The Place of the Gringo Gulch: Space, Gender, and Nation in Sex Tourism

This chapter draws on over a decade's worth of research on the history and retail culture of sex positive feminist sex toy businesses in the United States (US) to outline the underlying philosophies and retail strategies that comprise the Good Vibrations model of retail. It argues the project of sexual uplift advanced by sex positive retailers is an ideologically dense and complicated one not easily reducible to gender alone. In Candida Royalle's opinion, who has created a popular line of vibrators, bringing the markers of 'quality' and 'class' to the sexual market place is not only how you 'get to women', but also how you rescue sex, porn and sex toys from their stereotypical crass and 'lowbrow' status. The Good Vibrations model of retailing an educationally-based and quasi-therapeutic approach to selling sex toys has since become a prototype for other women-owned and oriented sex toy businesses in the US and in other countries.