Mumsnet vibrator: for "mothers, women and people with wombs"

[NewBootsAndRanty]

Amongst otherthings that stand out from the article:

"We knew from previous activations with our community that sex and motherhood is a deeply-rooted taboo. The lack of conversation and resources on the topic is leaving women and people with wombs feeling side-lined as sexual beings. At Smile Makers, we have been tackling taboos around female sexuality for over 10 years and that was obviously an important one to remove"

www.mumsnet.com/articles/the-whisperer



Where to start with the language mangling?

[Slothtoes]

I’m also shocked that Mumsnet put their name to this
Its so disrespectful and sexist
Perhaps since it’s MN they will write about it and explain all about the careful market research and user testing they did with a wide range of mothers…?

[FrancescaContini]

@Clymene

Why is Mumsnet involved in this crap?

Yes, absolutely. Why?

[JarByTheDoor]

🫰

[TheWitchesAreBackInTown]

@Q2C4

Isn't part of the language problem that the dictionary definition of "woman" was recently updated to include "an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth."

www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/cambridge-dictionary-woman-gender-definition-b2244579.html

Fuck the dictionary. (Channelling Vanessa McCulloch).

Not really in this case, I don't think. It's more to do with a refusal to use the term women and, instead, reduce us to body parts. Someone on the other thread (AIBU vulva owners) said it was a deliberate attempt to separate the word woman from our bodies.

Also, as I'm in the fuck off mood. Can we please fuck off with the myth that an intern is in charge of the social media posts. People get paid a lot of money posting this kind of crap - it's a sought after job.

[Moopsi]

May as well call it a vibrator for people with bleedin' 'oles 😆

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

Has the article changed? Maybe I clicked on the wrong link but it seems very different from what is being written about here.

[WinnieFosterReads]

I think they've rewritten it three times. The general MN part has got better. But one of the problems is the quote from the vibrator company - they're the ones using 'with wombs'. I think their context is that the vibrator is aimed at women who have just given birth and the vibrator company doesn't realise that sometimes even women who have just given birth no longer have wombs.

[ResisterRex]

There's a thread in Site Stuff (just popped up on Active) where someone says the vibrator in question looks like "Shrek's ear" 😂

[maranella]

What a load of bollocks that blurb is! There are masses of different kinds of vibrators on the market aimed specifically at women. As for all the trans-friendly speak? Bleugh!

[ArabellaScott]

Way back in those frigid and ancient days BG (Before Gender) —the Olden Times that most mothers hail from — it used to be customary to do what was called “market research”, where instead of getting the non-binary interns aged 21 to write your product descriptions, you actually went out and asked some actual potential customers about the product and what they thought about your marketing before you unleashed it on the target audience and risked making a fool of yourself and your business. (I know, right?!? What a bizarre idea!)

Depends whether you want to sell products or educate those daft, repressed old motherhags, I suppose.

[pattihews]

I think their context is that the vibrator is aimed at women who have just given birth and the vibrator company doesn't realise that sometimes even women who have just given birth no longer have wombs.

I've not given birth so I have no idea, but judging from my sister and friends and neighbours who have, and who have ouched and limped around like John Wayne and sat down gingerly for weeks afterwards and sworn they were never having sex again, I'm a bit gobsmacked imagining any woman wanting a vibrating bit of plastic anywhere near her vulva just after giving birth. It's not a taboo that's holding them back from sexual pleasure, it's the painful physical reality of having just squeezed out a human baby. The last thing they need is some marketing trainee fresh out of university telling them they need to use this whispering bit of landfill to overcome a taboo.

I'm old and I've been masturbating very successfully since I was a young teen in the 1970s. Never used a sex toy. My fingers know exactly what's required and when and where and how fast or slow or heavily or lightly. No plastic pollution. No need to whisper.

[creepycumsmile]

"Smile Makers"' brand director appears to be called Cecile Gaslight.

[Clymene]

Sorry, they've rewritten it to focus on the sexual needs of new mothers who aren't yet able to have penetrative sex?

