Why Big Tech Should Embrace the Big O
There’s a new women’s health solution on the market that can lower cortisol levels, regulate menstrual cycle, reduce pain, improve immune response, and help achieve deeper sleep. It’s easy to use with virtually no side effects, available to everyone, and it’s actually not new at all. In fact, it’s a little known solution that has been hidden in bedrooms for centuries: The Orgasm.
The Orgasm is an excellent health booster — mentally and physically, that women all over the world are waking up to. With a new crop of technologies like Lioness which allows women to use precision sensors and biofeedback to learn more about how their body works and what they like best, achieving The Big O and reaping the health benefits has never been easier.
“People have used the Lioness Vibrator and app like a sex diary to try new things, track how their health affects their pleasure, and experiment with how different substances (like alcohol or cannabis) can change their experience.” says Liz Klinger, Co-founder and CEO of Lioness. “We even had one customer (a young athlete) who grasped the severity of her concussion after seeing a dramatic shift in her orgasm data. Pleasure and health interact in many unexpected ways that we don’t yet fully understand, but it’s a missing puzzle piece that could tell us a lot about our health and life.”
“What we’re able to provide with Lioness can make a huge difference in understanding and becoming more comfortable with your own sexuality.” she continues. “Even seeing it as ‘just a chart’ can make a subject that once may have seemed nebulous more tangible and approachable.”
So why then, was Lioness removed from Samsung’s ‘women in tech’ event that was focused on trending topics in the health and wearables space? At their “Growth and Innovation in the Wearable Device Market Meeting”, Liz Klinger, a member of the FemTech Collective community, co-founder and CEO of Lioness was told after 4 hours of waiting that “you shouldn’t even be here” because Lioness is not “women’s health” at all. This is despite their devices providing biofeedback and physiological data on arousal and orgasm as it relates to an individual’s stress, health, and more as well as attending and presenting at several medical conferences discussing sexual pleasure and health.
This is not the first time that women’s pleasure has been dismissed as lewd. There’s CES rejecting Lora DiCarlo from showing their product, the MTA (New York City Subway) rejecting Dame and Unbound from advertising, as well as widespread censorship and shadow banning of sexuality-oriented accounts including Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Amazon. Meanwhile, Hims and Ro, male-centric “sextech” companies who sell erectile dysfunction medication for orgasm difficulties, are allowed to advertise on all online platforms. While there have been many giant phallic cacti advertising erectile dysfunction medication all over the city, Dame and Unbound can’t run a single ad, despite MTA’s official rules prohibiting “sexually-oriented companies.”
“This kind of bias — especially where sexual wellness is health (unquestionably) for men, but not for women (where it is seen as lewd) — is incredibly damaging to society.” says Klinger. “ It affects everything from how often women are able to frankly talk to medical professionals about problems related to their sexual health, what kinds of products are made and how they’re marketed, all the way down to the comfort that women have in natural functions of their own bodies. It is critical to be able to discuss it and show that not only cultural forces are shifting, but it’s wrong to continue to have these double-standards.”
Just as with any other industry, when you empower women to learn and equip them with the right tools, they achieve greatly and it benefits everyone. In addition to female orgasms benefiting our physical and mental health, it benefits men too. For example, men who focus on their female partner’s orgasms report better focus and productivity in other areas of their lives. Women with reduced pain, improved immunity, and bettered sleep because of orgasms can achieve more in other areas of their lives too with potential positive impacts to their relationships, their work, and their industries — making orgasms make good business sense too.
For centuries a woman’s orgasm was shameful, intercourse was meant to please the man and achieve a pregnancy and that was about it. But just like so many other industries, women are reclaiming their right and their power and time’s up. It’s 2019 and with so many innovative femtech offerings, it’s time for tech companies to wake up and bring previously taboo subjects of female health like menstruation and sex out of the shadows.
A woman’s right to an orgasm — and to the immense health benefits that come with it isn’t some passing fad. Products like Lioness are paving the way for all to achieve not only a healthier sex life, but healthier physical and mental health too. Think about it — if there was a clinical trial that provided all of the benefits orgasms do to struggling women it would likely be stopped and deemed unethical because the control group would be withheld so many incredible benefits. With that kind of health power, companies like Samsung and the litany of others who have rejected femtech products have a responsibility to give a platform to these tech innovations.
We, at FemTech Collective, have a mission to support, empower, and give voice to female health companies that are changing the game and rewriting the rules for what’s possible to achieve in women’s health. We invite everyone to join our mission. After all, equality for all means equality in all areas, orgasm included. We urge Samsung and all companies who push women’s health products like Lioness into the shadows to reconsider their position. We urge them to uplift and give voice to companies who are catering to true women’s health needs and until they do, we’ll just be over here with our new vibrators.
This article was written by Sarah Dubow. Sarah is a healthcare strategist, women’s rights activist, and wellness aficionado. She graduated from Bucknell University with a double major in Psychology and English where her passion for women’s health was first ignited. She is extremely passionate about the FemTech space and strongly believes it is a critical component to closing the gender gap in healthcare. She is also a volunteer ambassador for FemTech Collective, the first organization connecting innovators in female health globally. To see more from Sarah, visit her online wellness community The Lemon Tribe.
