Ten Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Sex Toy Instruction Manual Writer

We're so inundated with user manuals included with everything we buy that one could be forgiven for ignoring them as one more piece of the packaging.

While they seem like just another automated part of the manufacturing process, instruction manuals have to be crafted by people with an understanding of the given product and an ability to communicate effectively to the consumer. Which means copywriters are currently racking their brains to explain everything from board game rules to the proper way to clean a rifle.

There are also plenty of practical reasons you might want to read the instructions for, say, a new sex toy. Obviously you want the most bang for your buck, and you also likely want to play safe—in its list of common sex injuries, Cosmopolitan names UFOs, or Unretrievable Foreign Objects as a common, sometimes very literal, pain in the ass ("When there's a hole, things can get stuck").

So what goes into a sex toy instruction manual, and who writes these things anyway?

VICE got in touch with Stu Nugent, manual writer for high-end sex toy manufacturer Lelo, to find out everything you never knew you wanted to know about writing sex toy instructions.

VICE: How did you get into the sex toy industry?
Stu Nugent: I knew I wanted to be in the industry from a very young age, and I sought out my studies based around it.

My interest was always in writing, and I was slightly, I guess you would say sexually precocious. From a young age, I was able to articulate quite difficult sexual topics in writing quite easily. And I wanted to pursue a career that would allow me to do that.

I made that decision when I was about 14, and decided to pursue a degree in linguistics and a degree in literature, and they were both designed to make me a well-qualified writer when I finally decided to enter to adult industry.

What kinds of reactions do you get from people when you tell them what you do for a living?
That's always fun. I always look forward to that moment. Sometimes, if I have a sense that someone will react negatively to it, I just won't mention it, and I'll make a mental note that that person and myself are probably not destined to be good friends anyways.

There's a few different reactions I get. One is people will nod politely, and then they make a mental note that they don't really want to be friends with me. A second reaction is that people tend to assume I'm going to be a slathering pervert. And that's kind of attractive to some people. Some people quite enjoy that and drill down on some interesting details. It depends who I'm talking to.

I tailor my answers depending on who I'm talking to. If I worry about someone's reaction to what I do, then I will tend to say that I work in the alternative health industry, and I help sell holistic, alternative health products. There's a truth to that, in a sense.

Do you ever worry that after all that work people are going to buy the toy, throw away the instruction manual, and just have at it?
I try very hard not to be dogmatic about the way toys are used. If you go to lelo.com, unless it's absolutely necessary, we don't organize our products by men, by women, by experience, or anything like that. We try not to make those claims, like for example, "This is a G-spot vibe, so it can only be used for a G-spot." I like to assume that our customers are knowledgeable enough to know that it can also be used as a prostate massager, so I have to be very careful in the manual that we're not so dogmatic about the purpose for the product, which means we need to be necessarily vague.

For a first time customer, I expect that would be a little bit frustrating, but very few of our customers are first-time buyers. Our customers tend to be slightly more savvy. So what we do is instead of packing the manual with as much information as we can, we drive them to the website, and to our own blog, where there's much more valuable information for them.

How clueless do you have to assume that a sex toy instruction manual reader will be when they open one of these up?
I think that you should always credit your customer with a little bit of intelligence. Our products are not inexpensive, so you can expect that the person who has paid $200 for a luxury sex toy will probably have done some reading first, will probably understand the purpose of the product, and it's very likely that they understand the sensations that they enjoy pretty well too, which means that you don't have to pander. You don't have to hold their hand the whole way through. If you treat them with a little bit of respect, then they tend to enjoy that.

On the safety side, is there a need to have information about injuries or things like that?
We have some common sense stuff that people may not know, for example don't use a silicone lubricant with a silicone sex toy, as the two materials could bond and they could damage each other. That's a thing that not everybody knows. But apart from that we don't don't have to go really deep on the medical information.

What I'm also getting at is the possibility of…losing things in places.
That has, to the best of my knowledge, never happened to us. They're built in such a way that it's not really possible. Most of our products are made from single pieces of silicone. As a result there's nothing really that can fall off. There's nothing that would come apart.

We have safeguards for that sort of thing. We have, for example, a prostate massager called Billy, and Billy has a flared base, which would make it not impossible, but very difficult to "lose," I guess is a good way to put it. I don't think we've ever lost a toy in someone.

How much do you have to know about human anatomy and sexual health to do this job?
That's something I need to be very aware of. But it's lucky that that's also the kind of thing I enjoy. It's not a chore for me. I don't think a writer ever really goes home from their work. At home they're a writer, at work they're a writer. It's something that you are rather than you do. And I feel that's true even in my industry. I don't really switch off. Much of the literature that I consume is related to sex or to the industry in one way or another. There is a real requirement to be quite on the ball, specifically with regards to anatomy and much more to do with the landscape of sexuality, generally. You have to know where you are with regards to gender and sexuality and sexual politics.

Are there guidelines for avoiding writing instructions that assume that a sex toy owner is straight or cisgender?
Yes. My writers are quite well coached in this. And we will have a very good intuition around how to approach that kind of language. In some cases, let's take a cock ring, it's almost inescapable that you're going to find yourself writing for a cisgender or cissexual man for a product like that. You're going to be talking to a person who has a penis, and there's a good chance he's going to be heterosexual too. But there's no absolute guarantee of that. So in some cases like that, the instruction manual will be talking very specifically: "You use the product around the base of your penis," and that kind of language, because that is what the product is for, it's inescapable.

But with products that are slightly more versatile, we try to skip the issue altogether, or we tend to write around it in a way that gives someone reading it the information that they need, but doesn't really speak to one audience or another.

For something like a cock ring, I'm thinking of a trans woman who does have a penis. Would the instructions be accessible and relevant to her?
I believe so. If you were to go review it, you'd find places to catch me out on this, but we try not to use pronouns at all in these kinds of technical information, and that's what I mean when I say we write around it. What we would say, for example, is "this vibrating couple's ring is designed to make the penis harder for longer and more sensitive at the same time." That kind of language, if you were to add pronouns, it suddenly becomes very gendered.

Do you ever slip in any jokes in your manuals? Any easter eggs I can go find?
Yeah, that happens a lot. Sometimes it's really geeky. For example, I wrote an entire manual in iambic pentameter once. I don't think anyone will ever notice that. That was just a little treat for myself.

If you look closely enough, you'll find some little in-jokes and definitely some wordplay. This is something that my others writers like doing as well, like adjusting turns of phrase that can be interpreted in multiple ways, just to make each other laugh.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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