#076 ✰ Objects of pleasure
SoaO: sextoys [NSFW] • spaces • tempting cities • watches
Kev here, welcome 👋 we are Objet. Every object has a story. We’re building a network for object lovers.
Objet is the french word for 'object' and should be pronounced 'ob-jeh‘. In this journal, we explore the intersection of desire, taste, joy, meaning and culture.
In today’s Objet journal:
Soul of an Objet 👉 sextoys | cross interview
What’s up in the app 👉 spaces
Cool reads, cause it’s always cool to read cool stuff 🤯
Soul of an Objet | sextoys 🐰
Sublime possessions have soul and meaning. And today we're exploring what might be crowned the most intimate of them all; the one you'd carefully put away while cleaning your room to make sure that your regular guests wouldn't stumble upon it. Yet, this object holds the most beautiful paradox possible: to put its owners in a very vulnerable state while truly empowering them.
I've been surprised to see some sextoys pop up within the community. Then I realised how my own surprise was generated first by a kind of society-level views on and around these objects. It made me deeply curious. I don't own any sextoy, yet.
I'm extremely grateful to both Marie and Luc for opening up and letting me dig into their own relationship with sextoys. Our discussions made me reflect a lot, and I think I can say now: I'll buy one in the future for sure. Randomly enough, I might have found the 'where' already. Contact Sports in NYC with its vintage sport locker room vibe looks definitely attractive to me. The tagline resonates: “Curating the best gear for the oldest sport.”
Without further ado. Meet Marie - founder of Puissante: a feminine well-being company that wants to lift the taboos about masturbation and female sexuality. No less.
How and when did you discover sextoys?
I was 18 years old when I bought my very first sextoy. I remember it vividly. I was watching Sex and the City and when they introduced 'the rabbit' in an episode, with then the women spending their whole days locked in their bedroom to enjoy pleasure, I was way too curious and told myself: 'I have to try that out and experience it by myself'. So I went to my local sexshop and bought exactly the same. Which was ugly to be honest, translucent, pink with some little balls inside — definitely not a nice object.
What happened next?
I bought it, I tested it and I found it truly amazing.
Did you share this experience with your girlfriends?
Hell no. The whole process I've just described stayed entirely between me and myself. Only afterwards, I talked about it to my girlfriends but they all looked at me with wonder and astonishment. I'm 30 years old now. I come from Vannes, a little town in the Brittany region, north west of France, the local culture is very catholic, a little bit inhibited. So you can imagine more than a decade ago how sextoys weren't part of any conversation at all.
Even later on, in bigger cities, while we could touch on the topic itself, I could tell you it was really out of the picture for most of my girlfriends to buy such a product. I've to admit though, the object itself was just so ugly. And the result was: while in college, not one of my friend owned a sextoy.
Before any sextoy in your life, did you masturbate? did you feel any stigma around it?
Sure. I discovered masturbation early on, I was around 12. I think that also explained why I was pretty receptive to the 'sextoy-idea'.
It's funny you know, I was typically talking about all this yesterday night at a dinner. I was mostly surrounded by 60-ish people and I was telling them: 'for me, building this sextoy company and talking about sex and masturbation is completely normal'. I consider myself a very normal person. I'm just very curious. Everyone knows that everyone masturbates. And it irritates me a ton that the whole thing isn't viewed the same way for women — as compare to men.
At one point did you decide to work on your own sextoy company?
Well the very first time I tried the rabbit, I told myself instantly: 'every woman should experience this'. But as I told you earlier, the object itself was too ugly. It stigmatised even more. Of course back then I was only 18, so I just hold this idea somewhere in my mind. Then I joined an engineering school, followed by a business one. And I almost worked on that 'sextoy-idea' at the very end, as the last 'internship' we needed to go through to graduate.
Then once I graduated, I joined a consulting company. And as far as I remember, I always had the idea in the back of my mind. I finally started to work on it 1 or 2 years later. I was at my parents place, and I really wanted to try to make it work. I think it was around October 2019. And after a whole year of hard work, we finally launched the crowdfunding campaign on Ulule; which was a real success. It was January 2021.
At first I wanted to make the whole thing a 'made in France' product. Hence it took me so long. Then in retrospect I do think it's a great thing I didn't start working on Puissante early on, or even worse, when I was 18. I wouldn't have been able to introduce and position the brand the right way. I do believe today that communication is utterly important for us. The way we communicate about our product is way more impactful than expected. And after so many years researching the area, I think I now understand better what makes most women stuck on the idea to even use a vibro: they feel ashamed with the idea of treating themselves. The whole society makes us believe that we are such selfish creatures if we dare to seek and experience pleasure by ourselves.
