Happy 7th birthday to us! We’re celebrating our milestone with a giveaway
Presents!
While birthdays are often a chance to remember the good times, we are also excited to continue to bringing you the best of sextech reporting. We would love to hear from you. If you have any topics you would like to hear more about, or if you simply want to share your favorite article.
Hey there, SEXTECHGUIDE family!
Can you believe it’s been seven years already? That’s right, SEXTECHGUIDE turned seven this month! We’re feeling a mix of joy, pride, and gratitude as we look back on our journey since we first launched in May 2016 (and yes, we did technically miss our birthday but we’ve got history with that too).
Our journey began with a vision: to explore the exciting intersection of tech and sex and to keep you up to date with the latest industry news. We wanted to create a space where a range of voices could share their unique perspectives on where we are, and where we could go in the world of sextech.
Paving the way
We do our best at creating frank discussions that help to demystify the fears and confusion around sex and technology, with pieces like our Sex Robots 101 guide, instructions on casting your favorite content to a big screen, DIY sextech, how sextech can help heal sexual trauma and ASMR’s complicated relationship with sex. Hell, we’ve even given you a glimpse of how graphene could revolutionize many different aspects of sextech. Our opinion and featured article categories really are overflowing with examples of outstanding reporting and interviews with experts.
Despite the challenges we’ve faced as a sex-positive publication —like any other adult-adjacent industry, we’re often marked as ‘explicit’ on social and advertising channels— and unable to promote ourselves widely due to societal stigmas and taboos around sex. And yet we’ve still reached millions of people.
That’s no small feat considering sextech was barely a blip on the radar when we started, having only been coined as a hashtag in 2015 by Make Love Not Porn founder Cindy Gallop.
Hip hip hooray
Over the years, we’ve published hundreds of news stories and reviews, and we’ve had the privilege of collaborating with more than 30 incredible writers. We’ve also covered 47 sextech-dedicated events, keeping our readers informed about the latest trends and developments.
The past seven years have been filled with many memorable experiences. We’ve explored VR booths in Japan, interacted with Harmony on the SextechEU stage, and shared insights on the ups and downs of dating apps with an audience beyond SEXTECHGUIDE’s alone.
Inclusivity and progressive thinking have always been a cornerstone of our mission. We’ve made efforts to raise disability awareness through interviews and product roundups, uplift the women of sex tech, and we’ve championed trans and queer inclusivity, pushing for more diversity in the industry.
Our top-viewed “how-to” pages, such as “How to watch VR porn” and “How to find interactive content,” have become trusted resources for many of our readers, along with our most recent guide aimed at helping people with premature ejaculation. Being featured in the likes of the BBC, Metro, Wired, TNW, Wikipedia, and Sydney Morning Herald (and many more!), has brought a wide readership to our ‘little’ independent sextech site.
We’ve even been fortunate enough to sponsor events like the San Francisco Porn Film Festival and test the waters with an experimental events site (we stopped this experiment! Not all experiments work out!) and our sister shop SEXTECH.co.uk (which has just undergone a light redesign for the occasion, as you can see below).
Winners will be posted here once the draw is complete.
To many more…
Ultimately, we want to say a huge thank you to all of you for your support over the years. Here’s to many more years of exploring, learning, and growing together in the exciting world of sextech
Happy Birthday to us! We’ll keep pushing boundaries and making waves in the world of sextech, and all you need to do is keep reading. Cheers to you, our fantastic community!
Oli is a freelance sex tech researcher based in London. With an MA in Sexual Dissidence, researching sex tech, and a BA in History, researching gender and sexuality, she has a keen understanding of the past, present and future of sex. In addition to SEXTECHGUIDE, you can find Oli's work on titles such as shado-mag, QueerMajority, UnicornZine and more.
