Whaddya mean, “off the internet”?
It’s right here:
There is a non-creepy porn store near where I went to college. The clerks were pleasant and helpful, and didn’t laugh too riotously at my friend when she realized that she was looking at penis pumps. (The riotous laughter was provided by me.) No wank booths there that I could ever see, and it’s pretty clean and neat. Some of the customers were a tad skeevy, like the one who tried to pick us up, but they were mostly quiet and kept to themselves.
Besides, it’s called the Love Shack. How could you not go to it?
Ah. I thought you were questioning the claim that one was “cool” and the other wasn’t.
I’m not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with “wank now” vs. “wank later”. Women aren’t expected to masturbate or engage in sex play within the store itself. Men, I guess, are assumed to want to relieve their needs, so to speak, in the moment. The two lead to very different atmospheres. When a woman masturbates, it’s because she’s empowered and claiming her body and her sexuality as her own (because for so many centuries our genitals have belonged to a man). When a man masturbates, it’s because he’s scratching an itch. Empowerment is much sexier than being a slave to your penis. Why this double standard? I think because A) you have visible erections, and get them at sometimes inopportune times, which makes it obvious that it’s not entirely under your control and B) y’all spent too much time trying to get us to relieve your “blue balls” in high school. We learned then that your physical need was stronger than ours. Women CHOOSE to masturbate, men HAVE TO masturbate. (I’m talking cultural perception here, not physical reality.)
Really? Do straight men want to talk to other men about what gets them off in person? That seems a TMI sharing thing that most men would be wary of. If you just want to buy stuff in a clean environment, there’s the internet, which seems to have filled this niche for men. The drawback being not being able to touch the merchandise before purchase, of course. But I guess most men would rather accept that if it means not making eye contact with the guy ringing up the anal plugs.
This question could apply to tastes in porn, as well. The answer I’ve always heard is a vaguely dissatisfying, “If they were willing to pay for it, the market would provide it.”
In other words: got capital? 
I started as a clerk in a porn store…hmm, I guess about 13 years ago now and worked my way up to the main office where I now order the toys for the chain. (Female, btw.) The wages were a good $3 more an hour than what I had been making at other retail jobs, so I figured why not?
We are a full service chain - meaning we offer toys, movies, magazines, and have arcades and preview rooms. We’re also well-lit, clean, and have lots of knowledgeable female (and male!) clerks who aren’t skeevy. I wouldn’t have started working at the store if it was nasty!
Thanks. Now the b-52s will live inside my head for a while.
Heck, there is no way I’d ever be comfortable wanking in some public place! 
I’m not interested in that sort of thing. Just buying stuff is good enough for me, I don’t have to - ah - try it out right in the store.
I think you are onto something with the Internet. I’d certainly rather buy stuff over the 'net than put up with a crappy store complete with snarling dogs.
I do think there is still a bit of a double standard at play. Is this something inevitable, based on physical differences between the sexes, or socialization, or both? Your answer above seems to be the former. I do assure you that not all of us are “slaves to the penis” (though that makes a truly awesome suggestion for the name of a hypothetical porn store! ), though the fact that men typically have more indiscriminate sex drives plays a role. Myself, I think socialization is more significant, but I’m not wedded to the notion.
As far as capital goes - I’ll risk it when we’ve determined that this is a genuine case of market failure and not an inevitable difference. 
My first thought is that it’s at least partially a hold over. 20 years ago, were there women-centric porn shops? All of the stores I remember from then were of the dark and skanky variety located in rundown buildings. It seems that only recently (say 10 years or so) have porn/toy stores come out of the cave and become cleaner and more socially acceptable.
So the newer women’s stores are all clean, organized, brightly lit. The older stores are dirty, and in bad neighborhoods.
…and I, a male, would much rather go to the former than the latter.
I think most of WhyNot’s postings demonstrates very errudite, highly-educated, feminist-revisionist, umm, analysis. I am not a slave to my penis (band name!). I do not and would not wank in public.
Masturbating for women is empowering while men are just scratching an itch?
Definitely one too many women’s studies classes.
Centuries of sexual slavery only makes sense as an argument if you’ve lived through those centuries. You are a product of the past 50 years or so, just like almost everybody else. Sexual repression is, very much, a thing that has been already fought and (mostly) defeated in America since the 60’s.
Women today, I would argue, have as full control over their sexuality today as do men.
