they no longer sell adult toys on their websites. Urge them to remove all s*x toys immediately or you will be shopping elsewhere.Send Your Letter Now!NOTE: If you see a commercial or program which is offensive, email us the information. Many of you have done this, and it is very helpful.
First off, I feel that the women in charge of One Million Moms.Com, or at least this petition, would greatly benefit from a vibrator, preferably one designed for G-spot stimulation. Ladies, it’s far too obvious that you are sexually frustrated. A vibrator may not bring you flowers or cuddle with you afterwards, but it also won’t mention the weight you’ve gained since you bought it, or fall asleep before you’ve gotten off. In the remotely slim chance that anyone involved in this petition, from writer to signer, is reading this, let me emphatically repeat my point: Vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, nipple clamps and other toys marketed toward adults (i.e. not your children) are a good thing. They make the world a better place. I suggest you buy a couple, and I suggest you buy them from Good Vibrations, Babeland or Smitten Kitten, as these three stores are reputable, ethical, and above all, sex-positive. Which, now that I think of it, might be a problem for you.
I take issue with the first sentence of the petition. Adult fantasy store? Unless I can buy a gimp mask, a flogger and a dismembered replica of some random porn star’s genitalia and anus, I refuse to think of my neighborhood Walgreens as an adult fantasy store. Because let’s face it, if all they carry are vibrators, dildos and the like, they don’t qualify; when most people think of vibrators, etc., they probably don’t think “exotic fantasy”, but instead think “attainable reality.” And who’s to say that a sex toy isn’t a legitimate medical need? I know that when I go more than a day without an orgasm I come dangerously close to snapping, and in the case of the ladies of One Million Moms.Com, sexual frustration has obviously caused their heads to recede up their own asses, which is probably very dangerous. If they’re going to try and make the argument that a sex toy is not a medical need, I demand that they present their medical degrees to me in person so that I may tell them to their faces how full of shit they are.
They also state that “children are stumbling onto these sites by accident.” Seriously? Kids are stumbling onto drugstore websites? While I find this unlikely, I will play along and pretend that this is something that could be happening en masse. Let’s say, just for the hell of it, that Walgreens’ website is one or two letters away from a popular children’s website. I’m too lazy to make one up; please come up with something similar to “Walgreens” that would appeal to children as I’ve literally got nothing. So all of these fat-fingered children are making the same typographical error that leads them to one of three major chain drugstore websites. What I can’t pretend, however, is that said children are accidentally stumbling upon sex toys once they’re there. I would have assumed that when kids mistakenly find themselves at a website that holds little to no interest for them, they would just retype the web address until they get it right, but apparently a popular activity amongst children is to type the word “dildo” into any search box they encounter.
At this point I need to note that there is no language in the petition about removing these items from store shelves. Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS do not carry adult products of this nature in their stores. And if they did, while I wouldn’t particularly care nor would I support a petition to remove them from the shelves – remember, commerce is voluntary, at least in the United States – I might think that the people behind this petition were less batshit insane than I do right now. My daughter is still a baby, but I imagine that at some point in the future Jill or I (hopefully Jill) will have to explain to her what a vibrator is, though I hope that this occurs after we see one in a movie, or even in a drug store, and not when she finds one of Jill’s many toys in her nightstand drawer, or in the shower, or perhaps on the sink in the master bedroom where it’s undergone post-usage cleaning but hasn’t yet been put away. But we’ll certainly have that discussion if and when it becomes necessary, because the alternative, advocated by One Million Moms.Com, is to make sex toys less available, and this isn’t something with which we are comfortable.
I could almost be okay with this petition if the motivation was different, i.e. if rather than trying to protect our children, they were trying to protect the old folks of the world, such as our parents and grandparents. Older people are much more likely than children to browse a drugstore website, don’t you think? I think that including sex toys on a retail website that my parents – or my grandparents, if I had any still alive – might browse poses a real risk. I take comfort in my relative certainty that if my Mom somehow stumbled upon a vibrator while looking for some sort of anti-inflammatory ointment, she would most certainly never bring this fact to my attention, but the truth is that my biggest nightmare is having to, for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances, view a sex toy that my parent or parents are also viewing. This one trumps all the traditional nightmares. Naked in public? No big deal, I’ve been there. Forgot to study for a test? Yes, frequently when I was in college. Maniac with razors on his fingers chasing me through a boiler room? Hasn’t everyone been through this? But if I’m walking past an adult store with my parents, and sex toys are visible, I don’t want to live anymore. There’d better not be a uniformed cop anywhere in the vicinity, because I’m grabbing something shiny and running toward him or her full-speed.
