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Sex Toy Sellers Have To Jump Through Ridiculous Hoops
Humanity has been crafting objects to shove into our orifices for millennia, but several states -- mostly ones associated with twanging banjos -- still have laws on the books that ban sex toy sales. So until some brave legislator is willing to risk embarrassment by sponsoring a Free the Dildos bill, people in states like Alabama and Georgia have had to, appropriately, get creative.
bobm7/Pixabay
Not that creative.
Alabama's Sherri Williams, for example, took advantage of the law the same way that opportunistic pot dealers do. Alabama's anti-obscenity laws allow sex toys to be sold if they're used for vaguely defined "medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial, or law enforcement" purposes. Basically, they're legal as long as you promise not to enjoy them, so Williams simply has her customers fill out an anonymous medical form before they buy toys from her drive-through store. Be careful about accepting her offer to supersize.
Sex toys purveyors also face obstacles online, because despite all of the porn tabs you have open right now, it can hard to get their products in the right place, so to speak. Social media sites like Facebook prohibit explicit content, because you absolutely don't want to know what sex toys your parents and exes are interested in, but Facebook ads draw way more eyeballs than ads on picturesofmariotakingitfromtransformers.com. So one sex toy company, Lioness, advertised with a Facebook video in which women read PG customer feedback about how great their product was. Then they linked to a YouTube video, which in turn linked to their website, because trying to advertise sex toys online is like trying to advertise a speakeasy.
Lioness/Facebook