Why is female sexual pleasure so taboo?

Jingjin Liu (JL): I’ve always wanted to help women to establish intrinsic confidence with a business that drives positive impact. I believe that when a woman has confidence in her sexuality, she will be more willing to venture out of her comfort zone. This is why I moved to Singapore in 2018, where I pursued my EMBA and laid the foundations for my business. In China, where I grew up, I had little to no sexual education.

(Read also “True Story: How I Became Sexually Confident, From Being Clueless In Bed“)

When I moved to Germany at 16, schools and society were more open in discussing sex-related topics. The environment helped me develop my confidence and understanding of sex-related issues. By providing a supportive environment to learn about sex and sexual wellness, I want to help women gain confidence in themselves.

JL: For me, sexual wellness is as fundamental to our health as physical and mental wellness. It is the ability to love yourself, understand the intimate parts of your body and take care of its needs. Our sexuality is a living breathing part of who we are. It shapes our relationships, our self-esteem and it connects our mind and our body.

I believe that sexuality informs identity. When we are secure in our identity, that helps to develop confidence, which empowers us to make decisions that help to change the world for the better.

We aim to educate and develop a community that promotes sexual wellness and intimacy, and to encourage women to take care of their sexual well-being and discover their bodies. Our sexual intimacy survey has found that only a minority (less than 25 per cent) have ever climaxed during intercourse, which often leads to dissatisfaction, break-ups, and divorce.

We also host regular workshops and host events with in-house sexologists and intimacy coaches with different specialisations, as well as various educational campaigns so women can understand and experience pleasure better.

One of our objectives is to make sexual wellness more approachable. As a next step, we’re creating an all-inclusive community, the ZaZaZu Club, to infuse sex into daily life. This activity-filled ZaZaZa journey spans three to six months, the first of which will integrate the five senses. We’ll be partnering businesses with products that help stimulate the senses, including restaurants serving aphrodisiac food or essential oil retailers.

Through this journey, we want everyone to be in touch with their sensuality and gradually view sexual wellness as an essential part of life.

JL: The misunderstanding and misconception of the term “sexual wellness” is the biggest hurdle in Asian society. I grew up being told that sex is ‘dirty’ and ‘bad’ and pleasure, and that female pleasure is ‘forbidden’ and ‘slutty’.

(Here are “12 Surprising Erogenous ‘Sex’ Zones That May Give You A Better Orgasm“)

When I moved to Germany, where school and society were open about sex-related topics, I realised that knowledge is true power. Avoiding sexual education is not the answer. Parents may be afraid that if children are exposed to more knowledge, their children would start to explore sex earlier. The opposite is true. When we know more about sex and sex-related topics, the better we can make informed decisions.

Our business didn’t accelerate in the beginning. As we started our business in the middle of the pandemic, some ideas we had were not possible to realise when Singapore was in lockdown. Since sexual wellness is such an intimate topic, without face-to-face interaction, it was very difficult to gain trust from anyone, let alone a new brand in this space full of
misconceptions and misunderstanding.

We started our own YouTube channel and hosted Facebook live events to openly share our journey, mission and vision, and why we want to normalise sexual wellness for women. Gradually, we gained trust from our audience, and were overwhelmed with private messages of people sharing their intimacy challenges during Covid-19, seeking advice and
advocating ZaZaZu’s mission.

JL: I realised that once we have built a relationship with people and they start to trust us, they begin to seek more advice, and explore our quizzes and surveys to learn more about themselves. Many people may think that lockdowns and quarantine will increase the frequency of sex.

However, our sexual and intimacy survey found that the frequency of having sex dropped by almost half. One reason could be that the pandemic can be a stressful period, and the resulting tension due to the close proximity with one’s partner could have actually reduced the frequency of having sex.

JL: We realised that in order to truly elevate sexual wellness, we must incorporate sensuality. If you’ve never tasted wine, you would not miss the taste. This is the same with great sex; if you’ve never experienced good sex, you may not spend the money to enhance its experience.

That’s why we extended our offering to include the “ZaZaZu Club”, by infusing intimate wellness into daily lives through introducing pleasurable activities with wholesome, educational angles, which naturally integrate sensual feelings into your daily activities.

JL: I believe that the sex tech industry will become less stigmatised and more mainstream in the next five to 10 years. Just think about how mental wellness and yoga were perceived 20 years ago, yoga was considered only as stretching and mindfulness was only perceived as a breathing exercise.

With the pandemic in mind, 2021 is all about proving and improving the concept in Singapore. We plan to expand to other countries including Vietnam, Hongkong, Taiwan, Thailand and China. We ultimately aim to create a safe space where sex is healthy, pleasure is positive and education gaps are sealed. The future of sex will be like having great food with friends in a restaurant; we enjoy it, embrace it and have it frequently.

My long-term goal for ZaZaZu is to become the go-to place in Asia for all sexual wellness-related topics and challenges, to foster meaningful discussion and build a strong community.

JL: I had the opportunity to meet Indra Nooyi in person. When she was asked how she became the first female CEO at PepsiCo, she said: “You do your job better than any man, better than any woman, simply better than anyone―this is how you make it to the top.”

Since then, this has been my mantra in business and life. Simple things in life bring me the most joy, such as watching my little boy sleep, a weekly date night with my husband and having a foot massage.

This article was first published in Women’s Weekly.

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