Who knew opening a sex toy store could cause such a stir? While most of the news coverage has been fair if not good, I’ve been chuckling the past few days over a few recent articles. It seems that Claire’s comment about the Brooklyn store having a changing table in the restroom has taken Babeland from a parent-friendly store to a kid-friendly store. That distinction is important among conservatives. Parent-friendly isn’t really anything to sniff at. Kid-friendly implies that I’m standing out on the sidewalk with ice-cream tempting eight year-olds inside to buy sex toys.

Clearly this isn’t what’s happening. Regardless, Focus on the Family, one of my favorite organizations to hate, has picked up the story. Their name sounds friendly but behind it is the most misogynist, bigoted rhetoric I’ve ever seen. So, when I’m doing something that Focus on the Family disapproves of, I’m happy:

“The sex industry thrives on euphemism and deception,” said Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family Action. “Adding lights and changing tables doesn’t change the damage pornography causes to individuals and families. The only thing this changes is who is being targeted by the lie.”

Actually, our business thrives on directness and honesty. Lights help people actually see the toys and we believe that pornography doesn’t have to be damaging but in fact can be hot.

The best article I’ve seen so far is this one from One News Now in Mississippi:

Incredibly enough, Babeland features hip tunes, nicely-dressed saleswomen and infant changing tables (emphasis theirs) in its effort to sell itself as a cool place for couples to shop. Babeland’s efforts to attract customers are not alone; it seems that there is a growing trend across the U.S. in an effort to remove the sleaze from the sex industry.

Hip tunes are pretty incredible. See how unimaginable it is for these people to even conceive of a place like Babeland? It’s nearly impossible. I love the second sentence too - watch out! These less-sleazy sex toy shops might get you!

Then come the blatant lies:

Sexually oriented businesses attract more crime and drive down property values wherever they are located, not to mention the fact that you cannot remove the sleaze from the sex industry, no matter how hard you try.

That might be the case for more mainstream stores but this blog just got done telling us how (incredibly) Babeland is different. Maybe they should check their numbers because the last time I checked, Babeland has been a long-time member of some of the most vibrant and growing neighborhoods in New York City and Seattle. In fact, a Lower East Side real estate agent cited Babeland as being a key part of the revival of that neighborhood.

And lastly, you can remove the sleaze from the sex industry; unless you believe that talking about sex at all is sleazy in which case you may never “get” Babelalnd. But for those of us who do, we’re so glad it’s around.

I’m an avid New York Times reader and although I’m not always happy with their coverage, occasionally, I’m thrilled with it. For instance, Judith Warner’s piece the other day that manages to bring in hymen reconstruction surgeries, purity balls, children’s books about plastic surgery and men in Austria who torture their daughters. It’s a provocative look at the status of women around the world and the ways in which cultural mandates to “protect women” are at their root, harmful. The vast majority of societies are terrified of female sexuality; let women have contraception, go to work, chose when to raise children, live in non-heterosexual or non-monogamous relationships and the whole world will be turned upside down. Why? I don’t know, that’s just how they see it and this viewpoint is damaging to all of us.
Warner says of the man in Austria:

Fritzl, a self-described “man of decency and good values,” had imprisoned his daughter after she began staying out all night and drinking. “I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth by force if necessary, away from the outside world,” he confessed.

And of purity balls:

“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Randy Wilson, one of the ball’s organizers, said at the Colorado Springs “Purity” event. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”

And then she puts them together:

I don’t want to take this analogy too far. I don’t mean to imply that there’s any equivalency between Josef Fritzl’s acts and the Purity Ball. Fritzl’s actions were uniquely horrific, and I am not accusing the men who danced in Colorado Springs of any crimes. But there is nonetheless a kind of horror to their obsession with their daughters’ sexuality. There is a dangerous boundary violation contained in their vow “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” And there is even greater danger to the fact that this particular aspect of the nationwide “abstinence movement” has not been broadly denounced as the form of emotional violence against girls that it indisputably is.

Beyond my own interest in drawing these connections, this article points out the importance of what places like Babeland strive to do every day. Walk in Babeland’s doors and female sexuality is not to be feared, controlled, or repressed; it is to be celebrated and prioritized. Women’s sexuality is seen, not as a destructive or terrifying force, but as natural and possibly empowering. Babeland isn’t here to make anyone live their lives in a certain way, but we are here to help people as they journey towards healthy sexuality without repression or guilt. When I read articles like Warner’s New York Times piece, I’m grateful for the opportunity to fight these negative forces by contributing to a safe space for female sexuality.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about equal parenting for couples - that is, both couples share the responsibilities of taking care of the children; not just the fun stuff, but the laundry and the cooking and the diapers and the vomit. The New York Times recently had an article all about this where they discussed divisions of labor and how they are often gendered (in heterosexual couples). Women see themselves as responsible for everything regarding their children - how they look, if thank you cards get sent, etc, making it hard to turn over responsibility. Additionally, men are raised to spend their time not thinking about taking care of children so the learning curve might be a bit higher.

The article has some interesting ideas for how to divide up roles and deal with the stresses that come up (different ideas of what constitutes “clean” for instance). The article also explores lesbian parents who struggle with the bond felt by the birth mother, for instance, but seem to divvy up roles much more naturally without the gendered expectations.

I won’t summarize the whole article but I thought of it when I learned that there’s a website called Daddy Types that lists where in NYC there are changing tables in men’s restrooms. I don’t go into men’s restrooms very often (or never) but it had never occurred to me to even wonder whether there were changing tables. And of course there aren’t. It’s just another way that we set up gendered norms for society through subtle but powerful means. The message is: men don’t change diapers (certainly they don’t in public) so why would they need changing tables in restrooms?

I found out about the Daddy Types website because they’re going to list the Babeland Brooklyn store! We have one restroom (for everyone) and it has a changing table. The media has once again colluded in producing social norms around who changes babies by touting how interesting this is for “moms” instead of “parents”.

As there are more couples who give the equal parenting thing a shot (and more gay men adopting children) , I hope advocacy for changing tables really takes off. I know I’ll be part of the fight.