The Transformation Issue | Idealog.co.nz
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I
f you haven’t heard of Bryony Cole, you
are robbing yourself of a deep-dive into
understanding your own sexuality, the culture
surrounding sex and the opportunity technology
has to transform an age-old taboo.
I personally like to think I’m very open-
minded when it comes to sexuality, yet my
knowledge of Sextech was limited to scaremongering
articles on how sex-tech developments in VR and AI will
lead us to becoming antisocial, sex-driven fiends who eat
and masturbate ourselves into a coma. Not exactly the
future The Jetsons predicted.
Since launching her top-rated podcast, Future of
Sex, Cole has been on stages across the world defining
the direction of Sextech for governments, technology and
entertainment companies. Her wide body of research and
annual Future of Sex report are considered the lead in
industry insights. Her podcast episode topics range from
dismantling the taboo around sex, bicuriosity for women,
teledildonics, and yes, sex dolls and robotics.
Cole’s specialty is talking about the intersection of
intimacy and technology in an approachable, non-scary
manner. She acknowledges its growing importance in
our society, but understands the taboo surrounding sex
restricts movements in this space greatly. So, how do we
talk openly about something that has been forbidden for
most of our lives?
Cole says it starts with battling the misconceptions
about what Sextech really is.
“With the Sextech industry, everyone just believes
in VR porn: that everyone is going to be replaced with
robots, and we’re never going to leave our couches again.
That is the opposite mission of Sextech as industry, which
is to enhance design and improve our sexual lives. I think
that big misconception is that technology is going to
take over our sex lives and we’re never going to be with
humans again.”
Humans naturally err on the conservative side
when it comes to sexuality. Our society’s reluctance to
acknowledge sex as a fundamental part of our now deeply
connected and complex lives only makes it harder to
educate and easier to put regulations on.
That makes people like Cole so important: pioneers
whose main goal is to understand and educate, creating
a safer, more connected society.
“I discovered this industry and The Future of Sex
about three years ago,” Cole says. “My strategic move
was branding something that would help move sex out of
the creepy, inaccessible mind frame, to something more
palatable. By putting ‘future’ at the front or ‘tech’ at the end
of it, its suddenly becomes something that removes it from
the individual, so it doesn’t seem as scary to talk about.”You would think that developments in tech that greater enhance people’s
experience of their own sexuality would be welcomed openly. And yet, the
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Courtney Devereux has a chat to the world’s leading authority on Sextech and
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the untapped area of tech that many founders are afraid to touch: Sextech.Cole works predominantly on getting conversations
surrounding Sextech further accepted in the community
and works to be present at tech conferences to further
promote normalisation.
“We have this whole industry called Sextech which
is used to increase intimacy, but we need to get the
conversation onto more standard agendas,” she says. “It’s
important, because that is a great way to start and change
perceptions and open eyes. At the end of the day if you’re
talking about Sextech, you are just talking about sexuality
and being human.”Size matters
While awareness of the Sextech industry is growing, it
is still only growing slowly. In New Zealand specifically,
Sextech is an untapped area for entrepreneurs, with very
little headway being made by new companies. On a trip to
New Zealand in 2016, MakeLoveNotPorn founder Cindy
Gallop said there was a huge opportunity for New Zealand
to build services that support sex-tech ventures.
"The first bank that says 'we will bank honest legal,
decent sex-tech ventures’ will clean up," she told Stuff.
Globally, according to Tristan Pollock, a partner at
San Francisco tech accelerator 500 Startups, the Sextech
industry – made up of sex apps, toys and services – is now
a US$30 billion-dollar industry growing at 30 percent each
year, which is faster than the drone industry.
Internationally, a lot of Sextech start-ups are founded
and run by women who feel they’ve been underserved
as a forgotten demographic when it comes to sexuality.
Considering Credit Suisse Research Institute’s 2018
Global Wealth Report found women hold 40 percent
of global wealth, tapping into this market could be a
lucrative opportunity.
A panel of investors who’d invested in Sextech
companies told Forbes the reasons they’d invested
included believing in the growth opportunity for women-
run sex companies, to believing it is as important to fund
as healthcare.
“Sexuality is part of wellness,” angel investor Laura
Behrens Wu said. “My investment in Sextech shouldn’t be
viewed any differently than investments in other types of
healthcare, like Headspace or Calm — and that’s a huge,
established market. Investors who insist on segmenting
out one aspect of our bodies, just because it makes some
people uncomfortable, may regret it in five years.
Cole says Sextech isn’t just about enhancing sexuality- it serves practical purposes, too. She gives the examples
of O.School and OhNut as companies championing the
kind of educational connectivity that she is advocating for.
“I think what’s interesting is places addressing the
unsexy side of Sextech such as OhNut, which is a silicon