Sex Toys News

Thousands of sex toys valued at more than 3 million baht (£65,000) have been seized by officers from the Thailand's Child and Women's Welfare Department in Bangkok. Two men were arrested.

Around 5,000 dildos, penis enlargement devices, penis massage oils and lubricating gels were seized from a warehouse.

Police say the men arrested admitted to owning the sex toys and products. The items were shipped from China and then sold through Facebook to customers in Thailand. The men were charged with importing pornographic materials that had not been cleared by customs officials.

Bizarrely sex toys are still illegal in Thailand.

A Turkish social media influencer says she's being prosecuted in her country for posting jokey photos inside the Sex Museum in Amsterdam.

Merve Taskin shared pictures of sex toys taken at the museum during a birthday trip to the Netherlands in January last year. A few months later she says she was arrested in Turkey, where sharing obscene content is considered a crime.

Now she says she has been summoned to court to face obscenity charges.

Ebay has amended its censorship policy

Restricted adult items policy

Adult and sexual wellness items must be listed in the correct category and must follow our guidelines.

Most adult items are subject to some form of restriction or prohibition. We'll review the content of the listing description, images, and categories, to determine if an item is allowed.

What is the policy?

Sexually-oriented adult material is not allowed. This includes the following:

• Adult films and video games with a rating of X, XXX, R18 (the statement appears on the UK site and so presumably refers to the BBFC pornographic rating rather than the Australian general 18 rating), or unrated for an adults-only audience

• Sexually explicit anime, comics, books, films, animation, manga, hentai, yaoi

• Adult magazines, nudist publications, or adult anime/manga that include sexually-explicit content, nudity, or sexual stories

  • The following magazines and books can be listed as long as the listing and product don't contain nude images or explicit content: Playboy, Playgirl, Mayfair, and Penthouse

• Listings containing nudity (other than nude art)

  • eBay defines nudity as male/female genitalia, anus, or female breasts where the areola or nipple is visible

Sex toys and sex accessories can be listed in the Health & Beauty > Health Care > Sexual Wellness categories, and must follow these guidelines:

• Sellers must be pre-approved.

• Items must be new and in the original packaging

• Listings must not offer international postage

• Listings must not include images of nudity or sexual content

Nude art listings must include the item specifics attribute Subject: Nudes , and can only be listed in the Art categories, or the following Collectibles categories:

• Photographs > Contemporary (1991-Now)

• Photographs > Modern (1940-1990)

Activity that doesn't follow eBay policy could result in a range of actions including for example: administratively ending or cancelling listings, hiding or demoting all listings from search results, lowering seller rating, buying or selling restrictions, and account suspension. All fees paid or payable in relation to listings or accounts on which we take any action will not be refunded or otherwise credited to your account.

Why does eBay have this policy?

We want to make adult items available to those who wish to purchase them and can do so legally, while preventing those who do not wish to view or purchase these items from easily accessing them.

Lovehoney, a UK sex toy retail company based in Bath, has been awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise due to its outstanding growth over the last six years

The Queen's Award recognises Lovehoney's growth in sales, which have risen from £12million to £56million since 2015.

The award allows Lovehoney to use the Queen's Award emblem in advertising and marketing campaigns and on its product packaging. It could be spotted on condoms, bondage accessories and pretty underwear.

Thailand is very liberal about real sex but is bizarrely very uptight about porn and sex toys.

In fact sex toys are totally banned in the country with prohibition laws backed up by serious jail time and fines. The penalty for anyone caught selling, buying, or possessing sex toys is up to three years jail time or a fine of up to 60,000 Thai baht (£1500), or both.

According to Wisit Piemjai, the director of the Postal Customs Service Division, the customs department confiscated over 4,000 sex toys in 2020 alone. Wisit said:

Thailand is a Buddhist country and this is a generational issue. Older people still cannot accept sex toys and nothing can be done to change [that]. The law will remain in place for now,

A sex toy seller named Natasha, told VICE World News that the COVID-19 pandemic has made sex toys one of the hottest selling items online. Sex toys are sold openly in Bangkok's red-light districts, like Nana, Silom, and Patpong. In June 2020, the police raided an adult toy warehouse in a province just south of Bangkok and seized about 1 million Thai baht ($32,000) worth of illegal goods.

There have been efforts to change Thai society's perception of sexual wellbeing. In 2018, activist Nisarat Jongwisan pioneered the movement to legalize sex toys when she spoke out publicly against the Ministry of Culture in a TV program, sparking a debate about sex toys in the country.  In 2018, Nisarat launched a petition asking the government to legalize sex toys. She now plans to launch a new petition following the Thai parliamentary mechanism wherein she'll have to gather 50,000 signatures to submit a bill for a parliamentary vote.

In 2016, after reading a tabloid article about a woman who used plastic surgery to look like a sex doll, T, a sex toy reviewer from the U.S., started an Instagram account for his synthetic partner Celestina. T wanted to see if Celestina, a brunette doll who often sports a pixie cut and glasses, could amass more followers on Instagram than the sex doll wannabe. Within a few months, Celestina had succeeded.

Today, Celestina has more than 3,000 followers, and T is widely credited as a pioneer in the Instagram sex doll community, which numbers somewhere in the hundreds. Other sex doll 'influencers' have as many as 7,000 followers.

The Instagram trend has its roots in a 20-year-old website called The Doll Forum , which boasts over 70,000 members and has large sections devoted to photographing sex dolls. Using a combination of creative photography, in-character social media posts, and, more recently, deepfake videos , these doll photographers are working to make the synthetic women in their lives as close to organic as possible. Their goal is to give their dolls depth and personality, so they can show other community members, and the wider world, how the dolls appear through their eyes. If the owners can make some money off the pursuit, that's all the better.

See full article from inputmag.com

Sex toy maker Maude is attempting to generate a bit of hype by trying to impose politically correct terminology on sex toys. Maude claims that it is tired of seeing an 'outdated and gendered approach', their designers created a line up of vibrators and 'gender-neutral sex essentials'.

Dakota Johnson, who is now an investor and co-creative director, has joined the brand and spouts:

For too long sexual health has been poorly marketed, hyper-aggressive, and highly gendered. Maude is a company based on universal design making modern, body-safe, high-quality essentials for before, during, and after sex, with yourself or with another lovely human. The caliber and aesthetic of these products is excellent and elevated.

Now, Maude is taking things a step further with a new campaign denouncing supposedly outdated language that refers to vibrators as toys. Johnson added:

With our This Is Not A Toy campaign, we aim to activate hearts and minds in an effort to destigmatize sexual and intimate tools. Often the use of language surrounding sexual products is antiquated, gender-specific, and belittling.