At some point, a long-time user of the Lioness vibrator contacted the corporate to ask in the event that they could diagnose her broken vibrator. Previously, the device had recorded the information from her orgasms as a ‘volcano’ pattern (more on that later), but now her sessions were showing up flat on the graph. “We checked the firmware, the hardware, the software, and we couldn’t find anything unsuitable with it,” says Anna Lee, co-founder and head of engineering at Lioness. “So we asked, did something occur on the day when the information really starts flatlining, and she or he said ‘oh yeah, I had a sports injury, I had a concussion.’” 

The team began to wonder if the 2 were connected, and in consequence the girl, an athlete, decided to take a break from her sport and begin physical therapy. “In the middle of the six months she was doing the physical therapy we saw that data come back,” says Lee. Lioness has since presented the findings at a medical convention; a case study of how traumatic brain injuries can have a correlation to orgasms. “Once we do these data analyses on orgasms, we are able to detect other health things.”

For hundreds of years considered a myth, a mystery, an aberration, the feminine/AFAB orgasm is just just starting to be studied. Lee and Lioness, the sex tech company she co-founded with Liz Klinger and James Wang, are on the forefront of this research, collecting findings through technology which allows people to see real-time data – in the shape of rising and falling waves on a graph – of their orgasms. 

That is how it really works: the (world’s first) smart vibrator uses AI, sensors that measure tension, temperature and motion, and biofeedback to record your arousal and orgasm on a chart. Vaginal contractions are visualised as spikes or a circle that contracts and expands, so you’ll be able to find out how your body responds to different speeds, motions, and out of doors circumstances – you’ll be able to tag masturbation sessions with external aspects like alcohol, drugs, stress, sleep, mood and caffeine.

The aim is to assist users learn more about their bodies and provides them a greater grasp of their orgasms – what makes them tick. It’s not only in regards to the individual, though. The Lioness team also collect and aggregate the information (anonymously with permission) of their 1000’s of users to construct a greater understanding of female/AFAB arousal and orgasms. Earlier this yr, for instance, Lioness research was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in a study by Charles University in Prague which identified three patterns of orgasm.

Essentially the most common pattern is named the ‘ocean wave’ and involves rhythmic squeezing and relaxing of the pelvic floor. There’s also ‘volcano’ (huge explosion that quickly drops off) and ‘avalanche’ (starts very high after which goes rhythmically up and down, like an ocean wave, decreasing over time). “In our data that we’ve seen to date, we haven’t seen people jump from one type to a different,” explains Lee.

Here we seek advice from Lee about why the corporate was founded, creative ways users have been interpreting their orgasm data, and her engaging and academic TikTok presence.

I actually enjoyed your TikTok about how sex toys are all purple. It was so funny, since it’s so true. 

Anna Lee: If you happen to ask people ‘do you have got as sex toy’ and the reply is yes and also you’re like ‘which one do you have got’, nobody really knows what the brand name is but they’re like ‘oh its a purple one’. Plenty of sex toy shops will say that purple and pinks are their best-selling products. I even have my very own theory on that. You simply see purple vibrators so people associate vibrators with purple, so you purchase purple vibrators. I feel we’ll see the change as we see now there are so many alternative colors. For us, the grey still has the next percentage of sales than the purple one. 

Purple to me, especially in pastel lilac, feels almost non-threatening, that they’re doing it to be like ‘it’s a sex toy but it surely’s not scary.’

Anna Lee: Yeah, like ‘oh it’s cute!’ I feel definitely that. From an engineer’s perspective, some colors are only much harder to supply than others, and likewise once it’s finished you’ll be able to see specks of dust if it’s a light-weight color, but with a dark color if there are any fluids on it you’ll be able to see those fluids. So it’s a continuing backwards and forwards when it comes to what’s a superb color, and likewise what’s a color that’s easy to fabricate. If it’s handled are you able to see a scuff mark, and you’ll be able to see the lube, there are all types of random things we’ve got to consider.

The difference with Lioness is that it’s a sensible vibrator, so it’s collecting data in addition to just being a sex toy. How did that come about?

Anna Lee: I had began to understand how historically male-dominated this industry was and the way little tech innovation is definitely in sex toys for the way far we’ve are available tech as a complete. It was so interesting to me that vibrators just didn’t have that very same sort of innovation. Once we began we actually were attempting to construct an AI vibrator, so the more you used it, it got smarter and knew your body. The 2 things we learned from that was that there wasn’t enough research around female sexual function to even fill out that AI. There weren’t enough research papers, and if there was it was like a sample size of like 27 women from 1982.

And likewise once we had beta-testing a number of people were like, ‘Well I do know what I like and don’t like.’ But they were curious how we got that information, so we showed that [pelvic floor contraction] graph. That was a very big pivot moment for us to understand people were like, ‘that’s not data I’ve ever seen about my body.’ We realised we had to start out from, not square one, but even just helping people actually find out about their very own bodies.

Yeah because as you were saying, there was historically so little research into women’s sexuality.

Anna Lee: Oh yeah it’s crazy. I feel there’s a statistic that for each eight papers there are about male sexual function there’s one on female sexual function, and more often than not that female sexual function paper is about fertility. Fertility is totally necessary but I feel that once we’re talking about sexual pleasure, if were talking about erectile dysfunction versus female sexual dysfunction, the papers and the quantity of funding that goes into it are only so vastly different. I feel that’s where this concept that girls are complicated, or that girls are really hard to work out, comes from.

