I do's and I don'ts of "marital aids"

Flea of One Good Thing made an interesting point while recounting a conversation with two women in her sex shop. They had asked about glass dildos, very expensive and by most accounts very pleasant items which Flea doesn't care for and therefore doesn't carry.

I didn't feel like getting into the health issue with them, since I sensed they didn't really care, and just focused on the fact that they were expensive, and that for a dildo, silicone was much better and cheaper.

"I wouldn't never pay fifty dollars for one of them things, but then again, I'm anti-sex toy. I'm against them. I'm strongly against them."

Okay, you know what? Men would never, ever turn down the opportunity to give themselves exponentially better orgasms through masturbation; why, outside of religious fundamentalism, would women be so squicky about it?

It's a fair question for which there may be a perfectly logical, though (Flea's right) inconceivable-to-men, reason why a lot of women (based on a fairly large sample) are reluctant to try things like vibrators? The other distinct impression I get is that women who do try them often change their minds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not putting a higher value on unbridled pleasure-maximizing. Everybody has, or should have limits, and I'm perfectly aware that different people have different priorities. And yes, from very early ages girls are often taught that nice girls don't do things like that and that girls who do are often stigmatized.

Even so, sex toys rarely cost more than, say, the average nice pair of shoes and every time I say "but I already have a pair of shoes" I get the eye from my partner and her friends. And it's not like people who (finally?) do try them seem eager to go back. So why the reluctance?