Section B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, November 30, 2000
Black leather, thigh-high boots and a tight skirt are turn-ons for men as well as women. A 60-year-old man purchased a pair of these boots for himself from Priscilla's. 1206 W. 23rd St.
These black thigh-high boots were made for...
Continued from page 1B
face. For Katz, it's all in a day's work.
"You know why I love my job? make people happy. I sell you sex, or the best supplement to," she said, gesturing at a wall in the store festooned with every shape and size of vibrator, clitoral stimulator and butt plug.
Katz thinks sex should be celebrated.
"I think people should have good, healthy sex," she said. "I think people should be more open about it and try newer things."
"Every woman should have a vibrator," she said.
As she pointed out the most popular type of vibrators, she admitted that in the six months she has worked at Priscilla's, 1206 W. 23rd St., she had found out more about her own sexuality.
But, Katz said many Priscilla's customers were too shy to think about experimenting.
Katz partially credited Priscilla's for her new-found sexual adventures with items such as flavored lubricants, handcuffs and body paint.
"People will come in and be embarrassed to ask me a question," she said. "And I'm sitting here thinking, 'Why are you embarrassed to talk to me about this?'"
Katz can rattle off the pluses and minuses and pleasures and pains of most of the sex toys she sells.
"We have a lot of little kits that give a little bit of this, a little bit of
that," she said. "Maybe some of them have a little set of plastic handcuffs or a tiny, little fun whip I think people should try that!"
Fetish or turn-on?
Sometimes people find one thing that turns them on, and they become obsessed with it. Dailey said this kind of obsession was no longer a simple turn-on but had become what therapists called a fetish. Dailey said that although almost anything could be a turn-on, very few were fetishes.
A fetish is a narrow, driven, compulsive preference for only a certain kind of sexual behavior or object, he explained. Without this object — and it can be anything—the sexual experience won't be satisfying.
"A person with a clothing fetish looks at Victoria's Secret because of the specifics of the clothing and the erotic stuff attached to that." Dailey said. "As a matter of fact, he's more interested in the clothing than what's in the clothing. Your normal average guy is not particularly interested in the clothing, he's interested in what's under the clothing."
Dailey said the difference between a fetish and a turn-on is the narrow focus on the turn-on instead of the partner. He used a Victoria's Secret catalog as an example.
Noel Smith, Lenexa sophomore,
says for him the focus is clothing,
or more specifically, white cotton
panties.
Smith said that he had had sex with women who refused to don white panties but that sex without panties was not nearly as satisfying.
"When there are panties involved, or if I have someone else's panties, there's almost a sense of satisfaction there," he said. "It heightens everything. It heightens the sexual arousal."
Smith said his sexual fascination began when he glimpsed a girl's panties in a junior high math class. From there, his obsession grew. He now owns more than 20 pairs of panties that he keeps in a drawer by his bed. Most are white cotton. Smith said that he took most of them from women he had slept with but that some were from KU residence hall rooms.
"There is a certain something to a girl not knowing that you've got them, that you took them and she does not know that," he said. "That's definitely a thrill — to take them is a thrill."
He is really excited when he catches a glimpse of panties through a skirt or peeking over the top of low-slung jeans, he said.
"The fact that girls are supposed to keep that hidden makes it erotic, makes it taboo." Smith said.
Dailey stressed that unusual didn't mean sick. He said that most of the time when people struggled with a fetish, it wasn't the fetish itself causing the problem, but rather society's uptightness with a variation from the "normal" missionary-style sex.
Dailey said that stealing panties and focusing on them signaled obsessive, fetishistic tendencies but that thus fetishes were not common. Fewer than 5 percent of people have fetishes, and only about a handful of KU students come to
Dailey each year with fetishrelated problems or questions.
"What we really need to do is to help you to internalize your fetish and experience it less shamefully, and then seek a consensual partner to participate with you," Dailey said.
"Most students on this campus come from uptight homes, come from families that didn't talk about sex or they didn't get sex education," he said.
ashamed of the "strange" and settle for the "normal" has caused many people to become uncomfortable with their turn-ons — fetishistic or not — which Dailey calls unfortunate.
The fact that many people are
He said most students went to high schools where sex education "was very narrow: reproduction, physiology, anatomy and contraception. They didn't learn about orgasms."
Chocolate-flavored body paint is one of many sex toys available for couples.
Other products include swings, games and pornography.
The embarrassment factor
This lack of information leads to a heightened sense of fear regarding anything that could be considered sexual.
For example, Dailey said that many people, especially women, were embarrassed to walk into a store such as Priscilla's and say they wanted sex toys such as vibrators because they were worried about being classified as bad or dirty by society.
"Women don't go in and assert their sexuality because asserting your sexuality in this culture is troublesome," he said. "If women know about sex, enjoy sex, pursue sex, they are whores or sluts. If men know about sex, pursue sex, enjoy sex, they're described as men."
Dailey said women who were not comfortable with their sexuality were cheating themselves.
Almost all of the men raise their hands immediately.
"There's no penns on the planet that can out-move a vibrator," Dailey said.
"One or two might not," he said.
"And only one of those might not have— the other one is lying."
But, when he asks the women, only about half raise their hands.
Dailey said that when he talks to his 500-person sexuality class about masturbation, he first asks the men and then the women this question: How many of you have masturbated?
"My question would be, jeez,
women's clitorises are a lot more
sensitive than men's penises," he
said. "Why would there be this lag?
Why would there be this delay?"
Dailey blamed the difference on societal messages that said women should not be sexual without a man and that women should not know about or even like sex.
Dailey said this attitude can lead to problems.
"A lot of men do ask women 'What would you like, how would you like me to touch you, what do you enjoy, what turns you on?' Dailey said. "And there are 40 percent of women on this campus at least who are going to say, 'I don't know.' Why? Because they've never touched themselves."
He said society also sent men sexual messages that caused problems
"Men have been instructed to choose someone and make sure she's sexually pleasured," Dailey said. "And if she doesn't come, it's your fault. There's something wrong with you."
That expectation — and the guilt it engenders — is a turn-off in a world that needs more turn-ons, he said.
The end result
Katz, the Priscilla's clerk, said one of her favorite customers was guilt-free. She recalled how a distinguished looking man who was in his 60s and dressed in a suit and tie walked into the store. He started looking at the wide range of shoes and boots and finally found what he wanted — thigh-high, black leather, high-heeled boots. He asked Katz if they were available in size 11.
Katz assumed he was looking for a present for a large girlfriend.
She described how he took the boots into the fitting room, came out wearing the boots, and "walked around in them saying 'Oh, I'm just testing them out—seeing if they walk right.' Go you," she remembered thinking to herself.
Although some might see the man's behavior as deviant, it's just another turn-on. Dailey said.
According to Dailey, being able to walk into a sex shop and be comfortable with a turn-on is simply "getting smarter about what it means to be a sexual human being."
— Edited by Kimberly Thompson
— Designed by Kyle Ramsey
Student Senate Executive Secretary
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