The Smitten Kitten

New stuff on the website. We’re sensing a theme.

www.smittenkittenonline.com

Meet the winner of Smitten Kitten’s Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance Summit Scholarship, Myisha Battle! Myisha is a certified sex coach and owner of Sex for Life, LLC. Through sex coaching and her sex-positive podcast, Down for Whatever, Myisha provides accurate sexual information, instills pride in difference, and encourages the quest for sexual satisfaction no matter a person’s race, gender, orientation, ability or age. She empowers her clients and listeners to embrace better sex for a better life. She lives in San Francisco, California. See you at #SFS16, Myisha!

A picture of dildos and some info about our sweet Conference Scholarship!

The Smitten Kitten is providing a scholarship for one person to attend The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit - a fantastic sexuality conference held each year in Alexandria, VA.

We are eager to financially support sex educators and consent culture activists who are People of Color.

Applications are due May 15th. You can apply on Woodhull’s website.

Eligibility: This scholarship will be provided to a person who is not otherwise eligible for conference expense reimbursement through their current employer, organizational affiliation, or university AND for whom the cost to attend would be prohibitively high. Priority will be given to candidates with intersecting and marginalized identities, especially people of color.

This is a fantastic question! The answer’s kind of complicated, because it's always complicated talking about porous toys and how to make them more body friendly. 

If you're simply worried more about the wear-and-tear of porous materials... yeah, they eventually get kind of grayed and grungy looking, and sometimes the surface can "pill" and wear down. You can slow this process dramatically with proper care and cleaning. (Check with the manufacturer of each toy for instructions - sometimes it's an oil-based soap that accelerates the grungification.) Condoms aren't designed to make porous toys safe, and although many people recommend this trick for mitigating the dangers of porous insertable toys, Smitten Kitten actually advises strongly against it. It's a much better idea to invest in a nonporous toy.(Dangerous Lilly recently wrote an interesting article that explores condom use on jelly and TPR/TPE toys. The photos of her experiments will probably deter anyone from relying on condoms for protection against plasticizing chemicals!)You're right though, the majority of masturbation/stroking sleeves are made from porous materials. There are a few silicone wrap-style options out there, but very few Fleshlight-style sleeves made of silicone. (Check the websites of smaller indie toy designers, like www.primalhardwere.com, who work exclusively in silicone and make all kinds of cool fantasy beast toys including stroking sleeves).