The differences between sex shops today, I would opine, is mostly about the transition between hidden and open sexuality. I would predict that in another generation, the old-style shops will be pretty much gone and replaced by the newer supermarket-style ones with the internet as the refuge for those who remain of the opinion that sex has to be hidden in the back room, the previoius role of the “male-oriented” shop.
>Really? Do straight men want to talk to other men about what gets them off in person? That seems a TMI sharing thing…
Aw, jeez. So much for falling asleep easily tonight. No, no, I don’t want to talk to anybody about that. Not because there’s too much sharing. Because, for God’s sake, it’s some creepy guy in a creepy porn store. Ack. Never mind. Never mind.
You know, when you really have to take a dump, doing so is a wonderful and empowering experience rich with planning and attention and sensation and gratification. But this, too, does not represent some kind of opportunity for sharing, whether or not you can imagine that other people do it. Yish.
It seems most of the posters in this thread are North American - can I ask how long the proper use of “wank” (and variations thereof) has been in such common use over there? I’m guessing it wasn’t back when Mork and Mindy was a popular show.
/hijack
Not to speak for WhyNot here, as she is more than capable of speaking for herself, but you did get the part in her post, **Belrix, ** where she said that “masturbating for women is empowering while men are just scratching an itch” was a cultural perception, not what she personally believed. Right? Based on what I have read in her posts (and I always read hers with much attention), she is the last person I would think would actually believe such a notion.
I guess, if she sees it as cultural perception, than I believe she’s repeating the perception of the feminist analysis of our culture.
Maybe it started with this:
http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/90.html
Heh. I picked up the term “wank” from my NADS (Non-American Doper Society) friends. So I’ve been using it for at least a few years now, Struan.
There’s a new little “adult superstore” about 2 hours drive from my home that Himself and I happened upon a few weekends ago on one of our road trips. We had to stop! It was not a new building, but they seemed to have made an effort to clean and brighten the place up. Himself bought me a new toy and a couple of magazines. The female clerk was pretty, and very nice and helpful, and the one male customer shopping in the place pretty much made himself invisible while Himself and I discussed DVD titles, cover, and stars. No snarling dogs, or anything, but I think it was definitely more male-oriented.
That’s good to know. It’s one of those words that just seems fit for purpose.
Well, then, you wouldn’t be in the traditional porn shop, where the majority of shoppers go to wank in (semi) public, would you?
Based on the clientele, set-up and services offered at “women’s” porn shops vs. “men’s” porn shops, it seems that’s the idea they’re perpetuating.
Ha. Funny. No. In fact, I have an AA from a community college. There were no women’s studies classes at Moraine Valley Community College. I am, however, a “student of life.”
Bwa----huh?
Have you SEEN The Vagina Monologues? There’s a 15 minute “trialogue” in there about the various names women were told to call their vulvas growing up because their mothers taught them to be ashamed of their anatomy, all of them taken from real interviews with real people. Do you know how many women today don’t know that they have three openings “down there” - a urethra, a vagina and an anus? I don’t either, but it’s a lot, and even some Dopers - highly educated women, for the most part - have admitted not knowing that urine and babies don’t come from the same hole. We are still, as a group, woefully ignorant about our bodies and our sexuality. I mention “cervical mucus” in a thread and get cries of TMI and requests to use spoiler boxes. Men are throwing Purity Balls where their daughters sign a pledge in public not to let another man touch them before their fathers give them away in marriage. Paris Hilton drinks and drives and goes to jail for violating court terms, and all we can talk about in threads about her jail time is the fact that she tends to wear underwear more often than Britney Spears, but both of them are sluts and bimbos.
Legally, yes, which is a great step forward. Culturally, socially, no way.
I think you’re right about this. I hope you’re right about this. But we’re sure not there yet, for either gender.
But it’s such a wonderful word! I have no idea when I started using it. Maybe from Eddie Izzard? Graham Norton? I’ve stolen “snog”, too. Hope you don’t mind. (You can keep “shag”, though, I don’t like that one much.)
Aw, you’re sweet. I personally think that individuals are individually wired, and that everyone should have as many or as few orgasms as they personally want. I don’t, in fact, think men are slaves to the penis.
Well, how many openings do you have?
They should make a Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” ad for “Mr. Porn Store Booth Cleaner-Upper”.
shudders
Dammit, that’s two great memes in one thread so far.