When people imagine the technology of the future, the emphasis almost always falls on the performance of complex tasks. In that respect, technological progress is chugging along rather nicely. Some remarkably intelligent machines have already become ubiquitous worldwide, including mobile phones and computerized transmissions in cars. But we should also anticipate technology for infinitely more challenging situations – ones in which our high-tech expertise is just as creatively directed at sexual fulfillment and inclusivity.
In the 150 years since vibrators first appeared, powered by water, steam, or compressed air, scientists and engineers have constantly reimagined and upgraded sex toy technology.
In fact, right now, nearly 50 years after the first modern sex toys hit the market, the sex toy industry is again undergoing a profound and sweeping revolution.
“The sex industry is on a swing from a male-centric vice industry to a female-centric wellness industry, and that’s a pretty big change,” says Janet Lieberman, CTO & co-founder of a startup company, Dame. “Technological advancements in the space have shown that these products are just as intricate and thoughtfully made as those in any other category.”
The Obscenity of Intolerance
Over the past five decades, the vibrator market alone has expanded into a $6.5 billion industry and continues to grow at 13 percent annually.
Driven mostly by smart technology and more tolerant society, this is a breathtaking turn from the standpoint of cultural history.
The view of masturbation as a benign and beneficial activity is a new one, after all. The Judeo-Christian tradition has long been hostile towards self-pleasure, and the Talmud compares spilling seed to bloodshed.
Traditional Islamic philosophy forbids masturbation, as well, based on several Qur’an and Hadith verses, which state that people should refrain from certain sexual acts.
Women were, of course, almost universally left out of these old prohibitions. Most male religious authorities of the time didn’t consider the possibility that women were capable of giving themselves orgasms.
They were spectacularly wrong, of course. Nowadays women customers are driving much of the sex toy industry’s growth, enticed by the wider acceptance of sex toys and a desire for higher-quality, more innovative products.
What’s perhaps even more heartening is that women executives are also increasingly running the business. While most of the legacy sex toy companies are headed by men, women run the vast majority of sex toy startups. These include some of the most successful companies like Crave, Unbound, Dame Products, and Maude.
That’s not to say the sex toy industry’s more recent expansion has been a complete love-fest of openness and tolerance. In 2019, the sex tech company, Lora DiCarlo, created a product so advanced that it won a major award at CES, the world’s biggest technology conference.
The device was Osé – a $290 toy designed to stimulate both a woman’s clitoris and her G-spot to achieve a “blended orgasm.” Quite shockingly, CES’s parent company, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), later revoked the award, calling the device “obscene.”
“I was appalled because we don’t think sexual health is obscene – it’s sacred,” says DiCarlo, the company’s CEO and namesake. “Sexual health is human health.”
“A History of Gender Bias and Double-Standards”
DiCarlo and her company launched a vigorous publicity campaign against the CTA’s action. For starters, she wrote a scathing open letter that skewered the trade show for its “long, documented history of gender bias, sexism, and … misogyny.”
The New York Times and other news organizations covered her critique. The resulting public outcry was such that the CES soon returned the award.
In the middle of the awkward hullabaloo was the device itself.
The tacit acknowledgment that sex technology can no longer be ignored runs parallel to the industry’s shift toward greater inclusivity for female entrepreneurs.
The Osé is a consequence of that movement, which makes the robotic massager quite unique. True, like many other devices, it’s designed for dual stimulation: the palpating wand activates the G-spot while a humming oval applies suction to the clitoris.
The pleasure system is a variation on the classic rabbit-style vibrator made famous by Sex and the City. But, as is often the case with one-size-fits-all devices, any given rabbit might feel amazing to one person, while another finds the parts frustratingly askew.
The Osé embraces inclusivity rather boldly in that it’s supposedly meant for everyone: a hands-free device that could bend for a customized fit for any vagina. Consequently, the sex toy’s limber neck suggests a swan looking back as it glides on water.
(Photo: TechCrunch/Wikimedia Commons)
Harnessing Inclusive Technology
How DiCarlo’s company managed to conjure such a deceptively simple – if not downright elegant – design is a story in itself. DiCarlo had to do her own research, surveying hundreds of women for her company’s flagship product.
Giving out instructions, the tech CEO asked the women to measure the distances between their clitoris and vaginal opening and between their vaginal opening and G-spot.
With the information as a guide, DiCarlo set out to build a product with a hinge flexible enough for any customer.
That’s not all. The Osé has “biomimetic” engineering and design which, according to the company, is more akin to the human touch. Instead of vibrating, the device replicates a “come hither” motion for G-spot stimulation.
Curiously, much of the technology behind the toy is the result of changing cultural mores. But then the trend that has been evident in the industry from the very beginning.
As attitudes toward sex loosened in the 20th century, sex toys became bolder, sleeker, and more anatomical. The bulky, often frighteningly medieval designs of the Victorian era gave way to more intelligent and user-friendly phallic shapes.
These days shoppers can choose among toys with custom vibrations, interactive control panels, app-controlled public play, and long-distance couple’s devices that connect to each other.
Of course, if your old device works fine for you now, you should keep it. But why deny yourself the added pleasure of these new advances? Every woman should have the best of both worlds.
The Revolution the Industry Needs
None of this means that you won’t encounter problems with today’s devices, either. Even high-tech sex toys like Osé fall victim to some of the fundamental issues dogging the tech industry.
Consider the gamut of everyday frustrations of technology. We have constant firmware updates that foul our devices, maddening connectivity issues, faulty apps, malfunctioning hardware. Surely, even the smartest sex toys aren’t immune to these glitches.
But dropped connections and stalling software are the least of the industry’s problems at the moment. As always, the real impediments to progress are still psychological and social. They mainly stem from the flaws in our intellectual and emotional capacities.
We’ve made some truly astonishing breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence, yet we’ve yet to address how to make ourselves more mature.
We’ve built rockets that take observation instruments farther into space than ever before. But the cranky old men behind the CTA will, on occasion, still declare sex toys obscene.
Certainly, one of our gravest errors around technology is to imagine that things cannot get any better. They most definitely will.
But we’ll have to get better right along with it for any progress to really matter.
My Secret Drawer®
