First, I’d love to see Buzz made into a miniseries. I think that would be AWESOME.

So much about this book stands out to me. I like that it’s written not as an academic paper but like a story with characters. I like that the author links each person she talks about to the next person she’s introducing: “A few years before Dodson introduced vibrators to her conscisousness-raising group, Gosnell Duncan was miles away in Chicago…” This helps my brain locate each of the people being highlighted in relation to each of the other characters and then to me, the reader.

One of the parts that has stuck with me is chapter 6, pages 93-107, about Gosnell Duncan making dildos out of silicone so that he and others could have a meaningful sex life as paraplegics and various other differences in abilities and then growing into this sort of advice-giving sage as the only person many of his clients could go to for their various sexual advice needs.

Duncan’s “problem” that he solved for himself and his clients had never crossed my field of awareness, not because I don’t care but more because I’m not in the paraplegic community. Now that this is in my frame of reference I’m like, “Duh! Of course this was a huge need that needed to be met!” The whole chapter was a lightbulb for me and made me just want to know more about Duncan and his life and the people who were helped by him.

It’s irritating that Duncan’s clever and cute names for his products like Joy Boy got rejected. Personally, I want to have sex with the Joy Boy! And I do not want to experience the Artificial Penis #1, #2, or #3 – unless it was maybe a kinky medical fantasy scene. It’s also messed up that he was not met with a resounding, “hell yes,” to his inventions but rather had to deal with the hardships of our cultural “epidemic of chasteness.”

Why are we not honoring this fabulous and brilliant man in our sex education? (My question kind of answers itself, we don’t have meaningful sex education for anyone let alone highlighting the heroes of the sex toy/sex enjoyment movement. This highlights the repression soup we’re all brought up in.)

It stands out to me that he was a black paraplegic man addressing his needs and the needs of his communities but that the satisfaction of him and his community reached its way to me a white-presenting non-binary woman in the future, where I now get to enjoy my harem of silicone dildos, in their colors other than “caucasian nude,” some of them looking like penises and others not resembling human penises at all. This makes a good case for why we need all of us, with our differences and our particular needs and desires; our differences make us stronger and better as a fun and fabulous species here on this planet.

I’m skipping over so much amazing stuff about Duncan and this chapter but I’m trying not to make my forum entry super long. I now feel a similar affinity towards Duncan as I do for women like Betty Dodson and others. I get to exist in my life the way I do because of them. I hope that others get to exist because I do the work I do as well.