Does the world need a smart vibrator?

I know, with all of the tech out there some of you might be thinking, “Why a smart vibrator?” And why Lioness?

A lot has changed since the 1980s, but research on female sexuality hasn’t advanced much since then. It’s not for a lack of interest—global taboos, personal discomfort, and lack of funding have held us back, and it doesn’t look like things are going to get much better on their own…

Sex (Research) Doesn’t Pay

In a recent New York Times article, author Hallie Lieberman took a deep dive into the history — past and present — of the Kinsey Institute, a leading sex research institute in the United States founded by Alfred Kinsey in the mid-20th century.

She didn’t have a great prognosis for the future of sexual pleasure, nor did the current director of the Kinsey Institute:

“Kinsey has to have some kinds of priorities to survive in the future. We cannot focus simply on things like sexual pleasure. We can’t because there’s no funding for it.”

— Sue Carter, Director of the Kinsey Institute, a leading sex research institute in the United States

There are a few reasons that Lieberman covers, but one of the most worrying ones is that in December 2016, the Kinsey Institute moved from being an independent nonprofit organization with an independent board of directors to merging with Indiana University and only answering to the university’s administration.

Needless to say, Indiana University (and especially current governor Eric Holcomb) are not fans of the Kinsey Institute.

Knowledge is Power

What happens in research doesn’t exist in a bubble. It affects all of us. That’s why the kind of work that we’re doing at Lioness is especially important right now. Sexual pleasure is more than sex. Sexual pleasure is essential to everyone’s lives. There’s so much more to learn and we’ve barely gotten started. It affects our self-confidence, our relationships, our intimacy, and even our health. The lack of information available affects our ability to talk about sex and sexuality, especially for women.

What we enjoy and how it changes over time is a subject of taboo. It’s an awkward topic to bring up with friends and family, and the societal discomfort around female sexuality makes it difficult to find reliable sources of information that we can comfortably and privately consult. Like other aspects of our health, there’s no one-size-fits-all guide. Sometimes your health changes and you have to relearn your own body to live a better, happier life.

My Journey

The topic of pleasure and the effects of its accompanying taboos were clear to me even before I (Liz) started my sexual wellness company, Lioness. Before developing Lioness, a vibrator and tool for sexual self-experimentation, I was in and around the sexuality space for nearly a decade — first as an artist, then as a sales person and educator. I first noticed something was amiss about our societal understanding of sexuality when, as part of an art show, I created a giant photograph of a vagina and some people couldn’t recognize what it was, even if it was right in front of them staring them in the face. There were even women, young and old, who couldn’t recognize a body part they‘ve also had for their entire lives. I was shocked by the number of people who thought my photograph was of “two figures dancing”. Representatives of my alma mater tried—actually, demanded—to purchase the piece over everything else in my art collection until they were told what it really was…

When I sold intimacy products to women, I ended up talking to hundreds of women from all walks of life about everything from simple questions to their deepest-held secrets. I discovered that we all have questions but few places to get real guidance or answers, and again, everyone is different so no solution or method of learning suits everybody.

Knowledge to the People

I started Lioness as a step toward helping women discover their own answers. We are a team of designers and engineers building a vibrator that helps you understand, discover, and take control of your own body. It’s paired with an app that allows you to easily visualize what your body is telling you and ask questions to a supportive community. Using advanced biometric sensing and statistical methods, we help you characterize your sexuality — how fast you get aroused, how long it generally takes to orgasm, and when sex would feel best — both individually and within the diverse sexual spectrum of the aggregate female population. All designed and packaged into an elegant consumer product you can use in the comfort of your own home.

As a company with strong female technology, design, and executive leadership, our product is women-centric at its core, from our choices to use the same materials as those used in medical devices to tailoring our device’s ergonomics to how women actually hold vibrators. Women-centric technology is a small space, and it’s high time there are some new advancements out there for 50% of the world’s population designed by those who share the same experience.

Lioness is a way to experiment with your own body on your own terms. It is a vibrator that is designed with a suite of sensors, so you can see your own sexual response and orgasm. You can use it with the Lioness app like a sex diary to get a better sense of what works over time, to self-experiment, and as a means for opening up the conversation about pleasure with your partner or yourself. The Lioness creates words for pleasure that did not exist before, because the information simply did not exist.

Partnering with Research

We’ve already started to see the nuances of female pleasure, both individually and on a societal level over time. While the data has been anonymized and encrypted since the beginning, soon Lioness customers can choose to opt into research conducted by leading experts in sexual health if they want to help push our understanding of sexual health and pleasure even further. Or if they want to keep their data their own, still completely private and encrypted as it is now, they can do that, too. We’re trying to strike the balance and give choices of how people want to use their data and provide opportunities for researchers and our customers to contribute to destigmatizing female sexuality through advancing research in a space that’s been held back for far too long. For some, privacy grants freedom, while for others, sharing in ways like contributing to research grants freedom. We want to give people choice and autonomy to do whatever gives them the space to freely experiment and explore themselves.

Can a Vibrator Change the World?

My wish is that five years down the line, we’ll surpass how much we understand female sexuality (and beyond) compared to the last four decades of stagnation. Best case scenario: We’ll look back and see the year 2018 as the dark ages of female sexuality and pleasure, and realize that our present understanding of sexuality was (is) very narrow and limited. Sexual pleasure could be broadly considered human and part of everyday life, not something that should be devalued, dismissed, censored, or tucked away in the shadows, never to be discussed.

I think it’s possible, but in order to accomplish that we have to take matters into our own hands. Yes, literally. Jokes aside, all of this is to open up sexual experimentation so we can all lead happier, healthier, loving lives.

The world needs a smarter discourse about the female experience, and a smart vibrator might just be the answer. Changing the conversation around female sexuality is going to be hard, but our team is determined to take on the challenge.

It’s often easy to talk about sex and hard to talk about sexuality, especially for women. What we enjoy or not and how it changes over time is a subject of taboo. It’s an awkward topic to bring up with friends and family, and the societal discomfort around female sexuality makes it difficult to find reliable sources of information that we can comfortably and privately consult.

Lioness is trying to change that. We are a women-owned company building a vibrator that transforms the way women understand, discover, and take control of their own bodies. Changing the conversation around female sexuality is hard, but we’re determined to take on the challenge.