Start Me Up

Meet the female tech entrepreneurs leading thesex-toy revolution.

- Meg Mason

SAY YOU’RE ONE OF THE 75 PER CENT OF WOMEN who rarely has an orgasm from vaginal sex, or the five per cent who can’t. Or, say, sex has been painful for you since having a baby and you need a whole lot of lead-up before anything is going anywhere; that you’re between partners or with someone who isn’t, so to speak, a dab hand. For whatever reason, you need a vibrator.

But say it’s also 1995, or 2005, or 2015, for that matter. Your options? Ascending the dark stairs of an adult shop to pick from a shelf of veiny plastic penises, made of who-knows-what kind of BPA-leaching materials from an unregulated overseas factory, while a leather-clad man behind the counter follows you with a lecherous gaze, getting ready to deploy some shudder-inducing innuendo at the register.

Shopping for a sex toy online would be better, if it didn’t require wading through images of whip-holding women in nasty lingerie, while avoiding accidental click-through to porn sites. You may have started bravely, but you come away with nothing, except for a lingering sense of unease, embarrassment, I-need a-shower kind of grubbiness, in all senses unsatisfied.