MEN talk about what they think; women talk about what we know. So it was only natural that when girls were married off at 18 and did nothing but bake, their parties would be themed around Tupperware; now that they spend their thirties out on the razzle and complaining that no men are suitable marriage material, their parties are themed around naughty knickers and sex toys. It’s a progression of sorts.

Ann Summers products are a neat replacement for Tupperware in the cultural scheme of things: efficient, inexpensive, somewhat naff. The high-street sex shop even offers a range of foodstuffs, tipping its hat to the latent housewife in us all with its chocolate body paint, genital-shaped pasta and mint-flavoured After Dinner Nipples. Neither does Ann Summers necessarily represent a great leap forward in cultural mores. I was once browsing in the Oxford Street branch and examining (with some alarm) an item called the Toad In The Hole Vibrator when an assistant appeared at my shoulder and whispered: “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. And this really is the prince of vibrators.”

Women gather for group purchasing of Ann Summers products, though, for reasons different from those for which they once crowded together around Tupperware. I imagine a Tupperware party was a desperate attempt to inject some fun into the suicidally boring business of stocking up on gammon stew. A woman forced to spend too much time alone with her food storage materials might easily have thought: “Hang on, my life is utterly devoid of excitement and Beachy Head is calling my name.”

Ann Summers parties are more to do with establishing some peer-group sexual etiquette and making sure that everybody’s doing the same sort of thing. One woman in scratchy red nylon split-crotch knickers is a tart. A generation of women in scratchy red nylon split-crotch knickers is a laugh. Similarly, one woman with a novelty rabbit-shaped vibrator is a lonely sex freak; a group of friends with a cutesy animal dildo each is a statement about what goes these days. Browsing together over the latest bedroom accessories is a delightful opportunity to satisfy your nosiness about other people’s love lives, and quietly categorise your own.

Women have always chuckled together about sex; it’s just that now there’s more to laugh about. Male strippers, furry handcuffs, plastic nurse’s outfits. None of which is much more exciting, in the end, than a sturdy meatball container — but when your mates get tired of sex products, that’s when you start the book group.

VICTORIA COREN