CATCHING UP WITH OMGYES CO-FOUNDER ROB PERKINS
We live in a very sexualised world, constantly using sexuality to sell and advertise but in private, in our bedrooms, do we really know ourselves and how to pleasure our partners, in particular our female partners? This is the kind of question the founders of OMGYes have asked themselves. Female sexuality is still a taboo topic that needs to be addressed in order for women to fully enjoy their sexual lives, alone or with a partner. OMGYes provides personal advice with videos of women talking about their own experience and interactive pictures showing how to reach pleasure according to your own liking. These techniques are scientifically backed up and categorized in order for women and partners to realise and discover how different each and every woman is regarding sexual pleasure and how many “moves” and ways a woman can be pleased or can please herself. We talked to Rob Perkins, co-founder of the website about the importance of communication and exploration and why sex can always improve and evolve through curiosity.
Why did you feel like you needed to create this website?
Lydia (co-founder) and I went to university together many years ago, now we are almost 40. Back at university we had a group of friends that would talk about sex late at night with wine, we’d talked about specific things that we liked sexually. One night we realised that half of the women in the group really liked consistent motion, repeated movement and the other half said “no, you always have to be changing”. We realised that there are patterns to what feels good and when we looked at the science at university we realised it had never been studied. Female pleasure seemed like an indecent topic for science. So that made us very angry.
And then a few years later you started the website…
Yeah it started with research and how to make this information actually change people’s lives and help them. We also learned that reading about sexual techniques is like reading about dance moves: you have to feel it and you have to understand and hear from people who do it to really understand the differences, so we tried to find a way to make this research into something fun and useful and practical for people.
Why do you think people still have issues talking about female sexuality and in particular female pleasure?
We think it’s a hangover from previous generations: you can’t see a taboo in a culture until years later. Seeing sexualised people in the media and seeing big boobs and people joking about sex is not the same thing as the authentic experience that we have with ourselves or with our partners in our bedrooms. People think sex is everywhere but really the personal authentic vulnerable kind of sex that we have with our partners is not everywhere. Lots of women think they are broken, that there is something wrong with them because they don’t feel pleasure like in the movies, and them saying something to their partners will be received as an attack. There is also a lack of words about what feels good. We have a gynaecologist who works with us and she says that there is a word for everything that can go wrong but no words for the positive aspect of female sexuality and precise vocabulary for every way that feels good touching a woman. It is literally unspeakable. So we tried to create words to talk about it.
Who did you design it for? Women, their partners, both?
With sex there are so many guides for men and for women so it’s difficult for people to put a category on OMGYes but the truth is, it’s like a very personal science book, it’s all about the ways that women vary. We want it to be for anyone that is curious, men, women, couples – for anyone! One of the big points is that we encourage to give and ask for feedback, to tell your partner what you like because this is nowhere in culture: it’s not in the movies, not in porn, or in magazines. There is a lot of silent sex happening because people see movies where there is no talking and they assume that’s how it’s suppose to be. Men think they know exactly what women like and women believe they also know what feels good but in reality that’s not how it works.
So with OMGYes, you hope for more communication and openness between partners?
The hope is that men will see it and will go to the site and realise how women are incredibly different, there is no move that just works and that a good lover is the one who asks what that particular woman likes. We also want women to realise that there is a lot of variation, that they have to figure out their particular thing and communicate it to their partner. Because lots of people think either they already know or they don’t know. But actually it can get better and better all over your lifetime. Our website is like thousands of friends giving insight about their sexual lives and techniques. We want people to see pleasure that way, the same way they see cooking! If you read a cookbook it doesn’t mean you’re a bad cook and you need help, it means you’re probably a good cook and you’re curious and you want to explore and try new recipes.