Traditional hard packing might come with some complications.
Downs's company also makes a regular "soft packer" you can wear for everyday use that resemble a flaccid penis (they even have one with foreskin and one without!) and all their packers come in at least four skin tones, which is awesome because not all penises are white, duh.Ģ. It won't make it look like you have a massive erection, but it also has a bendable core inside, making it rigid enough for penetrative sex (aka "hard packing"). Downs says her company created an awesome "pack and play" dildo, meaning it can be worn discreetly under clothing by wearing the dildo in a harness and tucking the shaft down between your legs. Packing traditionally involves special "packers" that come in either soft (aka kind of a flaccid penis situation) or hard (something more like a dildo). Well, you can, of course, but it's going to look pretty weird. No, you can't just throw any dildo in your pants and ride off into the sunset. Here's everything you need to know (and might've been to afraid to ask).ġ. To hammer out more of the tips and tricks to packing, I asked a variety of queer people with all sorts of gender identities why they love to pack and how the hell they do it. Not only does it ramp up the charge for me sexually, it also serves to center and focus my feelings of being a transmasculine queer woman."īasically, anyone and everyone can and might be packing. Jackie, 50, executive vice president of Good Vibrations, loves packing because it makes her feel "instantly sexual," saying, "I am a transgender butch dyke, so there is a visceral connection to packing a dildo and thereby having a cock.
The emotional attachment, if any, is individual." My friends and I all pack or don't pack at different times for different reasons, from comfort to aesthetics. Julian Wolf, 36, an activist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, says packing is a "great way to accessorize and feel more confident in your presentation. As a person who identities as a queer femme, it makes me feel most like a woman." Her partner even bought her the packer to "challenge my own gender and gender expression," and she's loved it ever since. She says, "My packer is sexy and it's my skin color and it can be whatever my brain wants it to be. Shane'a, 33, from Arlington, Virginia, says she actually feels her most feminine when she packs and doesn't see packing as inherently masculine at all. He says his gay male friends are also fascinated by it and will frequently ask him questions excitedly about the process and which products he uses, which he says feels "amazing" because being read as more masculine is a big part of what he's going for when he's packing. Most of his butch and androgynous lesbian friends also really love packing, as do his trans masculine friends. Laws says his wife is a huge fan of his packer and she gets more "handsy" when they're out together and she knows he's packing. I don't mean to be crass, but it feels very powerful to be able to present outwardly in a way that is cohesive with my own internal image."
Jen Laws, 30, a transgender man who works in customer service at Perfect Fit Brand, in Florida says he loves hard or soft packing because, "I get to feel my dick. Many trans men also pack because it helps them read as male, which could potentially help them avoid harassment, unwanted questioning, or something more violent, and even cisgender males who may have lost some or all of their genitals in accidents (sometimes wounded war vets) pack. The first question you might have at this point (other than "all of the questions") is "why would anyone want to do that?" To answer that, I asked Chelsea Downs, 31, co-founder of New York Toy Collective, who said her customers enjoy packing for a variety of reasons, from playing around with the idea of gender, to modifying their gender expression, to helping them cope with gender dysphoria (people who have significant distress about their sex and gender).
When I first asked some of my queer friends how they felt about packing (which Wikipedia defines as "wearing padding or a phallic object in the front of the pants or underwear to give the appearance of having a penis"), a lot of the replies I got were, "You mean like for a trip?" That tells me that not everyone, even in the LGBT community, is familiar with the term, so it's OK if you weren't either.