AMA: Researching Butt Plugs

Inspired by my previous post AMA: Boiling a Sex Toy, I’ve decided to use my blog to archive these Twitter discussions. 

And the next topic? Butt plugs.

After spending a locked-down pandemic weekend researching butt plugs, I decided to prompt Twitter for questions: Spent a majority of this weekend researching butt plugs AMA

Here’s what people were curious to know. 

Butt why?
My original response started with: “Curiosity mostly 🍑 I realized recently that I didn’t know much about them!” 

While that was technically true… the reality was that I was curious about trying anal sex with my ex-boyfriend and thought that starting with a small butt plug sounded less scary. 

As I started researching, I quickly discovered that there was much more than just deciding what butt plug to buy. For instance, topics like anal training or, more generally, how people (particularly those without a prostate) can use butt plugs to experience a different type of pleasure or enhance other forms of sex. 

What are some of the most surprising things you’ve learned?
⚓️🎈🪶💎 All of the various ends and bases. 
🕳 Hollow and tunnel plugs were new to me.
🕓 How many butt plugs are designed for longer-term wear.
💧 The most surprising was that I spent just as much time researching lube (because I rarely ever use it). 

Are there good centralized resources for learning how they work?
Depends if you’re talking about how to use one yourself or the mechanics of how butt plugs are made. 

For an overview of what butt plugs are and how to use one, I like Chingy Nea’s “A Plugged-In Guide to Butt Plugs” in Mel Magazine. As for how they’re produced… I don’t know. But if anyone has a good resource, send me a link.

Do mini lava lamp versions exist? 
It’d make sense, especially since lava lamps and butt plugs are literally the same shapes. 

I found this Lava Lamp Dildo - Fantasy Dildo from NawtyToyBox on Etsy that looks cool. According to the description, it’s made from 100% body-safe platinum cure silicone. The reviews are great—one even says you can light it up with an included UV LED light. 

What about glow-in-the-dark?
Yes! Tailbone—a lovely sex shop in Rotterdam run by my former hackathon teammate—sells a glow-in-the-dark glass butt plug. 

Apparently, Spencer’s (what a throwback) also sells a silicone butt plug with what looks like a glow stick inside? But I’m almost certain that’s not safe to put in your body. 

You know those omnipresent shiny metallic butt plugs with, like, a rhinestone on the end? How are those made? Are they solid or hollow? Can I put ✨🎵 technology 🎵✨ inside them safely?
I never answered this question in the original AMA 🙈 but there are so many directions we could go here. It might even be worth writing a separate article about safely creating a DIY butt plug. 

If you’d like to read something like that, hit me up.

How many of them connect to the Internet and could theoretically side-load Doom?
My original response: “Side-loading All This Doom might be a big ask, but @buttplugio does a lot of fascinating open source teledildonics work, can recommend 🍑✨📡” 

I’d still recommend checking out Buttplug’s work. From their landing page: “Buttplug is an open source, cross platform library for connecting to and controlling sex toys via Bluetooth, USB, and other methods.”

Kyle Machulis (@qdot), who runs Buttplug, even replied to my response and said, “Been discussing this on and off with @Foone. It’s really imperative we figure out something. History demands it.”

I wonder if he ever made any progress on this… 

🙋🏼‍♀️ Have a question about butt plugs that I didn’t answer?
Write me on Twitter @carolstran or Mastodon @carolstran@mastodon.online

This blog post was written as part of the Dev | Writers | Miami retreat 🌴