When entrepreneurs Billie Quinlan and Anna Hushlak were developing their mindful sex app, Ferly, male investors said the idea was not worth funding: they claimed that women were a “niche market” and recommended the pair focus on porn to get ahead.
“We were told that as two women talking about sex, we’re never going to be taken seriously,” says Quinlan.
Many commonly held views on female pleasure derive from porn, and the dialogue surrounding women’s sexual health and pleasure is limited. That’s why Quinlan, 29, and Hushlak, 31, are trying to change the conversation. Their app focuses on pleasure for the body by using the mind: through learning about physiology, and through mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy. Since launching it has raised £1.5m in funding.
Scientific data on women’s sexual and reproductive health is limited. Centuries of male bias in medical research has created a huge gap in knowledge of women’s health. This seeps over into our own understanding of our bodies. YouGov research in 2019 found a third of men and women didn’t know what the clitoris was, and half of Britons surveyed couldn’t identify or describe the function of the vagina.
Upon opening the app for the first time, users are given a questionnaire on what Quinlan describes as the three key pillars of sexual wellbeing: pleasure, confidence and health. The founders worked with Kate Moyle, a psychosexual therapist, to develop the framework.
The app then suggests appropriate audio guides, such as body mapping, which encourages the user to self-touch and explore. The app might suggest a guide to body neutrality, which talks you through challenging negative beliefs about your body.
Ferly offers diverse audio erotica stories, guided practices to try out alone or with partners, to more factual podcast-style guides to the gynaecological anatomy. It is aimed at women who experience “sexual difficulties” – a term that includes anything from low libido, anxiety around sex, lack of confidence, inability to orgasm or pain during sex.
“Half of women experienced a sexual difficulty in the last year,” says Quinlan. “The impact of that feeds into every facet of life.”
Ferly takes users on a journey to mindful sex. You can create a profile, cite affirmations and log reflections about your new experiences, opening up the conversation – even if it’s only with yourself – about pleasure.
“People don’t prioritise sex or their sexuality because it feels like a burden or something that’s quite toxic. It’s like there’s this unspoken conversation,” says Quinlan.
Quinlan cites apps such as Calm and Headspace as inspiration because of how they opened up the conversation about the importance of mental health. “We thought we could do the same with sex and sexual wellness to make this topic accessible, demystify it and create a space for women to get the education they never had.”
Quinlan and Hushlak met at a company builder programme run by Zinc VC in 2017. The theme was women’s health, but by the end of the course no one had mentioned sex.
“We were two angry feminists banging our fists on the table like, ‘why have we left out sex in this conversation when we’re focused on women’s health?’” says Quinlan.
It was a particularly personal issue for Quinlan and Hushlak, who have both experienced sexual abuse.
Quinlan was assaulted by a former senior manager. “My mental health was in a very negative place and you go into all that kind of narrative of self-sabotage that we know to be true for women who experience assault. It took me a very long time to come out of that,” Quinlan says. “I’d never really thought about how my relationship to my sexuality would influence my own wellness and my own sense of self.”
It was within this context that Quinlan and Hushlak began Ferly. They say Ferly works for people who have had negative sexual experiences, or just want to become more aware of their bodies and discover what works or doesn’t work for them.
“Our ambition is that if we can empower the next generation of parents to have a healthy relationship with their sexuality, then the next generation will be set up for success,” says Quinlan.
At the moment the app is free to use and download through Apple. It will launch on Android this month. The team – currently just three – are working on a paid-for model with the aim of making a more tailormade journey.
Sex technology has seen a steep rise in demand since March, with sex toy sales booming by 25% in the first two weeks of lockdown. Ferly, with its 30,000 users, has had a 65% increase in organic downloads. “I think people are just seeing that health is so important.”
Despite its importance, the global wellness and health industry – now worth $4.2tn – often fails when it comes to diversity and representation. Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive preventative health services than white people, and generally receive lower-quality care. Most of the brands cashing in on the wellness trend fit the same aesthetic of white, athletic and slim. On top of that, wellness is expensive.
Ferly is trying to bridge this gap by having a diverse set of content creators. Their content crosses sexual orientations, gender identity, weight and age, but Quinlan admits they haven’t done enough when it comes to race. “That’s problematic in the specific content on the app. We have made a commitment – a figure that sounds low but is representative of the UK population – that 3% of our content creators are black. That’s a starting point, and we hope we massively exceed that.”
The next challenge, she says, is making Ferly accessible to different socioeconomic classes. As they start to bring in a payment structure, they are considering whether they can create a membership that’s “pay it forward” to cover fees for those who can’t afford it.
“A positive relationship to sex shouldn’t be a privileged thing, it’s a fundamental human right,” says Quinlan.