So, back to Puissante, I think the right mix is really: product + positioning. And obviously we've been lucky with the timing as well. I mean, right around the time I decided to give it a try, we got more and more Instagram accounts around masturbation for women, pleasure and how sextoys could be great for our lives. Even more broader than that, we noticed many accounts and people who tackle sexuality at large. Which was much needed.
And I think it makes total sense just in the flow of history. The rise of feminism as a whole helped tremendously. For a very long time - in our societies at least - women saw sex only through their male counterpart eyes. Literally it was: patriarchy ⇒ missionary position ⇒ penetration. Period. Now I do believe we're breaking free from this. Our minds are dramatically opening. For the better. And today if a woman is looking for more info, well, it's everywhere.
How would you describe your main objective with Puissante?
I'd say it's both put on the market the best sextoy possible but also design a dramatically better experience as a whole around 'pleasure for women'. Of course the latter starts with a great sextoy. Period. Otherwise, we fail and nothing else matters.
85% of women enjoy an orgasm through external stimulation of their clitoris. Which means, 15% need penetration. We designed our first vibrator - Coco - with this reality in mind. Our goal was: most women can buy this product and wouldn't need anything else. Today, we have 4 different vibrators in stock.
But we also plan to launch some t-shirts. Our goal being to have fun mainly. Frankly, long-term, Puissante shouldn't be a sextoy-company only. Helping women feel great and enjoy pleasure could come from many other angles. I wouldn't consider ourselves a proper tech company. We might not be that tech-oriented actually. On the other hand, evolving into a streetwear brand for instance would be better for our word-of-mouth. Today, very few people know if you enjoy this or that one specific sextoy. On the contrary, if you wear this hat, well everyone sees the brand.
Would you say that today, society as a whole, is more inclusive re: women masturbation and pleasure?
Oh yes, no doubt. I was talking about this exactly a few days ago with a sexshop owner. Young women these days don't care at all what other people say; they come in groups inside the sexshop and browse the store like they'd go to a bakery.
We also enjoy a greater variety of stores. There are love-stores for instance. The whole atmosphere feels better, more 'quality' oriented. Everything looks more beautiful. You could find Puissante for instance inside concept stores; or in a few pharmacies too. So sextoys are definitely more accessible; hence accepted for sure.
What is still missing though?
By far: equal pay. Typically, I lately had to force a woman who works for us to ask for a raise cause she never dared. This is ingrained in our culture. Women don't dare to ask.
I know I'm answering outside of the sex-area but to me, that's why we named the company 'Puissante' [powerful in english]. There is a deep link between a fulfilling/ accepted sexuality and all the rest in our life. You assert yourself. You're in full possession of your faculties.
Can you imagine: there are still 25% of the 15 year-old girls who have still no idea they have a clitoris. This is unbelievable. It makes me angry. Finally, the clitoris appeared in the SVT book [SVT = biology & chemistry class in France]. Meanwhile, young folks have a total access to the web so everyone learn first through pornography. I recently heard another teenage girl telling me 'I'm not sure I'd like to receive a facial cumshot'. Seriously? So you don't know you have a clitoris but you know what a facial cumshot is 🤦♀️ It's simple: at 11 year-old, they've all been exposed to porn already.
Would you recommend everyone to own and use a sextoy?
Of course. Sure, there are women who genuinely don't like vibrators. Like they can't use anything else than their fingers. Fair enough. As long as they explore and listen to their inner selves, I'm truly happy. Now, most of the time, there is just a psychological block. Like people telling themselves: 'nope, it's out of the question to try this. Never.'. I do have a girlfriend exactly like this. I already offered her many many times to try; like a thousand times maybe; but nope, she can't. She doesn't even really know how to explain it. It is what it is. I accept it of course.
Meanwhile, we receive very often some messages from women telling us: 'I didn't want to try at first; and then one day I got curious nonetheless and test and… I still wonder why haven't I tried this way earlier in my life?'. This is the most important feedback for us.
At the same time, there are still many men who're afraid. Like they're convinced that the object itself exists to simply replace them. In that regard I've to admit the Sex and the City episode I mentioned earlier didn't make a great job haha. We published a lot on this topic by the way, this is something we still hear too often; men stating: 'what's my role now? what will I be used for exactly?'. Guys, don't be afraid. A few inches of silicon won’t replace you.
And to add some nuance, of course there are also many men who're just happy and find the whole thing very cool. We can see it in our stats by the way, many men buy a sextoy to their partner during Valentine's day for instance. And overall on our website, 30% of all the orders are made by men. Now, a funny anecdote though is, we do have some women sending back the product stating 'it was a gift from him so I don't want it. I want this for myself. I want to buy one alone, by myself. It's about me and I want it to stay this way.'. Selfishly, some women want to explore and discover by themselves. I totally understand.
