I have been talking about Other Nature here a lot, simply because I think it is an amazing space where you can get valuable advice, browse a great book / movie selection, and of course get exciting toys. In the midst of the heat wave in Berlin I sat down with Kitty May, Education & Community Outreach Director of the shop to chat about their sex education program, sex toy parties, and in general about Other Nature. You can too, chat with Kitty and attend a sex toy party - on the 25th of August (the Langen Nacht der Museen) at 11pm Other Nature and the Museum of Objects will host a sex toy party at the museum.

Vanina: What is Other Nature?

Kitty: Other nature is an alternative sex shop in Kreuzberg Berlin, opened in 2011. Why alternative? The word can obviously mean lots of different things, but there are 5 areas that we focus on. When we say we are an alternative sex shop we mean feminist, sex-positive, queer, eco-friendly, and vegan. So those are the 5 principles that shape how we decide which products to stock, how we talk to people in the store, how we’ve decorated the store: everything that we are putting on offer is guided by these 5 principles. It doesn’t mean that people who come here, our customers, need to be queer, feminist, sex-positive, etc. - they don’t! Everyone is welcome, but that’s who we are and that’s how we orient our work

V: I’ve been here before, and it always feels very safe and accepting space to be and ask questions. Because many times when you enter a sex shop you feel a bit ashamed or a bit embarrassed, but I don’t have this here at all - it is very friendly, very comforting

K: This is exactly what we are going for. When the shop was founded the idea was really to open this space that could hold all the different aspects of sexuality under one roof.

So we sell toys, and exciting products, but we also sell things that are really necessary for life, like menstrual products that are eco-friendly and lube that isn’t gonna give you an yeast infection. We have a whole range of safer sex products (not just condoms, but also dental dams, and gloves) and a big book room, where we also sell lots of different resources and materials - everything from erotic stories to resources for survivors of sexual assault and guides to help parents talk with their kids about sex.

For us it’s really important that the store is exactly what you described - a place for people to feel comfortable, like they feel at home in the store, and we try really hard to cultivate that atmosphere, and encourage people to come talk to us and ask questions if they want to.

There is no pressure to talk to us, but we are here, we are available and we are sex educators. That's what we do, we are here to answer people’s questions, and if there are things we don’t know we will do our best to find out. We can really talk to you not just about the products in the shop, but a lot of different issues. Any thoughts or issues you might be having about sexuality - it is all welcome here.

V: Which brings us to the sex education program, and the workshops the shop does. Can you tell us more about that

K: Sure, yeah. So we tend to say that we are an education-oriented sex shop, and I would personally say that we are doing sex education all day every day, even in one to one customer interactions we are having. If we are explaining to someone which toys are safe to put in the bum for example, and why that is, and not just which toys, but what this whole process is like, what the anatomy is, how one does that in a way that is pleasurable - obviously that is sex education right there in action. Or helping someone find condoms that are not going to give them an allergic reaction for example. So that’s sort of the informal, daily sex education side of our work. And then we have some other types of sex education. We do workshops at the store - usually twice a month. We have different facilitators from outside the shop who we invite to come and teach or facilitate workshops on a whole range of topics. This month we have an intro to japanese bondage workshop.

Next month we have workshops that rhyme, which was an accident - we have flirting and squirting - a beautiful accident! So, flirting and squirting in September. And we have workshops on a whole range of topics - from communication and consent, to blowjob skills, jealousy workshops, poly skills. We had recently one on non-verbal communication and masculinity, so a whole range of different angles that we offer here. We also provide workshops out in the community. Sometimes an organization or a festival, or some kind of group would ask us to go to them, and do a workshop. And that might be on a range of different topics. In that way we can sort of go out into the world and take the Other Nature perspective with us. In terms of sex education, on our website we have an online shop and also information and advice pages. These are educational resources on a whole bunch of topics, like what is the G spot, or a whole page talking about masturbation, one on anal play, how to talk to kids about sex, sex and aging, sex and disability. So people who can’t make it into Other Nature can still access some of our sex education though our website.

V: I’ve been to some of the workshops at the shop - it feels very comfortable, being very open and friendly translates very well into the workshops. You can ask absolutely whatever you want, you don’t feel embarrassed or anything

*Kitty May*

K: That’s really good to hear. We are very picky about who we invite to come in and facilitate in our space and we’ve got an amazing network of fantastic educators who we are so happy to have here. People have quite different presentation styles and that diversity is obviously nice, because people are diverse, people learn in a lot of different ways. And facilitators’ consistent traits are that they represent our values, sex-positive, feminist and so forth, and that they are creating this safe and comfortable learning environment for people. It could be really empowering as well, because one of the main things we are workings towards is to make sex less of a shameful topic, which it is for many, many people, because we are still living in a sex-negative world. So what I really see in the workshops is that people come and they learn something, they hear something they haven’t before, get some information they didn’t have before. But the other part of it is to have had this experience - of coming and sitting in a room with other adults, who are all willing to say “I am interested and I’m gonna spend some of my free time learning about this” and that atmosphere that’s being created by this communal experience of “yeah we’re gonna sit in a sex shop and we’re going to think about some aspect of sexuality together” - I see how freeing and empowering that can be.

V: Which brings us to the sex toy parties Other nature is now doing. Can you tell us what exactly is a sex toy party and how is Other nature doing a sex toy party?