I was hoping to avoid ranting about personal responsibility when it comes to raising and communicating with one’s children, but it needs to be said: Parents who bitch about what their children see and do online need to do a better job monitoring their kids’ web surfing habits, or at the very least fostering a safe and open environment in which the child knows that communication is encouraged. It is your responsibility, and if you truly believe that your child glimpsing a vibrator, out of context on a retail website, is going to cause him or her irreparable damage and turn him or her into some sort of hairy-palmed, Hell-bound chronic masturbator, then the onus is on you to prevent him or her from looking, even though by doing so you are almost certainly causing more harm than good. Parenting means occasionally talking to your child and answering questions. You owe it not only to your child, but to the legions of consumers who would like to buy a sex toy from Walgreens, Rite Aid or CVS, and who would be impacted negatively by your refusal to take responsibility and be honest. It’s this attitude that is partially to blame for the backlash against marriage equality. Comedian Louis CK said it better than I ever could:
Like when you see someone stand up…on a talk show and say, like, “How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married?” I don’t know. It’s your shitty kid. You fucking tell him. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fucking five minutes?
The fact is, your children could stumble upon these sites. But they probably won’t. If your kid is deliberately going to Walgreens, Rite Aid, or CVS’s websites, I suggest you find out why. When I was a kid, nothing was more boring than a chain drugstore, even before they took out the ice cream counters. The toys were overpriced, and the magazines were out of date. Those were literally the only two sections of the drugstore that I found even slightly interesting. If your kids are deliberately going to one of these websites, it’s a safe bet that they are looking to buy over-the-counter drugs in bulk in order to sell them at school. What’s more, they are using your credit card to pay for them. But take comfort in the fact that your kids are probably just ordering the drugs and then going to another website; chances are they aren’t sparing a moment to look at sex toys. Alternately, I suppose they might be going to these websites in order to search specifically for dildos and vibrators, but if that’s the case Walgreens and the others are not to blame.
Note the final two lines of the petition:
NOTE: If you see a commercial or program which is offensive, email us the information. Many of you have done this, and it is very helpful.
While I am tempted to point out that someone who actively monitors the airwaves for something to get offended by is the worst sort of time-wasting parasite I can imagine, I would really just like to state that one may only exercise his or right to be offended as long as it doesn’t impact someone else’s rights, be it the right to sell sex toys, or the right to purchase them.
In the process of writing this entry, I actually went to Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS’s websites to confirm that they carry the “offending” products. Given these three chains’ mainstream, middle-of-the-road reputations, I expected to see a few back massagers of the sort that can be repurposed for intimate use. I typed “dildo” into Walgreens’ search box and six items came back! Granted, there were none of the traditional phallus-shaped latex, silicone rubber or Cyberskin dongs I am used to seeing in adult toy stores, and a couple of them were battery-operated, i.e. vibrators. One item, the Tantus Alumina Pace, was a very nice looking butt plug that is, according to the website, equally suitable for vaginal use. I read the following under the product description: “Putting Pace in a cup of hot water before playing is an amazing sensual surprise.” When was the last time you got advice like this from a drugstore? Thank you, Walgreens!
All told, Walgreens’ website features, in addition to the aforementioned six dildos, 327 vibrators (!), eighty-four massagers, and four “intimate massagers”. Searches for “erotic massagers” as well as butt plugs returned no results. CVS, on the other hand, features six vibrators, fifty-four massagers, one “erotic massager” and eleven “intimate massagers”. Again, no butt plugs, and a search for “dildo” returned no results but they did ask if I was trying to type “did.” Rite Aid, on the other hand, was a total boner-killer. Searches for dildos, vibrators, butt plugs, massagers, intimate massagers, and erotic massagers all returned zero results. Just to make sure their website was working correctly, I typed in “Ibuprofen” and got two results. I wonder if they never carried these items, and One Million Moms.Com went off half-cocked and assumed they did after seeing sex toys at the other two sites; or if they carried them and, bowing to pressure from terrified Middle American soccer moms, stopped.
After doing some browsing, I found that both Walgreens and CVS carry a variety of items from adult manufacturer Lelo. I considered ordering myself a Lelo Bo, but decided I’d be better off getting it from one of the reputable, ethical and sex-positive companies I mentioned earlier.
-Jack
That gets my ire up as well. I’d heard that drugstores were starting to carry these items, and leave it to some stuck-up, shrill, sexually repressed people to try and ruin it.
I do think that everyone can be helped by some type of sexual aid, it’s certainly helped my marriage. And the fact that it could slip through Internet filters is even worse. If you don’t want your kids seeing that stuff, monitor their Internet use, and watch them wind up like my cousins; parents very strict, when they turned 18 each they went wild. Now both on are on 2nd husbands, have 3 DUI arrests and 5 kids between them, and neither are employed, or have college degrees. And I think a lot of it stems back to their parents being so strict that when they hit college, they could care less about classes, and more on parties. Okay, my rant over now too.