LOS ANGELES — An article published this week on Huffington Post spotlights female entrepreneurs that are enabling women to feel more sexually empowered.
“From billboards to steamy movie plots to come-hither musical lyrics, the pursuit of pleasure surrounds us,” the article’s author Ilaina Edison says. “And yet, sex remains one of the most uncomfortable and stigmatized topics for American women. Much of the uneven attitudes are based on an assumption of knowledge and understanding: We talk about the importance of consent, but not expectations and desires; health and wellness generally, but not the specifics of where and how to access condoms.”
The article profiles Elise Racine and Mia Davis of sex ed social media app Tabú, Polly Rodriguez of erotic product subscription service Unbound Box, and Alexandra Fine and Janet Lieberman of sex toy manufacturer Dame Products.
Racine and Davis’ app Tabú connects women to sexperts, where they can gain insight — and a sense of community — from a network of sex educators offering a range of knowledge.
“A lot of young adults are learning about sex from porn, leaving out conversations like consent and protection,” Racine told Huffington Post. “Mix in that girls are taught to say no, and you have a huge double standard. We want to abolish a lot of that and create an environment where women are becoming advocates for their own pleasure and sexual health.”
Rodriguez launched Unbound to create a selection of approachable pleasure products for women to explore their sexual pleasure.
“It’s like asking someone to go into a job interview without any prep on what the company is, or what their role would be,” Rodriguez says in the article. “If you don’t know what you like, how can you expect to enter into an activity and have it be successful?”
Fine and Lieberman, founders of Dame Products, also launched their company in the hopes to bridge “the pleasure gap” between women and men.
“I realized that in this product category, I wasn’t getting the same value as from other consumer electronics, and I think that gap is based on shame,” Lieberman told Huff Post. “People thought that women don’t know what they deserve.”
The women featured in the article also lament about the challenges of being in the business of pleasure.
“I don’t think people are intentionally vindictive about the fact that you’re a woman, but when you walk in the door you start below zero,” said Rodriguez. “You have to be twice as good because you’re a woman.”
To read the article, click here.
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