Good Vibrations Magazine

… because I have been honored by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the lovely order of drag nuns who make San Francisco (and everyplace in the world you find them) a more fabulous and communitarian place. This, per their website, is what the Sisters are all about:
“…community service, ministry and outreach to those on the [...]

Question:
Has anyone yet developed sex toys for people with RSI? I keep wondering if that market is being tapped at all…
To my knowledge no one has made toys specifically for people dealing with repetitive stress injuries, though many people might find that valuable. Holding a vibrator can be challenging for someone with RSI, [...]

Question:
Oil as a lube, is it safe? with a move to more natural/organic lifestyles, are natural oils an alternative lube?
Certain oils can be used safely as lubes. First let’s look at the disadvantages or issues:
One, they’re not compatible with latex. If you’re having safer sex, you MUST use a poly (not latex) condom [...]

Question:
Some G-Spot toys are REALLY curved while some are straight without much of a bump. Do they both do the same job?
Different people may prefer different toys, and g-spot stimulation is a perfect example: g-spot toys are curved, made with a bump, ball, or other pressure-enhancing element, or both. The point is to [...]

Question:
The general attitude of ppl towards ‘queefing’ seems negative to me.. is it normal? Can you stop it or make it quieter? I do when I cum.. =/
Queefing (in case anyone reading this is unfamiliar with the slang) = vaginal farting, or more precisely expelling air from the vagina in such a way that it [...]

Question:
Is it safe to insert egg bullets? i thought the cord was a possible safety hazard?
The cord is a safety hazard in two main ways: People assume they can use it to remove the vibe, then one day it breaks and leaves the vibe inside them; and the insertion point of the cord into the [...]

Question:
Know of any sex-positive educators in the Honolulu area? Or good references for self learning?
Hmm! I’ll want to do a little research for you re: the first question (unless we have some HI folks tuned in who would like to weigh in on this?) – for your second question I’d say that there are books, [...]

Question:
Why is it obscene/illegal to show fisting in adult DVDs in the USA? Will it ever become legal?
Nothing in US porn is de facto illegal except underage participants. But the law allows porn to be charged as obscene according to “community standards,” which are nebulous and changeable. So literally anything *could* be judged illegal if [...]

… to engage in one of the most thrilling intellectual adventures of my life: debating at the Oxford Union. Yes, that Oxford. In England. And the topic, “This House believes that Promiscuity is a virtue, not a vice,” is truly the debate I was born to have. You can imagine how delighted I was, shortly [...]

At heart I’m just a small-town girl from Oregon — granted, a girl who got called queer even before my tormenters were old enough to know what the epithet was supposed to mean — and moving to San Francisco fifteen years ago was a big deal for me. It meant I had to learn the [...]

…is one of the many clever ways to describe masturbation, and of course May is National Masturbation Month, so here’s hoping you’re loving yourself as well as possible these days. I’ve talked about masturbation to several jillion people since Good Vibes began National Masturbation Month five years ago; I routinely talk to large groups and [...]

I spent last week in Tennessee, a fact that caused some consternation among my California friends when they heard about my travel plans. “Be careful!” they exhorted. “Get out of there alive!”
Oh, come now. The Tennesseans I met were all very polite, even when they weren’t crazy about what I had to say. Even though [...]

You know a genre has arrived culturally when people start making fun of it — not garden-variety, “Nyaah, nyaah, it’s stupid” type fun, but actual spoof or satire. By this measurement, porn est arrivee. Oh, sure, I know the argument can be made that much porn is already a spoof of itself — mostly not [...]

It’ll probably be ignored by more mainstream bastions of contemporary, even pop, culture, but a minor miracle happened this week at the Adult Video News awards ceremony in Las Vegas — the so-called “adult Oscars,” where porn movies and their stars, directors, and box cover designers get recognized for their excellence. “Excellence” has sometimes been [...]

The holidays are a hell of a time to go to the hospital (although in San Francisco we do have a special attraction: the award-winning SF Gay Men’s Chorus singing carols), but last week I checked in my partner Robert. A routine exam had gone wrong, showing a stricture at a previous surgical site, and [...]

Carol was so busy being San Francisco Pride’s most beautiful Grand Marshal ever that we gave her the month off. We’re running an archived, yet still important, column in its place.
First-time Good Vibrations customers often ask us whether they’ll become “addicted” to their vibrators. When I do public speaking and talk about toys, people occasionally [...]

My partner Robert and I recently went out to grab lunch at the Tempest, our favorite burger joint, a place near the Good Vibrations office that hosts bands, a bar, and an active pool table. Robert headed for the restroom to wash up and came back steamed. He described a Planned Parenthood poster he’d seen [...]

I’ve had the wonderful task over the course of the last three months to help re-envision our already-terrific web site. As fast as the Internet moves — and in as many directions — it became clear to us that we have been tapping only part of the web’s potential with goodvibes.com. It’s my pleasure to [...]

Last month my partner Robert and I went to Ohio to visit his family. They live out in the middle of many thousands of acres of corn and soybeans in Clyde, a town no one outside of Ohio has ever heard of (in fact, few Ohioans we talked to knew where it was). This little [...]

While politicians gear up to outdo themselves sounding like each other — another election year, mostly banal but with real implications for those of us in the sexuality communities — a case in Attleboro, Massachusetts reminds us how close we are to the bad old days when sex was dirty and if you engaged in [...]

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 [...]

For a couple of weeks early in May, my life was a blur. I was trying to keep track of dozens of details for the Annie Sprinkle show at the Castro Theatre which Good Vibes sponsored and simultaneously getting ready for the live worldwide webcast of the “One-Handed Reading” Reading. And perhaps most importantly, I [...]

You must know by now that May is National Masturbation Month. I’ve spent many early morning hours for the last few weeks telling the world via interviews on drive-time radio shows — blessedly, this year we’ve mostly avoided the shock jocks whose real reason for having us on the air is to see if they [...]

Just last week the Supreme Court once again took on the question of whether nude dancing is covered by the First Amendment as a form of protected speech. Previous cases have suggested that it is, even though it isn’t literally speech — dancing is considered a form of artistic expression, though, so it shouldn’t matter [...]

“The problem with Dr. Laura’s anti-gay rhetoric is it doesn’t stop even after you turn it off.”
That’s the headline of an ad placed in the San Francisco Examiner and other papers last week by the Horizons Foundation. It shows a picture of an old-fashioned radio — Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s estimated 20 million listeners a week [...]