Getting to know your body can be incredibly empowering.
Ladies, the cards are stacked against one of our most fundamental human rights: our right to experience sexual pleasure.
Pleasure, especially women’s pleasure, is a stigmatized topic. Example A: In 2019, CES — the world’s largest tech trade show — rescinded an innovation award given to a vibrator company, claiming the winning product “profane” and “immoral.” The Consumer Technology Association, the show and award’s organizer, later gave it back with an apology, and finally allowed women’s sex tech products to officially exhibit on the show floor for the first time in 2020.
Many tech companies still have an archaic attitude towards women’s pleasure, deeming it “inappropriate.” Some wouldn’t allow a doctor to promote her own book, The Vagina Bible, because it has the anatomically-correct word “vagina” in the title. The advertising policies of social media platforms prevent us at Crave from marketing our female pleasure products to new audiences, and yet Viagra is granted these permissions.
Given these attitudes, can you blame women for feeling guilt and shame for wanting pleasure? Can you blame women for not knowing about their own anatomy or pleasure spots when the full anatomy of the clitoris was not even fully documented until 1998?
I don’t blame them, but I do know that in 2020, it’s time women start owning their pleasure.
Over the last 10 years of building a modern sex toy company for women, I’ve learned that there is no right or wrong way to do this. Your preference, interest or curiosity may be different than that of your friends and lovers, but that does not mean it is any less valid or important.
Pleasure is a personal journey that starts with yourself and it will likely change over time. It taps into your curiosities, your desires and your comfort zone, but you have to first give yourself permission and the space to explore your pleasure. My friend and certified intimacy educator Shan Boodram agrees. “I think people can give themselves permission to explore their pleasure by being okay with where they currently are and starting there,” she says.
“I often find that sexual repression and the sexual pressure to ‘open up’ often boil down to the same end result: people feeling like there is something wrong with their sexuality. In truth, where you are is where you’re meant to be, so feel good about that space and challenge yourself to take small risks to expand outside of your comfort zone.”