Obviously I can't speak for all women but masturbating - with or without shrek's ear - was the very last thing on my mind.

[creepycumsmile]

MN ought to be ashamed to have anything to do with this. They do know that women who've had children probably know a bit about sex, don't they? And that most of us can work out how and when to start masturbating and having sex again after childbirth without the help of "Smile Makers" <boak> <boak> <boak>

[FrancescaContini]

Yeah gotta laugh (hollowly) at that: “sexual needs of new mothers”.

This thing was clearly wholly devised by very young non-womb people who have no idea - and due to their aforementioned non-womb-ness will NEVER have an idea - that the words “my sexual needs” are never thought or spoken by new mothers.

[SalviaOfficinalis]

@ResisterRex

There's a thread in Site Stuff (just popped up on Active) where someone says the vibrator in question looks like "Shrek's ear" 😂

That thread has been hidden from active now.. how odd 🤔

[MrsDanversGlidesAgain]

We knew from previous activations with our community that sex and motherhood is a deeply-rooted taboo

IME 'deeply rooted taboo' is salespeak for 'something we can make money from.' See also 'menopause.'

[Happylittlechicken]

Which community would that be……

[MuckyPlucky]

Just popping over to this thread to let you know that the one abojt this on ‘site stuff’ has exploded…people are so pissed off, and are asking innocent legitimate Q’s of MNHQ, who have now hidden the thread! They’re clearly hoping to avoid adding to the dissent, in case anyone from this thread were to stumble across the thread on ‘Actives’.

Active censorship & silencing of hundreds of women.

Just thought I’d make you aware, as it’s unlikely anyone would now know the debate was taking place over there 😔 😞 😡

[ZeroFuchsGiven]

I am here to shamelessly bump this thread. There is a thread in site stuff discussing this which has now been removed/hidden from active and trending.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/4733890-official-complaint-to-mumsnet?page=1

[Youwhatnowbiggles]

The ‘official complaint’ thread has now indeed been hidden from Active (despite being 14 pages long!!). Just letting anyone who posted on there know. If you did post it was still in the ‘I’m on’ section last time I checked. I’m really appalled Mumsnet see fit to silence women, or whatever it is they want to refer to us as next, for simply standing up to misogyny. Women are essentially being cancelled.

[YesitsBess]

@ResisterRex

There's a thread in Site Stuff (just popped up on Active) where someone says the vibrator in question looks like "Shrek's ear" 😂

There is also now a picture to accompany (not done by me) and it is BRILLIANT

[MuckyPlucky]

Censorship of our legitimate right to voice our dissent.

Amazing way to utterly alienate their already pissed-off customers! These morons can’t help pouring petrol on the flames can they?

[ResisterRex]

Oh god that Shrek picture is inspired!! 🤣

[JarByTheDoor]

@JarByTheDoor

Aside from all that, I'm creeped out by "The Whisperer". Yes, I know it's supposed to suggest that you can get off without the chainsaw-like cacophony of an inferior vibrator motor waking all under-fives within a ten mile radius, causing them to sleepily barge into your bedroom and destroy the mood with their questions. But it makes me think of unpleasant, sleazy men leaning in to make quiet but unwanted comments, or feathery-stroker types who think they're being arousing when it's quite the opposite.

To be fair, it might actually be my fault the thing is called The Whisperer — in a previous incarnation I posted this thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4647187-exactly-what-special-sex-toy-needs-does-mn-think-mners-might-have
— about a poll MN were running on potential names for a new MN-endorsed vibrator, in which I said that I could at least kind of understand The Whisperer, as opposed to The Postman or The Sorcerer, even if it gave me the feathery-stroker creeps.

(Yeah, I know they never even saw my thread with MNers ripping apart both the proposed names and the very idea of a MN-branded vibrator. I know they never saw it, because someone came up with The CFer, which is so clearly the perfect name for such an item that, if seen, all other names would've been immediately ditched.)