ABOUT US
Two things everyone wants to know about us:

1. Yes, those are our real names.
2. No, we're not lovers. Just very good friends!

Anne Semans
If you want to get to know me you must first put up with a short list of my favorite things. I love my five-year-old daughter Roxanne, I worship Xena, and I hate missing "The X-Files." (Do you get the impression I have an "X" fetish?). I believe Prince delivers the musical equivalent of good sex through his lyrics and melodies. I can't fall asleep at night without a good novel and if I don't go on regular trips (big or small, doesn't matter), I become insanely stir crazy. I owe much of the joy and adventure that I experience in life to my friends and family.

And yes, I do like sex too. How else could I have spent most of my adult life educating people about its wonders? I've worked at two women-run sex toy businesses over the past fifteen years, during which I answered hundreds of different questions about sexuality, reviewed stacks of sex books and product-tested my share of toys (my personal favorites are the Hitachi Magic Wand and the Rabbit Pearl vibrator). All that experience led to co-authoring the three books on this site with Cathy, an exercise which my Stanford degree in English Lit prepared me for technically, but one which has scandalized a few former professors and classmates!

Sex work has been incredibly liberating and exciting to a girl raised in a Catholic family, where sex (and any mention of it) was as forbidden as that juicy red apple Eve plucked from the tree. Since I was a sexually active teen who would have benefited immensely from decent sex information, I've never doubted the life-enhancing potential of my work.

The World Wide Web is an ideal medium for sex education, research and networking, and I plan to expand my work into this arena as much as possible. Providing quality sex education to youth and helping parents teach kids about sex has always been one of my passions. As a single mom I've encountered a whole new set of sexual challenges and rewards, which helped inspire the book of which I am most proud, The Mother's Guide to Sex.

Cathy Winks
Depending on your belief system, you could argue that I've made a career out of selling sex toys and writing about sex because:

a. I grew up in San Francisco in the '60s;
b. I'm a student of religion with unfulfilled missionary impulses;
c. I first learned how to come thanks to a vibrator;
d. I'm a Scorpio; or
e. All of the above.

Spreading the word that each one of us is entitled to accurate sex information and abundant sexual pleasure has been an incredibly gratifying line of work. Sure, it sometimes means that the people I sit next to on an airplane or meet at a party will tell me more about themselves than I necessarily want to know, but it also means that I've been able to make a positive impact on a lot of lives. When it comes to the highly-charged subject of sexuality, a little reassurance, advice and simple cheerleading goes a long way.

While I firmly believe that information is power, I've also got a healthy respect for the sweet mysteries of sex. After all, even if you've got a handle on all your erogenous zones and are perfectly comfortable plumbing the deepest, darkest depths of your erotic imagination, sexual desire, when it arises, can still feel like a visitation of grace. That—as much as the unlimited access to sex toys—is what's kept me thinking and writing about sex for the past fifteen years.

On the personal front: I live with my girlfriend Becky. I'm a doting auntie and a doting pet owner. And my favorite sex toys are the Hitachi Magic Wand and the Crystal Wand.