How I Turned My Love of Dildos Into a Sex-Positive Writing Career

From discovering a sex toy in a hotel room to poring over an adult film star’s diaries in the Harvard archives, sex historian and Narratively writer Hallie Lieberman on how she forged her own path.

Collage by Yunuen Bonaparte | Edited by Brendan Spiegel

When I was 15, my mom dragged me and my friend Rachel on a group kayaking trip on Matlacha Island near our home in Sarasota, Florida. I hated boats, water and bright sunlight. (“I’m not meant to live in Florida!” I’d always shout at my mom.) Before boarding the bus to the island, we were given name tags. I scrawled “Dilda Fallis” on mine, a nod to my burgeoning sex toy obsession that had arisen a few years earlier. I had found a vibrator in a hotel room, mistaking it for a pencil sharpener, and my mom had shouted at me to put it away. I knew that thing I’d found, whatever it was, had power. 

My mom was mortified by my “Dilda Fallis” name tag, but I felt justified in my form of protest. She thought somehow I would learn to enjoy kayaking if I just went on one more excursion with her. So why not change my name to Dilda and show her I’d rather be indoors, talking about sex? (The logic wasn’t entirely sound. Remember, I was 15.)

I took …