Maya Ström

Maya Ström, “Selling Sexual Products in Sweden: Gender, Disability, and Sex Toys, 1978–1996,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 34, no.3 (September 2025), pp. 385-417.

In “Selling Sexual Products in Sweden: Gender, Disability, and Sex Toys, 1978–1996,” Maya Ström draws on a wealth of primary source evidence, from institutional ephemera, to newspaper articles, archival materials, and oral histories in tracing the shifting discourses that made sexual commodity consumption respectable in late-twentieth-century Sweden. Sweden is an interesting and important example for such an analysis given the wider understanding of Sweden’s sexual progressiveness – evidenced, for instance, in that country’s decision to legalize pornography in 1971. Nevertheless, as Ström deftly lays out, at this time Swedish ideas about sexuality, pornography, masturbation, and sexual aids were highly gendered and shaped by broader understandings of ideal sexual relationships (partnered, and emotionally fulfilling), and the sexual capabilities of (dis)abled Swedes. The article presents a rigorous and fine-grained investigation that draws on and contributes to Swedish and international literatures of gender and sexuality, with particular attention to the place of disability in shifting discourses around sexual consumer goods.