Sunday, November 6, 2016

What's the Buzz?

Kickstarter, a crowd-funding site for launching new products and projects, has just recently accepted a new product they had previously refused to feature on their site: a sex toy:
Due to the site's prohibition on what it calls "pornographic materials," sex toy companies have to head to other sites, like Indiegogo, to fundraise. But on November 3, Kickstarter made the first exception to its no-sex-toy policy when Dame Products used the site to launch its new finger vibrator, Fin.
This is the second product from Dame Products. They released the first after a campaign on Indiegogo, but this time, wanted to use Kickstarter. So co-founder Janet Lieberman wrote an email to Kickstarter, asking them to make an exception, and explaining why:
"There are dozens of reasons why we risked our futures to start this company, but they all come down to a lack of awareness," she wrote. "People lacking awareness of their partners' needs. Companies lacking awareness of their customers' needs. Women lacking awareness of their own needs, or even their own bodies. We know we can run a successful campaign with your competitors. But we want to work with Kickstarter because people trust you to build awareness of important conversations. In our business, driving the conversation is the toughest part of the job. We’re blacklisted from ad networks, shunned by much of the serious media, and brushed off by wary banks and investors."
Kickstarter replied, agreed to feature their product on the site, and said they would consider welcoming similar products in the future. While this may seem trivial (and if so, hey, see the name of the blog), the mission of Dame Products, to open up dialogue about once taboo topics, and also to close what they call the "pleasure gap" for women, is definitely important. In fact, they cite survey results published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that states 15% of women said their last sexual experience was a only little or not at all pleasurable. The survey found only 4.3% of men said the same.

Getting their product onto a more mainstream site like Kickstarter helps get people thinking and talking about these topics.

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