The first ever San Francisco Trans March was held the weekend of Gay Pride. The crowd was good sized, totaling about five long city blocks, and we marched toward City Hall from Dolores Park. It was a powerful event, in part for being the first of its kind in SF, but also because it was the first time for many trans and genderqueer people to take center stage and not just be the sometimes silent “T” at the end of LGBT. Which by the way is considerately updated to LGBTIQ, the “I” for Intersex and the “Q” for Questioning. It was also an emotional event because the March came on the Friday just after the mistrial in the case of Gwen Araujo, the transgender teen whose brutal murder last year left the Bay Area trans community shocked and grieving. Her family and friends came to the march and many in the crowd carried “Justice for Gwen” signs. In contrast to the frat party feel of the Dyke March or the Mardi Gras crush of the Pride Parade, the Trans March had intense political energy. The issues of inclusion and safety brought so clearly into focus by Gwen ranged from the daily hassles of finding a safe place to pee to the real danger of being murdered. Powerful, emotional and political–how perfect. And the range of people was beautiful too: transwomen, transmen, their allies, and an army of genderbenders, genderqueers, and protesters of the binary gender paradigm.

Perhaps of all the places I visited, I looked forward to Playboy the most. No, not because I entertained fantasies of bunnies feeding me martinis (although not bad as fantasies go), but because I’d had a pleasant phone relationship with the Playboy Advisor for years. Of course it comes as no surprise to you that the Playboy Advisor would regularly seek the counsel of a giant pussy, right? I thought not.

Anyway, we entered the gilded offices on Fifth Avenue and inspiration hit me. I did not want to show up at Playboy empty-handed, so I strapped the discreet little finger vibe under my finger. When my friend the Playboy Advisor greeted me I gave him a warm handshake complete with a little buzz that literally set his pulse racing. To his credit, he did not miss a beat but smiled knowingly and said, “you know what I like, after all these years.” After a good laugh, he escorted Clit Girl and I to the conference room, where a rack full of bunny-logo’d hats and a cocktail tray with bunny-logo’d stemware lined the walls. Our Playboy Advisor casually informed us that he’d emailed a few of the staff to join us. Imagine our surprise when about fifteen staff members walked into the meeting.

Delighted to have such a big audience (giant vulva’s love big audiences), Clit Girl and I whipped out every single toy in our bag and held an impromptu version of TIB’s Sex Toys 101 class. I’ve got to hand it to Playboy, for all the controversy they’ve inspired over the years, at least they’re not shy about sex. We didn’t have to censor our language, dumb down our instruction, or focus on cute toys at the expense of more practical, explicit toys. We fielded questions from a large, curious, mostly late-twenty-ish staff of men and women on everything from anal penetration (they were fascinated by the Bend over Beginner’s Kit), to cyberskin and acrylic dildos and what they each do best, to the latest tech trends in sex toys (see the Audio-oh, Solar Vibe, and Laptop vibe).

At Playboy, sex toys were celebrated, and we were the much appreciated messengers. It was a welcome alternative to some of the squeamishness we’d experienced from women’s magazines and the polite rejection we’d had at Maxim.

We stopped by the Museum of Sex, which opened last year to much fanfare. I thought the new exhibit, Sex Among the Lotus: 2500 Years of Chinese Erotic Obsession, was great. Seeing the pages from ancient pillow books depicting group sex, voyeurism, and sumptuously decorated boudoirs, made me want to get flat on my back right that minute. Eastern religion celebrates sex as natural and divine; it’s a refreshing reminder that the Judeo-Christian emphasis on repression and sexual guilt is not universal. For a peek into one of the most famous ancient pillow books, check out this mini Kama Sutra.

On a less joyous note, the exhibit segues into a large display of foot-binding, a painful reminder of how much women suffer for beauty. Whether we’re having our feet reshaped to fit into doll-size slippers, we’re starving ourselves to feel more desirable, or we’re having our vagina’s tightened to please our partners, it seems we’re always so far away from just accepting ourselves as we are.