Kovac’s adventurous spirit in bed is part of a growing trend in the Czech Republic, where people are increasingly open-minded about their sexuality. Czech women have the highest rates of sex toy usage throughout the EU; 22 percent of women in the Czech Republic, or roughly one in five women, attributed the use of sex toys as being key to a satisfying sex life, according to a study released in March 2016 by HRA Pharma, a European pharmaceutical company. This is almost double the European average of 12 percent. 
  

Part of the reason behind the Czech women’s zealous use of sex toys is due to the liberal sexual attitude in the country. “If you compare with research in the US, UK or France, you’ll find that the attitude of Czechs towards extramarital sex, premarital sex, porn, prostitution, contraception, abortions and even homosexuality are more liberal,” said Petr Weiss, a sexologist from the Institute of Sexology in Prague. 

 

According to his research, only about six percent of Czechs have a non-liberal attitude towards sex, declaring themselves as homophobic or conservative in other sexual matters.

 

Weiss explained that this relaxed attitude towards sex is due to the atheistic society, where only 20 percent of people are religious. “We know that religion is the factor in conservativism of sexual attitudes,” he said.

Another reason why Czech women could be using so many sex toys is because their male partners may not know how to please them in bed. This is the case for Verca Pulnik, a 37-year old mother with two pre-school kids and a husband who is not exactly the ideal sexual partner. “I think that my husband would like to please me but he often doesn't know how,” said Pulnik, who requested to have her name changed for the article. “And we only speak little about what I or he would like because he is so shy, although he used to be more adventurous the first few years of our relationship.”

 

With her husband, Pulnik uses a long black stick with feathers on the end, called a tickling feather, penis sleeves, which are clear, bumpy-edged, squishy devices that snuggle around a penis, and of course, sexy lingerie. But, they rarely use these toys. “He's not very keen on using any of them, especially the sleeves. He only uses them to make me happy, but not too often,” Pulnik said. “In fact, I've nearly forgotten I have them somewhere in my drawer.”

Instead of sex, Pulnik turns to her secret stash of sex toys several times a month to masturbate, since she only has intercourse with her husband once or twice a year. “He doesn't know about my vibrators. I bought them as a substitution for sex with him when I realized he just needs much less sex than I do and that he will never change,” she said. “Sad, I know. Well, he has other qualities.”

 

Pulnik’s introduction to sex toys actually came when she was in her mid-20s, thanks to an American ex-boyfriend, who helped her pick her first sex toy online. It was a transparent pink vibrator made of hard, smooth plastic, and shaped like a slender cylinder that tapered off at the end in a round tip. “It turned out that this vibe wasn't the best, it was too slim, too hard, but it did its job,” she said. 

 

She used it when she was alone, as a way to satisfy herself during her long-distance relationship. When she and the American boy broke up, he kept the vibrator and she was toy-less for a few years.

Since then, Pulnik has learned the ins and outs of using sex toys. Her current favorite sex toy is her small, travel-sized vibrator that is only 1 inch wide and four inches long. She said she likes it because “it's easy to use anytime, anywhere, and it easily slips in and out.”
  

This type of avid sexual behavior could have its roots from the totalitarian communist regime that existed in the Czech Republic roughly 30 years ago. Although the totalitarian regime itself was conservative, citizens often used sex as an escape from everyday life under totalitarianism. 

 

“In the last 20 years of communism, most people went through inner immigration- they closed themselves and didn’t engage in activities,” said Weiss. “They retreated to the inner world of their families and weekend houses. They would leave work on Friday for their weekend house to drink and have sex. This was an area, the only area, where the regime didn’t interfere, and maybe the only area of freedom of Czechs.”

 

Post-communism, this freedom has taken new heights in the sex-toy world, but not all Czechs are happy about it. Men in particular can tend to be anti-sex toy. “Czech men are really often jealous of sex toys,” said Lucie Krejcova, a researcher in the field of human sexuality at Charles University. “They do not want to use them during partner´s sexual activities. If they cannot trigger orgasm to their partner and sex toys can, it is kind of a rival for them.”

 

Not all women enjoy using sex toys either. Emilie, who declined to give her last name, is a Czech mother of two children who has been married for 21 years. She tried sex toys, but didn’t like them. “It does not excite me, I find it ridiculous,” she said. “It’s a lousy thing that hums or vibrates. That's what I have to stick into my vagina? I laugh at that.”

 

Though the Czechs lead freeing sex lives, one might also find Czechs to be very outwardly conservative. The same people who are not likely to smile at strangers on the streets are equally unlikely to discuss their sex lives, even among friends. 

 

“I think they are very open-minded when they are talking about sex of somebody else,” said 33-year old Petra Vrzackova, a gynecologist and sexologist working at both the General Teaching Hospital and at the TH Clinic in Prague. “But when they are talking about their own intimacy, about their own reactions, about their own problems and ideas, then they say ‘this is something that is too secret. This is just mine and I will not talk about anybody else about this.’”

 

Vrzackova believes that sex should be a part of normal discussions and that sex education is severely lacking in the Czech Republic. “It’s not really a part of the normal education at school,” she said. “If there is some education it is usually just several lessons, or several lectures, it’s not like they have it for one to two years duration.” 

 

To combat this, Vrzackova has gone into Human Sexuality classes at Charles University, one of the Czech Republic’s top universities, equipped with sex toys. She passes around the sex toys, letting the students touch them and play with them, then explains how they work. One of the students in the class, Alzbeta Klatova, doesn’t personally use sex toys, but would be open to the experience. 

 

She thinks part of the reason that Czech women use sex toys more is because Czech men may talk about sexual activities more than they engage in them. “For example, I dated this guy who would talk about sex and anal and stuff and when it came to him actually doing any of the stuff he would be like ‘no I don’t want to do that,’ when I actually asked him about it,” she said. “He’s never actually done any of the things he talks about.”

