I was a late bloomer when it came to buying my first vibrator. Out of some misplaced fear that using it would desensitize my clitoris, I waited until the tender age of 38—38!—to buy my first buzzer. What can I say? I’m an analog girl in a digital world.

In a time when sex toys are modeled after Marvel characters or plated in gold with a price tag of $15,000, a Luddite’s approach to sex has become my way of taking a stance against technological excess and our imminent robot takeover—which, by the way, experts predict could happen as early as 2060.

Still, I can’t deny the many benefits of owning a vibrator. For one, they’re helping close the orgasm gap, or the difference between how often women orgasm during sexual intercourse and how often men do. In a 2017 study conducted by the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University and Chapman University, the figures for female and male heterosexuals were 65 percent and 95 percent, respectively. In 2015, Cosmopolitan reported that almost 40 percent of women had used a vibrator. In other words, women are climaxing with the help of an electrical appliance almost as often as they are via intercourse with men. Aside from guaranteeing a woman her orgasm, autonomous sex provides loads of other tangible benefits versus sex with men. Vibrators don’t snore or drool on the pillow after sex. They’re hairless, which means as long as a woman sanitizes her dildo, it’s probably more hygienic than most men—and 100 percent more hygienic than a stranger picked up in a bar.

Relatedly, there’s zero chance my vibrator moonlights as a DJ on the weekends. It won’t neg, unfollow or ghost me, and it can easily access my clit to give me multiple orgasms with zero recovery time. According to a 2010 study, four in 10 men can’t even point out a clitoris on a diagram. A vibrator won’t break my heart (unless the battery dies mid-session) and doesn’t need a condom.

There’s also zero risk of STD transmission (unless I pass it around at an orgy), and most important, my vibrator doesn’t talk…yet. For all these reasons, electronic sex toys have helped expand the sexual experiences of a lot of women. Not long ago, I wrote about how the definition of sex as we know it is evolving, making the point that sometimes, a “great sexting session can supersede having sex with an unappreciative fuckboy.” That’s because between sexting, FaceTime, Snapchat, the endless availability of streaming porn and battery-powered sex toys, we can now get off whenever we want, as often as we want, without another human.

In fact, in 2009, the first peer-reviewed academic studies on vibrators, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, found them to be as common a household item as toasters. But despite both genders’ growing appreciation for their alone time with toys—roughly a quarter of men use vibrators these days—few women would permanently trade a man for a non-sentient phallus. Why? Because for all our obsession with technology, instant gratification, commitment-less sex and independence, true human connection is our greatest desire. Let me explain.

Any semblance of a healthy sex life can be traced to the mantra “Giving is receiving.” Most women get as much joy out of giving a man fellatio as they do from receiving cunnilingus. In fact, I love that anything I do may turn a man on, whether it’s preparing him a home-cooked meal or nibbling his neck. Call it toxic femininity, but I get off on knowing I can make a man squirm—and many other women do too. Personally, when I ride a man to his climax, I feel like Daenerys riding her dragon. I get none of this from a toy; in fact, it’s the opposite: I feel just a teeny bit dead inside after every factory-generated orgasm.

” Men can be intimate, and they’re quite good at it, despite endless think pieces that cast the male species as ignorant of female sexuality.”

And yes, while men require recovery time (which varies from man to man, largely depending on age) and often pass out immediately after coming, they require little stimulation to get hard again. There’s certainly no danger their batteries will run out at the precise moment you want to be satisfied.

There’s also the fact that the best sexual partners can give me an erotic massage, tickle me with a feather or run ice around my navel. My vibrator can’t wrap its arms around me at a concert, let alone run its hand up my skirt at the dinner table. My vibrator can’t even hold my hand.

My vibrator can’t talk dirty, but if it did, would it sound like the male version of Siri? Does that voice turn anyone on? My vibrator has no kinks; it can’t bend me over, grab my waist right at my hipbone, pull my hair and spank me. My vibrator can’t tie me up and make me beg. It certainly can’t choke me ever so slightly, and I hope I don’t live long enough to witness a sexbot that can. My vibrator doesn’t unload my groceries, open jars, hang artwork or fix shit. Instead, my vibrator sits in its box, lifeless, while the toilet overflows. My vibrator definitely won’t take me to the best restaurants in the world or fly me to London.

But most important, my vibrator doesn’t tell me how beautiful I am. It can’t hold me when I’m crying and tell me everything is going to be okay. It doesn’t bring me soup when I’m sick or give me a jacket when I’m cold. Because guess what? Chivalry isn’t dead. My ex who brought me coffee in bed every morning? I’m pretty sure he’s the one who got away. Men can be intimate, and they’re quite good at it, despite endless studies and think pieces that cast the entire male species as ignorant of female sexuality. Men can whisper sweet nothings and smell that certain way that gets women wet instantly. (When we say, “You smell so good,” what we’re really saying is “I want to have your babies.”) Men can protect me. What am I going to do, threaten an intruder with my vibrator? Wield it like a weapon? “Take another step and I’ll be forced to vibe you to death”?

Feel free to take away my feminism card for saying this, but I feel safer when a man walks me down the street late at night. My vibrator can’t make me feel safe, loved or wanted. So let’s face it: Vibrators can be boring. Turn them on, choose a setting and away you go. Men aren’t much more complicated than that, to be honest, but at least they’re human. That brings me to my last point: Vibrators aren’t exactly doing their part to propagate the human species. If I desire a child, my vibrator isn’t knocking me up—yet.