Do you get criticisms that the research isn’t vital? 

Anna Lee: We get a mixture, I mean I feel we’ve heard all the pieces. We used to call it a ‘FitBit to your vagina’ and FitBit didn’t love that! Nevertheless it is actually this concept of quantified self and the more you have got data to your body the higher you get to realize it. I feel people definitely are available with ‘well, why?’ But we at all times explain how little data we’ve got, how data can actually help us learn more about our bodies and provides us that understanding, and the way tracking how different parts of their lives, like concussion, can interact along with your sexual aspect. 

And there are some individuals who just find it a fun thing to do with their partners, so I really like seeing the creativity with how people can use it beyond what we made it for, especially throughout the kink communities. 

Have you ever seen people project the live streaming data up on partitions and stuff?

Anna Lee: That’s been my dream. I’ve been talking to some of play parties, I’m really attempting to get that launched off cause that will be so cool! We all know a number of people within the swinger community have been fans of the Lioness, like ‘I need to make use of it with this partner, after which this partner and see if it changes the information’. 

I feel it’s so cool how people get creative with it. We’ve had a musician make music along with her orgasm data. We’ve had someone who made a 3D model along with her orgasm data and bronze casted it. We’ve had people cross-stitch their orgasms. It was just essentially the most healthful sweet thing I’ve ever seen.

So healthful! What you were saying about FitBit is interesting, that they don’t even vaguely need to be related to anything to do with sex or female pleasure, I feel it’s very indicative of the way it’s still viewed within the culture.

Anna Lee: Definitely. I mean, as much as I’m at all times hopeful and I feel a number of things are changing, a number of policies are changing and other people’s general acceptance of it’s changing, I’d still say overall there’s still such a giant hurdle to leap. I’d say society moves faster than how policies can for firms. Plenty of times I see places like Meta or Instagram that never made a policy that protects sexual education in a way that’s healthy, especially with TikTok. I feel there are still a number of hurdles left in determining that firms can actually collaborate and use orgasm data as a part of their platform, or simply education usually around sex and all of that. 

I used to be researching for an article last yr, and was coming from a barely critical angle that a number of the language that among the recent wellness sex toy firms use to advertise the products is sort of euphemistic. I used to be like why are we talking about sex on this childish way? Then I spoke to someone at one in all the businesses and so they said ‘well it’s because we use social media to advertise these products, and we actually can’t use any, even scientific, words for body parts.’ So that they’re forced into this euphemistic language. 

Anna Lee: Totally. For me, on TikTok, the way in which that I say all the pieces will not be the way in which that I’d ever decide to say things. Content gets banned for those who say even the word vagina, or the word vibrator. I feel that’s been a very big challenge. We did bus ads in San Francisco years ago, and I remember one in all the things we actually desired to do was show the vibrator, and the ad agency were like, ‘you’ll be able to do it if it’s one-third of the vibrator,’ and we were like which one-third of the vibrator can I show? They kept coming up with these very arbitrary rules. 

We wanted to jot down ‘made by women, for individuals with vaginas’ and so they said you can not put the word vagina on an ad. It was this backwards and forwards of what term we use, in the long run, we just didn’t even use that sentence in any respect. I feel it’s unlucky that a number of the time firms should be forced down this odd approach to have the opportunity to speak about it. We only do more harm because we don’t use proper terms, or work out ways to really speak about it.

Speaking of TikTok, why did you select to tackle that social media educator role on top of your actual job?

Anna Lee: I wish I had a more inspiring answer, but actually the TikTokking was completely accidental. Through the pandemic, I used to be already completely obsessive about TikTok and there was a viral query, ‘what did you study and what do you do for a living now?’ I used to be like ‘I did engineering and I now make sex toys for a living!’ So I had very jokingly made that stitch, after which that night I used to be making dinner and my Instagram was getting pinged loads, and purchases were going through. We couldn’t work out where it was coming from, after which realised that the TikTok had gone viral. 

Coming from someone who was so scared about her own body, and so timid about her own body, I used to be like let me just put things that I’ve learned about it and the cool data that I’ve seen from it [on TikTok]. It became a natural progression of realising that folks were super interested by it as well. I wish I could do it more often but on top of running an organization it’s been insanely complex to maintain attempting to put out content, but I really like doing it because I’ve learned so many random things that I’ve been like ‘this ought to be out on the planet somewhere’.

Especially in school, sex education is so terrible, so it’s great that you just are making these fun, very approachable videos, that sort of takes the fear out of it.

Anna Lee: Yeah! I’d say that I hope that they improve education beyond TikTok, but I agree. One in every of the massive things that we did last yr was that Liz and I each got certified as sex educators, because if that is going to be a platform for us we should always have the opportunity to make certain that we put out content, and terminology, that’s correct so far as possible.

What do you discover is the largest misconception that folks have about female and AFAB pleasure or orgasms?

Anna Lee: I feel it being termed as ‘complicated’. It’s more that we just don’t know enough to essentially give ourselves the time to say what we like, what we don’t like. There is usually the flexibility to not orgasm, which is totally normal and nice, but people chalking it off as ‘well it’s complicated’, I feel it doesn’t HAVE to be complicated. People write it off very easily that for those who just don’t have one then it’s nice, but it surely’s more like, it could occur, you only should work out what could possibly be happening, what aspects could possibly be adding to this inability to orgasm.

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