 

“Guys always told me I had lower boundaries than them because I don’t mind talking about that stuff,” she continued. She really enjoyed learning about sex toys from Vrzackova and learned about how sex toys can be a good way to improve one’s sex life.

 

Vrzackova sometimes prescribes sex toys to help her patients, who can be as old as 72, with sexual dysfunction problems, but asserts that anyone can use them. “Masturbation is-- why not? You’re learning how to reach your body, what is making you feel nice,” she said. “But this also has to be or should be like a normal part of the sex education.”

 

Outside of school, Czechs can also learn more about sexual satisfaction through workshops and events offered by companies such as the Ruzovy Slon (Pink Elephant) sex shop. For the last 13 years, 36-year old businessman Adam Durcak has been running Ruzovy Slon in an attempt to expand the sexual boundaries of Czechs. “We change the Czechs’ view on sex,” he said. “We inspire each individual to try new approaches and perspectives on sex.”

 

Customers often come into Durcak’s stores to talk about sex toys or ask for advice with their sexual problems, and he is happy to provide information. “We are preparing a series of lectures and workshops,” Durcak said. “We are running a project on www.sexualniasistence.cz which fights for the sexuality of the disabled and the elderly.” 

 

His company also celebrates orgasm day every year on August 8th in Ostrava, a city near the Czech-Poland border, and hopes to celebrate the event in Prague this year as well. Durcak said he is gearing up for the event by preparing new workshops “where one can learn new skills in fields such as anal sex, sex toys for couples, erotic massage, bondage, and so on.”

 

When asked about any interesting experiences in these workshops, Durcak alluded to an experience making videos with live sex slaves, but never clarified what exactly the workshop entailed. However, in this situation, the sex slaves are not slaves in the traditional sense, but rather willing participants who like to be submissive in bed to a dominant “master”.

 

Ruzovy Slon receives both male and female customers, but both genders have different shopping habits. “While males are buying sex products with a vision of shared use with their partner and to improve their common sex, women often prefer sex toys for themselves,” Durcak said.

 

Their best selling products are vibrators, which account for nearly 50% of their sales, followed by lubricants and male masturbators. Love balls and bondage accessories are also popular. 

 

Ruzovy Slon’s business has grown steadily over the past couple of years, which they attribute to a correlating rise in Czechs’ sexual indulgence.

 

“We see it in our store and online too: Czechs perceive vibrators as a natural part of their sexual lives and are more shameless,” Durcak said. “In the past year the demand for sex toys has increased by 20 percent.”

 

This increase in buying sex toys has helped other sex toy businesses such as Erotic City, a sexshop chain which has roughly 20 stores in the capital city of Prague, as well as sex toy entrepreneurs like Anna Maresova, the creator of the Whoop.de.doo sex toy line. Maresova started the line in 2011 with a slender, pure white vibrator shaped like a spoon, and then expanded to include three different types of Venus balls which come in white, red, and black and look like blobs on a slender stick. Whoop.de.doo’s first edition of vibrators already sold out and the second edition is currently being manufactured.

 

Aly, a 27-year old Czech woman who declined to give her last name, is one of the sex-toy testers for the Whoop.de.doo brand. She said, “Testing of erotic toys isn`t my occupation – it is my hobby.” 

 

This hobby started when she was 23 years old, thanks to a boyfriend who introduced her to sex toys. Before this, she had conservative boyfriends who didn’t use sex toys. Her first sex toy was the Fun Factory Stronic, a candy-colored silicone vibrator shaped like a slightly curved penis, with deep, almost spiky ridges and folds along the shaft. It is equipped with 10 different pulsing and thrusting actions and was a hit with Aly. “Stronik caught me,” she said.

 

When she’s testing out new sex toys, one of the big factors that she pays attention to is the material. She prefers medical silicone or ABS plastic. She also tests them for user-friendliness. “Is it easy and intuitive? Is there enough buttons or too much buttons?” she asks. “The control is very important while you test the toy on yourself – you have to feel nice and not think about how you change the mode.”

 

For every sex toy, she tests each toy roughly ten times, both with her partner and by herself. After testing toys for a few years, Aly said she likes “toys which bring something new – feeling or experiences-- or if the toy changes my mind and opinions about sex and sex toys.”

 

Her current favorite is the Womanizer W500, a pricey toy which costs around 200 dollars, and is shaped like a stylish inhaler with a protruding, round simulator-suction hole meant to go over your clitoris. The toy is not a vibrator but works through suction, and has eight different intensity levels. “It’s an amazing toy with my sex partner or without him,” she said. “I can’t tell you which sex is better – with toys or without toys. Both are amazing.”

 

Though she tests sex toys, Aly doesn’t have a very clear idea of how many of her friends are also using sex toys. The same was true for Kovac and Pulnik, who also commented that they don’t usually talk about these topics with their friends. “In Czech Republic the topic of sex isn’t taboo,” said Aly. “but it isn’t an ordinary topic in which you can talk about everything.”

 

Aly hopes that this changes in the future. “I hope it will be better and better and the women can tell their boyfriends what they want,” she said. “Communications is the foundation of a relationship and sexual understanding.”

 

Overall it seems that Czech women are taking control of their sex lives. “I meet women who are really ‘sexual beings’ and enjoy their sexuality,” said Krejcova. “They are not afraid to say what they want or what they like, they want to experience sexual pleasure. They are not afraid to try new sexual positions or use sexual toys.”

 

This sexual prowess hasn’t gone unnoticed. A username by the name of John Singer, posted on a sex toys forum on Expats.cz, a media outlet for foreigners living in the Czech Republic, and commented, “Czech women are very sexual beings, with libidos on steroids....enough said.”