K: So we didn’t invent sex toy parties - you might have heard of tupperware parties, and the principle is somewhat similar. We take a bunch of sex toys from the shop and bring them to someone’s house (the organizer of the party). Which means they and a group of their friends or acquaintances get together and we come with a suitcase of sex toys and we give a little informal presentation. And then after the “show and tell” part, there is a chance for everyone to buy the products. That’s sort of the framework of what a party is – and then obviously because we are an alternative sex shop, we put our own alternative spin on that.

So for us one of the most important thing is sharing information and really sharing enthusiasm - we are enthusiastic about learning about sexuality, about sex toys, and we think that people should know about them, and understand what their options are. And we absolutely think that if people are interested in toys, they deserve to have accurate information about things like hygiene and materials, quality and manufacturers. So we are really quite passionate about getting the information out there, and we are equally really passionate about not being salesy and not being pushy. That’s what makes it an alternative toy party. Some of these parties in the world operate on a commission basis: the person who’s doing the party only gets paid based on what they sell. We would never do something like that, because we don’t want anyone to feel pressured to sell and we definitely don’t want you to feel pressured to buy.

So the fact that people can buy things at the end of the party is just that the opportunity is there if people are interested. But the more important thing for us is to give information, and open the topic up.

And we obviously talk about toys, but we also talk about the toys in relation to broad topics such as pleasure, desire, orgasm, communication, playing with a toy with another person - how might that go and why that might be interesting. Or playing with toys by yourself, so destigmatizing masturbation. These are the kinds of topics we are looking at in connection to sex toys. And also sometimes just basic anatomy - we are talking about toys that have been designed for anal play or clitoral stimulation and we can also fill in why and what these things are – and we bring in big diagrams that we can show!

V: So you have a selection of different types of toys?

K: Exactly. We always tailor the experience. We want to make sure we give the group the information that they find most interesting. So for some groups it might be “it’s a vibrator night, that's what we want to hear about” or a group might be “we are interested in kinky stuff and sensation play”, so we always tailor it to the group. It is also very interactive if people want it to be: they can ask questions throughout, we pass the toys around, so everyone can hold them and turn them on and off, and just familiarize themselves. Then there is also time after the party for people to ask questions one-to-one if they want to do that, away from the whole group. So there is the chance to follow up with us there and then, or there is a chance to follow up at the store.

V: Yeah, i was also thinking about it in a way of taking out the shop and bringing it to someone else’s space. It also provides even more comfort, like oh this is actually coming to me, so the power dynamic is a bit different

K: Totally. We hear feedback all the time – we are very lucky and grateful for the feedback we get – which often is that people tell us “when I walked through the door of the shop I felt so much more comfortable than I ever anticipated I would”. But we also recognize that there are so many people who are not going to get to the door of the shop. Mainly because all pre-conceptions of what a sex shop is and we understand and empathise with that. So for us, it is really nice to be able to bring a little bit of Other Nature to people, in the comfort zone of their home or a friend’s house. It’s an important part of our mission to spread the word!

Also what is exciting for us about the parties is that we have a really diverse group of people who facilitate them, who we’ve trained up to do these parties. I believe this is also very nice for people who, for one reason or another, may be shy to come to the store - just to know that for the toy parties there is a whole mix of people who can come to your house.

So if you are a group of gay men for example and you feel more comfortable for a gay man to come to the group you can actually request that. Or if you are a group of non-binary people you feel more comfortable with a non-binary person. In the autumn, for example, we have a toy party hosted by SUSI, the Interkulturelles Frauenzentrum, and that will be open to the public but POC-only, and hosted by a POC facilitator. These kind of request are completely okay, we understand why people might have some comfort zones or preferences, so we are really pleased to being working with a diverse group of people. And their diverse backgrounds, in terms of the other work they do and so on, is part of the strengths they are bringing to this work.

V: You mentioned a sex party at a museum?

K: Yes. On the 25th of August, it’s the Langen Nacht der Museen - the museums stay open all night and you buy one ticket to go around all different museums. And the museum of objects currently has an exhibition about the eroticism of objects. So they approached us, which was really lovely, and asked us if we want to do some collaboration for the Langen Nacht. I told them about toy parties and they thought that sounded fun. So on the 25th of August at 11pm I’ll be in the museum talking about sex toys.

V: Do you have an idea what kind of range of sex toys will you present?

K: Yeah they already gave me a private tour of the exhibition, and it has a mix of sort of historical objects and contemporary objects. They have quite a lot of sex toys in the exhibition - some of them we sell, and some are from companies whose products we sell. So it’s not such a leap to a (sex toy) party. But i think because the museum has a focus on objects and materiality i can focus on things like different aspects of design (aesthetic and function) and some of the newer innovations in sex toys. Also i definitely want to talk about different materials, as this is very interesting in terms of the tactile nature of sex toys - some people want to touch things that are very soft and some like to touch things that are hard and smooth. How things feel in your hand somehow feels very relevant to the museum of objects. There are some very very old dildos in the exhibition, which is very nice as i often talk with people about how dildos are the original sex toys - every ancient civilization seems to have been making dildos! So it’s nice to be talking about that in the context of the exhibition being right there: you can actually go and see some stone and wooden dildos from earlier eras.

V: Which relates nice to the idea of acceptance and just the fact that sex toys have been around for a while.

K: Exactly. There is nothing new about the idea of enhancing your or your partner's pleasure!