While there's no stigma around male masturbation, still, we don't expect them to own a sextoy; especially an anal one. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I was exactly talking about this with Patrick [founder of Passage du Desir]. Anal penetration for men is the biggest taboo of them all; even more than female masturbation for sure.
Obviously I'm intrigued, and it looks like so much pleasure. But of course all the men I hear about this are like: 'nope. Never. Ever. Period.' this is ridiculous; it even comes from people who'd consider themselves very curious.
Lately I discovered that a friend of mine wanted to launch his own company of vibrators for men but at the same time he told us 'I could never do it; I'd be unable to talk about it'. I find this so sad.
When I've shown our new ‘Chouchou’ model to some women, their instinctive reaction was ‘wow this is so big’ so I'm not sure they'd be ready for anal toys.
So for now we'll stay focus on what we do. Many women don't know anything about pleasure and all the benefits of sextoys; then they hear about us and start to trust us. It's a long-term game. And a step by step process. We'll take our time.
When I noticed Luc's sex collection, I reached out. He told me first he almost took it down earlier cause he wasn't sure he was ready to 'expose' this part of himself. Then he happily engaged and answered my questions.
Could you tell us the backstories behind your current sextoys?
Currently, most of my sextoys are anal toys. This is because I got interested in anal sex before other types of sex play. I discovered anal pleasure very early on, but for a long time, I was only using my fingers to masturbate.
Around 5 years ago, I got frustrated not to be able to get better sensations, so I decided to buy a first toy. The pleasure has been so intense in comparison to using my fingers that it made me want to try new shapes and variations.
So I bought all my toys one after another, to try new sensations. I bought them in a great sexshop in Barcelona called Amantis. Not all of them are on the Objet app actually.
Why did you pick up these ones specifically?
The bead one because it’s the one that consistently gives me the best sensations. If you would ask me to keep only one toy, I would choose this one. It’s also a beautiful object. When I look at it, it gives me the impression that sexual pleasure is serious business :-)
The inflatable one because it’s the most sophisticated of all my toys, it can change shape. I remember a porn movie from Rocco Siffredi and Bobbi Starr where they were using it. The scene was really erotic and impressive, and it made me want to know how it feels! And it turns out the sensations are radically unique, and I love it.
And finally, the tandem toy is also on this list because I like the concept of sharing the same toy with a partner. It is very interesting as it changes completely the traditional active/passive dynamic of the sex play between two (heterosexual) partners. But I haven’t played with it a lot unfortunately.
Why do you own several of them actually? do they serve a different purpose?
They all have the same purpose I would say: experiencing pleasure. To me, what make them different from one another are the sensations they bring and how I can use them in a sex play with my partners. Sensations are quite different from one toy to another, or from a category of toy to another, and depending on the play, one is more exciting than another. Also, when it comes to anal sex, you will always need several toys, especially of different sizes. You warm up with the small ones so you can use the bigger ones (or a penis) after.
Could you walk us through your own story with sextoys: when did you buy your first one? why? how did you learn about them? choose them? what did you expect exactly?
My first toy was a very thin and simple dildo, with small beads on one end and a long thin shape on the other end. A relatively small one and perfect at that moment to get familiar with the whole experience. But after just a couple of tries, I was already thinking about getting a bigger one.
In porn, it is difficult to not notice all the different toys that exist. Small, big, all types and shapes… it wasn’t difficult for me to have ideas about what to buy. But I also bought what was available in the shop, it’s that simple.
At first, I was going a bit blind in the shop, as I did not know what type of sensations I would get. More than expecting anything, I just wanted to try. It’s part of the pleasure with toys actually, to discover new sensations. Now, depending on my mood or the context, I know which toy I’ll like more at that moment.
I don’t necessarily like right away everything I buy. This is truly an exploration-in-progress. Sometimes you just have to be patient. I also end up liking things I didn't expect at first. This can be a bit frustrating of course but exploring new sensations and how to enjoy them the most is part of the experience to me.
Would you recommend everyone to own and use some? or not? why?
Absolutely! Don’t shy away from toys! Toys make our sexuality more creative; they are great to explore our bodies and different forms of pleasure (physical and mental). Now that I am exploring other types of sex play, like domination, impact, ropes, etc. I realise how varied sex experiences can be. And only a few of these experiences could happen without toys. Also, something I like about using sextoys is that they help us consider sex more as a cultural activity than a natural one.
Let me explain: the traditional heterosexual act narrative is trying to reproduce the act of procreation, in our very Christian society. Anything that deviate from that narrative is not “natural”. But my experience has been that since I’ve started to play with toys and discovered new ways to have sex, I have discovered new types of pleasure, became much more alert about my own pleasure, develop my ability to empathize with my sex partners, and feel like a better lover.
