Vibrators could put you in Jail

Vibrators could put you in Jail

By Ekaterina Mironova

If you live in Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia or South Carolina, using your vibrator could land you in jail.

In the past few years, many state officials have petitioned and created laws that prohibit the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for stimulation of human genital organs.” It’s a petition that makes the very vibrating toy that you are hiding under your bed illegal.

In some of these states, you can receive a hefty fine of up to $10,000 and a year in prison or hard labor, if caught selling a vibrator or any other sex toy. Imagine the frustration of the orgasm-deprived women in these states.

The reasoning behind such laws stems from the belief that the development, sale and use of vibrators and other sex toys lowers the moral tone of the society. The Hummingbird Twister™, a multifunctional vibrator, has even been called the “gateway drug” to prostitution.

To many, the laws are ludicrous and a way for the government to have control over people’s sex lives. Considering that lethal weapons such as guns and rifles can be sold in a local K-Mart and vibrators are banned, the laws are simply unfair.

But, the public is fighting back.

Two women who were prosecuted for selling sex toys at a private house party and a sex toy store challenged the law saying that it violated an individual’s right to privacy and personal autonomy as protected in the 1st, 4th, 9th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution. Their challenge was to no avail, and since then companies that want to sell sex toys have had to find way to circumvent the law.

There is a loophole. These anti-sex toy laws state that sex toys can be sold for certain purposes. Anyone developing, buying or selling dildos or sex toys for educational or medical purposes or something affiliated with a library or museum is exempt from prosecution.

So next time someone in these states wants to buy a vibrator, all he or she has to do is sign a waiver stating that their purchase is for educational purposes.

The sex toy business is way too profitable to plunder, so ingenious people will come up with ways to continue their livelihood. The Japanese got around their obscenity laws by making dildos and vibrators that look like Hello Kitty ™, so what makes the powers that be think that Americans won’t find a way to sell and enjoy sexual pleasure from vibrators?

And even if these laws stay in effect and branch off to other states, you can still buy a perfectly legal “body massager”, (which all of the states with laws still sell) and vibrate your way to ecstasy with no worries. Where there’s a will (and sexually active and explorative people), there’s always a way.