WORDS Heather Keane

ILLUSTRATION Graham Haught

You’re kissing in the taxi. Giggling as he fumbles with the keys. Making sure you’ve got his name right as he races you up the stairs. The room is bare, there’s a chest of drawers, the top one’s left open and something catches your eye — you freeze. “That’s just my fleshlight,” he smirks, pulling you closer. What do you do?

Let’s swap the situation. Make this a woman’s house and a clumsily concealed Rampant Rabbit, and you’ve got a celebrated Sex and the City cliche and a tick in the sexual deviant box. Not so for the man in most cases. What can add to a woman’s allure can destroy a man’s appeal, labeling him a lonely pervert for no good reason.

While vibrators for women have been lauded as a symbol of liberation, masturbators for men have never enjoyed the same sort of attention. They’re unfairly tossed in the same pot as creepy plastic dolls and an over-dependence on porn. If a man is looking for more than the everyday wank, he’s ostracised, despite the huge leap in toys available for solo use by men. Sex Siopa, Ireland’s own health and design focused sex shop, has a selection of products that would pique anybody’s interest — in a good way. They’re sleek and sophisticated, and are far more impressive looking than your average hot pink dildo. So why the double standard? Why the insistence that he shouldn’t be able to satisfy himself with anything but his hand or the real thing?

“But that’s the thing: there’s always a device in the scenario. Women on screen are rarely allowed to take control of their own stimulation without a phallus in hand, while men are casually wanking everywhere.”

Let’s take something a little more recent. When Sketch broke into Maxxie’s room in Skins, it was always going to be freaky. However, don’t you think if she had pulled out something with bunny ears for the scene, instead of just going for it by herself, things would have been a little bit more frivolous and flirty? Catch up to 2013, and we’ve got the controversy sparked by CW’s censoring of a manual masturbation scene in an episode of Reign, a historical fiction series notably filled with graphic and sometimes violent sex. The original depiction of the self-pleasure of a teenage girl was stripped down by the network to a few suggestive shots, despite taking place in between two explicit sex scenes.

While men are restricted to their own natural resources, single women are able to have fun with whatever device they want. But that’s the thing: there’s always a device in the scenario. Women on screen are rarely allowed to take control of their own stimulation without a phallus in hand, while men are casually wanking everywhere. I must here praise HBO’s Girls, which had Marnie reaching under her dress in a public bathroom in a scene that matched Lena Dunham’s usual surprising openness. But why was it such a surprise? Why are men disclosing their  wanking habits at the water cooler when a woman can only go so far as admitting ownership of a vibrator?

Sex toys are a personal choice, and obviously the cast of SATC could afford whatever pleasures they fancied and maybe preferred a little electrical help. But wouldn’t it make sense if the playing field balanced out a little? If men could head into a sex shop for more than just a Valentine’s present for their partner, and women could open up about their real habits without displacing the power to an inanimate object? Sex toys and simpler masturbation should be openly enjoyed by anyone looking for fun.