Good Vibrations Magazine

You may have already received the Good Vibrations Summer 2000 catalog in the mail (if you’ve requested a paper catalog recently or are on our confidential mailing list, that is). Each summer we give our catalog a special theme, usually having to do with travel to San Francisco. After all, our store is a landmark here in the City by the Bay — we’re written up in lots of guidebooks, especially for our collection of antique vibrators. We know that our customers from out of town will want to drop by, before or after they’ve taken in the Wharf, Coit Tower, and the Golden Gate Bridge. In fact, summer is always fun in the San Francisco and Berkeley stores because we get to meet so many of our out-of-town friends. If you come to the City, please stop by — but bring a sweater! (We’d hate to see you freeze on those afternoons when the fog rolls in early. We wear layers pretty much all the time. It’s not LA up here, you know.)

This summer, though we still want you all to come visit, we decided to do something a little different, and we developed a catalog on which our Logo, instead of buying sourdough bread and fine Napa County wine for a Golden Gate Park picnic, is examining her breasts in the shower. Good Vibes will give a percentage of the catalog’s proceeds to organizations fighting breast cancer. And scattered throughout the catalog are factoids about this serious illness. It’s the first time we’ve taken on a health issue so far removed from sex — we’ve raised money for and otherwise supported groups that fight AIDS and other sexually transmitted conditions, of course — though it could be argued that breasts are not too far removed from many people’s sense of their own sexuality. Indeed, for some people, they are central.

Notice I didn’t say “women’s,” but “people’s.” Although we got a call from one of our male customers questioning why we were doing something for breast cancer and not prostate cancer, the fact is, breast cancer is not strictly a women’s problem. Part of our culture’s insistence that men and women are from different planets, people persistently think that women have breasts and men don’t. Yes, I’ll grant you, there’s usually a size difference, but it’s not like women have ‘em and men don’t. Breasts, in fact, are sometimes thought of as women’s primary erotic characteristics, though not men’s: after the sly book Dick for a Day was published, which asked women writers to describe what they’d want to do if they woke up one morning with a penis attached, male authors were asked to imagine themselves with breasts. Did the publishers not grasp that if we all did this at once, we’d pretty much be a species of folks with dicks and tits? Of course, that’s some peoples’ idea of a good time. And what about vulvas and vaginas? I guess they wanted a sex characteristic that protrudes.

I suspect that our customer who (mistakenly) felt left out by our catalog’s theme thought that we were trying to emphasize femaleness, and by extension, to send the message that our catalog is especially for women. This is a longtime assumption by many: because Good Vibrations was founded by a woman (Joani Blank, back in 1977) and was for years run by a group of women, that our intent must be to focus solely on women. Interesting, isn’t it, that women shop all the time in venues owned by men, but when a sex store is owned by women, it’s assumed that it must be for women? And that “for women” somehow by definition excludes men. Men frequently assume they’d only enjoy the toys in our “Toys for Men” section, even though many men love the sensation of vibration and a lot of men also like penetration. Neither pleasure ought to be understood as a gendered experience.

We’d like such oppositional gender thinking to relax, particularly on this issue of breast cancer support. Certainly this is an issue that our women customers will recognize as relevant (though how many of them follow our Logo’s example and do a self-exam every month is another matter; many women know they should do this but somehow rarely find themselves actually performing the quick, simple exam). Many men, on the other hand, probably don’t know that men can be at risk for breast cancer at all. (Lots of men don’t even perform the self-exam that could help them detect the more common male testicular cancer, much less a breast self-exam. In fact, many doctors don’t even preform routine breast exams when doing physicals on men.) Though admittedly far lower than women’s, men’s own risk of breast cancer is real: 1300 diagnoses last year (compared to women’s 175,000) and 400 deaths. (The death rate for women was over 43,000.) Additionally, almost every man has women in his life who might be at risk for breast cancer: if not a wife or lover, then surely a mother, grandmothers, daughters, coworkers and friends. Breast cancer is not just a women’s issue, because women’s health doesn’t just affect women, and the more intimate a man’s relationship with a woman who has breast cancer, the more acute the effects on him and on their relationship.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women under 55, and is the most common cancer diagnosed among women worldwide. Risk increases with age. Fortunately, most breast cancer is curable if it’s caught early enough, and there is no technological or medical miracle that can currently replace self-examination as a strategy for early detection. Some of the Good Vibes women have fought breast cancer successfully, and we want to remind everyone else how important this fight is. We want all our customers to live long and prosper, with plenty of time to enjoy erotic pleasures, try new toys, read hot or interesting books and watch videos. So please, women, men, and everyone else, join the Logo as she conducts that important exam.