Ooo sure! Always happy to pass on knowledge! First and foremost, materials! Many materials commonly used for cheap sex toys aren’t safe for anal use. TPU, TPE, and PVC being among the worse. Low quality silicone can also be dangerous. These basically are carcinogens when used anally, your butt is literally designed to absorb everything it can. I’m in the US, and there’s no regulation on sex toy materials here, so it’s perfectly legal to sell toys that give you ass cancer. I’m assuming from your lemmy instance you’re from the netherlands or somewhere in europe, so the legality where you are may vary, but it’s something you really need to look out for. The materials that are butt safe are steel, glass, and platinum cure or medical grade silicone. Platinum cure silicone literally uses platinum as an ingredient in the curing process, so it’s a bit more expensive, but unlike tin cure silicone it doesn’t break down over time. It will last you forever, as long as you don’t do something to destroy it.

Next up, lube! Good lube is really important to a good experience. There’s three main categories, water based, oil based, and silicone based. Water based is the easiest to clean up, washes off easily, and lasts the least amount of time. Oil based is harder to clean up, can stain, but still washes off without too much trouble and lasts longer. Silicone lube is damn difficult to clean up, can ruin silicone toys, but pretty much never dries out. For water based lube, I recommend getting it powdered (xLube or kLube) and mixing it with water yourself. It’s far cheaper than buying premixed stuff, and you can control how thick it is, which is nice. xLube is easier to get in europe, kLube is easier to get in the US. This is my general go-to stuff. Oil based lube is ideal for use in the shower and when you’re using butt plugs for long periods of time. It doesn’t wash away instantly like water based lube does but isn’t hard to clean off with soap. I use coconut oil for this, you can get it at your local grocery store cheap. It can come as a liquid or a solid, personally I like the solid stuff–it melts easily with body heat. I honestly don’t recommend using silicone lube for the most part, for toying at least. it has the potential to ruin silicone toys, depending on the specifics of the toy and the lube and is such a pain to clean up. If you get it in the carpet, it’s pretty much impossible to completely get out. For fucking people instead of toys it’s better, you don’t need to worry about reapplying it or ruining your toys. It’s also good if you want to use a chastity device, to keep everything from chafing.

Finally, toys! There’s 4 or 5 things that really are the cause of pleasure in a toy. Girth at your butthole, girth at your inner band or sigmoid (depending on depth), texture, length, and depending on your biology, prostate stimulation. Texture is one of the most important qualities and can make or break a toy. What you want really depends on the other qualities of the toy. A toy made from firm silicone will make you feel the texture a lot more than one made from soft silicone. Similarly, a toy that’s a lot closer to the girth limit you can take will make you feel the texture a lot more. A firm toy that’s close to your limit that has rough texture just won’t feel that good.

A small aside to talk about anatomy–You have 3 main sphincters more or less accessible in your ass. There’s your anus, the outer one. There’s a muscle that’s not quite a sphincter but performs basically the same function known as the inner band that divides your rectum in two, and then there’s the sigmoid sphincter, which seperates your rectum from your large intestine. Understanding what you want for a toy in terms of girth and depth are dependent on these. Your outer anus is generally stretchier than your inner band–something that you can easily take shallowly can be a challenge to work in deeper because of this. So, it’s important to keep in mind if you’re picking a longer toy that you’ll be wanting to fit it through the inner band, not just your butthole. This isn’t a problem, just something to keep in mind when you’re starting out or if you mostly use plugs. The sigmoid isn’t something you have to worry about penetrating accidentally–if that’s something you want to do, you should look for something longer specifically when toy shopping. It’s the tightest of the three and is… odd feeling to penetrate. Good, though.

Firmer toys also generally stimulate the prostate better. Your prostate is pretty close to the anus so a toy doesn’t have to be very long at all to be good for prostate stim, but a longer toy can also be nice for it because it’s easier to manipulate with kegels. Overall, your rectum is kind of like a sock–if you stretch it wide it won’t have much depth, if you stretch it long it won’t have much girth. So, even though a toy might be short enough and slim enough, if it’s close to the limit of both you might have trouble with it anyways.

So, keep in mind when toy shopping, what qualities you’re looking for in a toy. Switch it up! Have some toys that hit some criteria, some that hit others! Fantasy toys aren’t just for furries, different shapes hit you differently and are pleasurable in different ways. Experiment and find out what you like!

The one thing I can’t recommend enough is a soft, squishy plug. Because it’s soft, you can fit larger ones than you might think, and doing kegels with them soft enough to stretch with your movements feels really nice. They’re typically very rounded, and between that and the softness they’re very very comfortable.

I think that’s all the important stuff! Please, feel free to ask me any questions you might have! Thanks for coming to my TED talk.