Inside Oakland’s Only Black-Owned Sex Shop
By: Azucena Rasilla
Tags: This Just In, Sex Work, Oakland, Sex, Sex Toys

Feelmore is stylish and chic, decorated with black walls, black-and-white wallpaper and thoughtfully curated displays of lubricants, cock rings, dildos, strap-on dildos, old-school Playboy magazines and even some porn flicks for some of the store’s older clientele.

Feelmore is the only black-woman-owned sex shop in Oakland, but spend a little time talking to people about it, and it quickly becomes clear that it’s much more than just a place at which people can buy date-night toys. Joiner has become known for their activism on issues such as advocacy for destigmatizing the conversation around sex, decriminalizing sex workers and local civic engagement.

Joiner’s story to become part of the sex-toy industry — a $15 billion market with projections to surpass $50 billion by 2020 — began in their hometown of Las Vegas, where they routinely rode the bus alongside sex workers nonchalantly going about their day. It was these bus rides that normalized this line of work for Joiner, who dreamed of moving to the Bay Area and becoming an entrepreneur.

Photo by Andrea Campos

“As a kid, I wanted to move to the Bay Area because rappers like Too Short, E-40 and those guys were talking about selling music out of the trunks of their cars,” Joiner reminisced. And that’s exactly what Joiner did in the early ’90s: sold sex toys out of their trunk to make a living. “I wanted to move to Oakland because these guys empowered me to believe that I could make it there. I could take my idea and have the soil be so fertile that it’s going to be accepting of me doing what it takes to survive.”

Since opening Feelmore in 2011, Joiner has seen the on-going changes that have been transforming downtown Oakland’s landscape, making it a mission to be a face that the community recognizes, whether by walking around the block wearing an “I Sell Sex Toys” T-shirt or walking into one of the bars down the street from Feelmore and giving out cock rings to unsuspecting bar patrons. Or, alternatively, closing the shop for a few minutes to catch the last few minutes of the NBA semifinals and chatting up whoever is sitting next to Joiner at the bar. They are always providing some form of customer service no matter where they go or whom they talk to.

“Some people might think it’s funny,” Joiner said about giving out sex toys in unsuspecting spaces. “But I’m just being self-sustaining, so why not have fun with it?”

In April, Feelmore began accepting returns for sex toys purchased through Amazon. Customers could just bring in their used toys along with the return label or email instructions from the original purchase, and Joiner would gladly process their return—no questions asked. In the true fashion of Joiner’s pride about customer service, they saw the stigma surrounding returning an item as private as a sex toy and knew Feelmore could provide this added service—and perhaps gain a customer or two out of it.

“Some people see Amazon as killing businesses, but what’s killing businesses is customer service,” Joiner said. “There’s a heavy shame around returning sex toys. But if they come into the store, I just pull out my black gloves, and I’m like, ‘It’s all good. There is no shame here.’”

Joiner is currently grinding into gears to open a second location in Temescal sometime this summer, despite the challenge of finding a space given some landlords’ hesitation about giving such a business a shot.

Much like Joiner has made it their mission to get involved with the community in downtown Oakland, Joiner expects the same of the shop in Temescal.

“Some business owners are very hands-off, but I’m here to say thank you,” Joiner said.

While the sex-toy industry is lucrative, for Joiner it’s missing a crucial component: more resources for sex workers and the support of local politicians to attain the goal of decriminalizing sex work.

In a perfect world, Joiner would like to see the legalization of sex work and the decriminalization of those who engage with sex workers of legal age, in addition to the Alameda County Public Health Department working to ensure the safety of sex workers, even though it seems that politicians are not on board with helping the cause. “I don’t think they’ll legalize anything,” Joiner said. “I think politicians who really talk about it are full of shit, and they talk about it in a roundabout way.”

Civic engagement is a high priority for Joiner, who serves on the City of Oakland’s Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board (a historical preservation board with strong ties to the Planning Commission).

“People don’t realize how important it is to register to vote and how local measures really make a difference around here.” Joiner has registered Feelmore as a voting precinct in every voting cycle since 2008, when then presidential nominee Barack Obama was running. But the county supervisors wouldn’t allow it to turn into a voting place on Election Day. This rejection hasn’t discouraged Joiner from keeping on trying, as they do every election cycle. “One day it will happen,” Joiner said.

“If we can make sex fun, we can make voting fun,” Joiner added, emphasizing how Feelmore could be a place where sex workers feel comfortable exercising their civic duty. “The power of people from the community to say this is a fuckin’ rad-ass shop. I wanna be part of that [voting] legacy. As an African American, it would mean so much.”