Visit the website of your average mainstream sex toy retailer—from Pink Cherry to Adam &Eve—and you’ll be hit with three options to explore: toys for men, toys for women and toys for couples. Look deeper, and you’ll discover a whole lot of cis and heteronormativity: strokers marketed only for men, dildos for women and couples’ sex toys that only cater to cis, straight pairings. Despite advertising copy that frequently implies sex toy companies value open-mindedness and boundary pushing, many mainstream providers remain rigidly normative.  
 

Thankfully, independent sex toy creators have begun to step in to address this gap, providing gender-expansive toys, or working to broaden consumers’ understanding of who exactly different items are “for.” 

Step Tranovich is one of them. About a decade ago, they began to notice that sex toy retailers weren’t inclusive of people like themselves, their friends or their partner. In response, the Bay Area creator founded Cute Little Fuckers in 2018. What started as a Kickstarter campaign turned into an award-winning sex toy company that champions accessibility and inclusivity by offering what Tranovich describes as “gender abundant” toys.
 

Online, none of the Cute Little Fuckers toys are categorized according to the gender of a potential user. Instead, each toy is given a name and a suggested guide for how it can be used. Many of the toys are also given their own pronouns—not to dictate who might like them, but in order to personify the toys and to reflect an expansive view of gender. For instance, Princette is referred to with they/them pronouns and is advertised as a mini, universal vibrator.  “By having our toys have their own names and pronouns, it’s giving visibility and affirmation to people of different identities,” Tranovich explains.
 

North of the border, Venus Envy, a Halifax-based sex shop and bookstore founded in 1998, is doing similar work to make the sex toy industry more inclusive. At the brick-and-mortar store, toys are sold by function—dildos, strokers and suction, for example—rather than gendered category. Other categories are focused on actions, such as “humping” and “butt stuff.” Venus Envy also offers educational books about topics such as sexual wellness and neurodiversity—as well as events and workshops. “We operate from the understanding that most people did not get any sex education, or if they did, it wasn’t very good, or it wasn’t very comprehensive, or just didn’t meet their needs,” says Rachele Manett, an education coordinator at the shop.
 

Manett believes that removing the gendered categorizations of sex toys can help customers make better-informed decisions on what they spend their time and money on. Instead of having assumptions about their anatomy or desires imposed on them, consumers can talk to staff in an accepting space to better understand their own needs.
 

These open dialogues can help people take charge of their pleasure. And Mannett points out this doesn’t just help queer and trans people feel more comfortable or better served—these discussions are just as important for cis and straight customers, too.
 

Mannett remembers the recent rise of the Rose Toy trend on TikTok. The clitoral stimulation toy was popularized online in 2019, largely because it was cute and discreet—the silicone toy is shaped like a rose and doesn’t obviously look like a vibrator. But it didn’t work for everyone. Mannett remembers several customers coming into the store, discouraged, saying they’d tried the toy but that it didn’t work for them. In viral posts, the rose vibrator was made to sound like it would be life-changing—when the toy wasn’t a good fit, the pressure made some people feel like their bodies were broken. “I was thankful they actually came in to talk to us, because we were able to give them some reassurance that their body was perfectly fine; they just needed a different toy. We end up explaining to a lot of people that the rose toy is just an air-pulse toy, and what it does is essentially just really direct clit stimulation,” they explain.“So if a person doesn’t like direct clit stimulation, the rose toy is not going to work for them.”
 

Cute Little Fuckers and Venus Envy aren’t the only retailers to challenge the gendered marketing of sex toys. Come As You Are in Toronto, or Intamo Pleasure Boutique in Victoria, BC, both offer inclusive categorization and resources online and in-store. Online, businesses like ThemFriends and Spectrum Boutique also work this ethos into their day-to-day operations. 
 

While there’s still a ways to go in the mainstream industry, these independent creators and retailers are showing that when you let go of traditional assumptions and beliefs, you can meet the actual needs and desires of the wide range of people who might be interested in using sex toys. 
 

Like Tranovich, meeting this need has felt fulfilling, and has helped to foster a personal sense of community. “It’s just so clear what we’re doing is so full of people. I just wake up every day really grateful that this is what I get to do and what I get to experience, what I get to share in the world.”