I believe that by engaging very intentionally in “unnatural sex” we make the fun part of sex much more enjoyable. Compare to when we only keep things very traditional.
You wrote 'most of my sextoys are anal toys', why is that? have you tried any other types?
Recently, I’ve tried impact toys (whips and flogs), I also tried tying toys (handcuffs and ropes), and other types of toys usually used in bdsm plays. But they weren’t mine.
Most of my toys are anal toys because I like this type of sex a lot, and because I can use them by myself as well as with partners. But since this summer, I think I will get back to the shop to discover other types of toys and enter a new phase of toys exploration :)
You also said you discovered 'anal pleasure' very early, how did that happen? why do you think most boys don't? or say they don't but maybe they do I'm not sure...
It happened very naturally. I was a young innocent teenager at that time, and the desire arose at school. We were having a sport class, swimming. While waiting for the class to start and the kids to get ready, some boys in my class were joking about the fact that girls were taking longer to get ready because they were fingering themselves. I was 12/13 and my body was full of hormones and my attention was oriented towards my own sensation at that age.
So I started picturing how would a girl finger herself, and realised I had a hole too, and I could try too how it feels like to finger myself too, cause I could already feel that sensations are usually erotic on this part of the body.
Why don’t most boys discover anal pleasure? It’s very simple: S.H.A.M.E.
Feeling rejected from a group is one of the most painful psychological experience one can experience. We adults have learned to cope with it (more or less), but young boys and girls are extremely sensible to this pain and will unconsciously do everything to avoid it, even if the price to pay is not to live new experiences and not develop their own individuality.
You mentioned porn a few times, did porn influence your discovery actually? Or not at all?
I think porn influenced my whole sexuality a lot. It helped me develop fantasies, think about new sex positions, and realise how far the sex play could go. But porn didn’t help me explore my sexuality, no… I feel porn only reinforces the desires you already have.
Until I started playing with toys, I was watching only mainstream hardcore porn. My sexuality was very mainstream. I was dreaming about a more creative sexuality, but I wasn’t allowing myself to explore. It’s really my desires that pushed me to discover toys.
How did your partners react to these toys? did they end up playing with them & you? or some of your partners rejected them entirely? why do you think?
Thank you for asking this question! Yes, the potential reaction of your partner is influencing very much what you allow yourself to do, or like.
There was a before and an after. Before, I was meeting partners very much interested in mainstream sex (understand penetrative, reproducing procreation + some standard oral sex), and anything that would go against this narrative was not very well welcomed. I was also younger, maybe it played a role.
But it was more the fact that a guy likes anal sex on him than the toys in themselves. The same thing happened for women than for men. Whether you’re a man or a woman, if your goal is to fit the narrative instead of listening to yourself, anything that deviates from this narrative will be a turn-off.
Now, I am meeting partners that are much more interested in kinky sex. I use a dating app specialized in this called Feeld, and it is great :-)
What’s up in the app
We’re building a giant, underground rendez-vous where the best conversations around objects - worth cherishing - happen, far away from social media’s blackout.
Some examples of spaces currently live 👇
⌚️watches
👟 sneakers
👩🍳 yes chef!
📚 life changing books
6️⃣ me in six
🛹 skaters
more are coming. and we welcome all your suggestions 🤗
Cool reads & more
🗽 I relate to
so much in her post The Endless Hole of Wanting More. I also feel the difference when i'm spending some time in cities such as NYC, or Paris. Compare to our 3 years in Lisbon where it was so much easier not to buy anything.🧠 which leads to the question
is asking: Is your brain hardwired for newness? and this statement:The fashion world is at a moment of chronic indecision, hoovering up the drug of over consumption to slake its rapacious desire for growth, whilst simultaneously overcome with morning after remorse.
📺 I was these days literally considering setting up a 'video-game' room at home. And then, I stumbled upon
and their “Rec Room” Philosophy. I didn't even know that term — ‘rec room’ stands for recreation room. I enjoyed the historical dive; and old pictures. I also found interesting the evolution of the TV [as an object] and its move from the rec room to the main living room [and its impact].⌚️🇫🇷 last but not least, for people out there who understand french, this whole discussion with 'Monsieur Biver’ is a must-listen -- especially if you're interested in watches.
His career in the watch industry is quite impressive: he bought Blancpain and then sold it to the Watch Group; then he rejuvenated Omega [within the Swatch Group as well]; then joined Hublot as CEO and sold it later to LVMH; then became CEO of Tag Heuer; and was finally named as the head of the watches and jewelry division of the whole group. He lately launched his own brand with his son: Biver.
If you got all the way here and have been seeking a way to engrave the stories of your cherished objects for eternity, alongside enthusiastic, not-so-serious souls, try Objet:
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Peace,
kev 💎