I have been growing a sexual health company for ten years. I started it in my home and then when it grew past the capacity of sharing with my kids, moved it into another residential space in town. It kept its home business feel, where we have dogs and kids and a lawn to mow. But recent developments in our quickly expanding distribution have made it clear that the home business phase is over.
So I set out to find a public space, with a small store front, a place to invite in sexual health experts, and to expand our mission of increasing the quantity and quality of loving relationships into our community. There are only a handful of retailers in this country and none in our state that elevate the business of sexuality to the health concern that it is. I know them all because they are our customers. These stores serve as essential resources for physicians, and counselors, as well, as for the public.
Most people know my company as a product company that manufactures organic and all-natural alternatives in the intimacy consumer product space. We sell our organic lubricants all over the country, as well as internationally. The sexual health mission we promote is an infidelity preventative, supporting loving relationships and preserving family structures. So it was with this history and mission that I went looking for a new space for our growing business. Then eureka, our realtor found an amazingly good private location, a block from a beautiful neighborhood with enough room to grow our current wholesale business and expand our mission into a community education resource. Although I have been turned down before, the refusal to let us rent because of the “nature of our business” and the perception of others hit me hard.
Creating spaces to explore and learn about what it means to each of us to be sexually well is a public service that should be welcome everywhere. When we refuse to include real sexual conversations in our education and our community we lose access to a fundamental aspect of our humanity. This is why culturally we are largely only left with fictionalized, often vulgar, representations of what it means to be sexual. This also explains the research, which demonstrates that the more education kids get about sexuality, the later they are to engage in it. What we repress and refuse to look at owns us- rather than us being able to own it and make good choices about the sexual lives we want to lead.
The truth of how we look away from our real sexual issues is arguably one of the most significant health crises the world over. From rampant and increasing family sexual abuse to ever increasing numbers in sex trafficking to the hundreds of millions of girls who lose their right to pleasure through female castration, we are the most wounded sexual human beings of all time. Closer to home, couples struggle with sexual dysfunction symptoms that affect over a third of the population or more, depending on the study. Sexless marriages don’t last. Infidelity is a booming business. The fabric of our families is shredding under the weight of the sexual health issues that we refuse to look at or discuss.
So here is hoping, that Good Clean Love will find a public home to share the light of how freeing sexual health can be and how critical the healing of our sexual selves is for the planet.
