Page 12 - AVN Intimate Spring 2018

FEATURE
By MARk KERnes
Come, All Ye Faithful
Speaking sexual truth to the religious
From left, panelists Nikki Goldstein, Kim Airs and ShaRonda Parker at the AVN Novelty Expo
A nyone who follows the pleasure product
industry knows that across the United States,
it is not uncommon to hear stories about the
struggles that adult retailers face gaining
acceptance in their communities. This is especially true
in parts of the country where religious communities are
dominant. To thrive in those circumstances, retailers
need to reach out to the faithful and preach about the
power of sexual health and wellness.
At the 2018 AVN Novelty Expo, held in January at
the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, the very
first seminar in the show tackled just that a challenge:
How to talk to religious customers and others whose
faiths may create conflicts with their quests for sexual
enjoyment.
The panelists included ShaRonda Parker, a Louisiana
retailer who said that she doesn’t run a “sex shop,” but
rather a “sexual health and wellness” store; Kim Airs, a
25-year veteran of the pleasure products industry and
the founder of Grand Opening, a pleasure products
boutique in Massachusetts; and Dr. Nikki Goldstein,
a sexologist and sex educator from Australia who’s
worked with religious leaders in her home territory.
Parker, whom moderator Sherri L. Shaulis described
as the inspiration for the current panel, began by
noting that the Deep South is the heart of the Bible Belt,
and that everything is steeped in religion, including
sex, and that many sexual practices that others
consider completely normal are thought of as wrong,
12 | INTIMATE | SPRING 2018
sinful or unclean. A former school teacher, Parker sees her task as one of “freeing people”
from some of their sexual preconceptions, in part by opening her retail outlet and also by
partnering with churches to educate them on sexual issues in a way that respects their
religious sensibilities.
For her part, Airs noted that she’d opened her store outside of Boston in a very Catholic
area, and that as part of her business, she saw it as her duty to help her customers overcome
some of the unfortunate sexual attitudes they’d picked up from the religion, their parents
and other societal influences.
You have to give people your permission and let
them know it’s okay, because what I’ve found is,
the church uses guilt and sin and they basically
play on people’s emotions.
—ShaRonda Parker
“Everybody’s doing the exact same thing as anywhere else,” Airs said she would tell
those who questioned her choice of retail location. “And it just depends on how tight they
pull that bedroom door.”
Goldstein, who doesn’t have a retail outlet (“Yet,” she noted), told of how orthodox Jews
tend to be more conservative sexually than more liberal believers. Her home territory, the
Gold Coast, was not overly religious, but in her travels she has come across all levels of
religiosity and had to learn to deal with them.
“I spoke to this [Jewish] philosopher who told me it was kosher to have anal sex as long
as the man finished off inside the woman,” she reported.
She also stated that her own (rather liberal) rabbi acknowledged that there is a relative
lack of education regarding sex toys, and that “when it comes to a religious couple,