When we said never measured, never improved we meant it. Sexperiments are designed to help you find what does (and doesn't) influence your orgasms and arousal. Every month, Lioness users will come together to try and see if their orgasms data changes based on specific techniques, tools, and lifestyle changes.
In other words, we're inviting you to take part in spicy science projects for adults.
New month, new Sexperiment!
No matter what you do for work, whether you have kids, or even if you have a long-term relationship or prefer casual hookups, life gets in the way of pleasure in one way or the other.
For couples, this can often create a strain on the relationship. One partner feels like their needs aren’t being met while the other feels like they’ve got to add sex to their list of chores and…well, conflict or connection happens. But we can get into that another time.
Today, I’m going to talk about when the only person in the sexual relationship is you and plead my case for making a masturbation routine.
Remember: we listen, and we don’t judge. So if you’re not sure what the point of prioritizing masturbation is, that’s okay! It’s a fair question.
That said — and I’m sure you can guess I was going to say this — masturbation is a really important thing to prioritize, regardless of your sexual status in relation to other people. (AKA, I don’t care if you have sexual partners, you should still be masturbating!)
Not only does it come with a host of health benefits like lowered stress and better sleep, but it also opens up a really important connection between yourself and your body. Being able to provide ourselves with sexual pleasure allows us to connect with our bodies, find what works for us, and lean into arousal where we’re both the giver and taker.
Many people operate under the assumption that sex and masturbation are better when they’re spontaneous. As if somehow the mood striking randomly on a Tuesday night is any hotter than the anticipation and build-up that can come with knowing things are going to get hot and heavy.
So if you’re sitting there thinking routine or scheduled masturbation sounds unsexy, you’re not alone — but you also may be limiting your own sexual pleasure.
Masturbation effortlessly fits into each of the categories that ultimately benefit us: health, self-care, and happiness. You don’t have to convince yourself to take care of your body daily, to spend time doing things that bring you joy, or to seek out small pleasures when things feel stressful. At the end of the day, masturbation is no different than that. Just like any other pleasurable pastime or activity that we might enjoy, if we don’t make time to do it, then it’s not going to happen or be as beneficial as possible.
You’ve got your concerns addressed, you’re ready to reframe your thinking, and make masturbation a part of your routine. So where do you start?
Well, like any other journey, you cannot know how to get where you want to be without first understanding where you currently are.
Before you just throw a personal block on your calendar and turn on DND, take stock of where you’re currently at in your sexual relationship with yourself and masturbation. Ask yourself the following questions (and answer them honestly!):
After you have a solid idea of what masturbation looks like for you now, that’s when you start penciling in your pleasure.
What good is a schedule or routine if you don’t follow it? Once you’ve dedicated yourself to making masturbation a part of your routine, don’t compromise on it! Your lunch break, your hot girl walks, and your masturbation sessions are all an important part of your routine, and you deserve the benefits that come from them!
Curious to see if the masturbation routine really works for you? Get your Lioness Smart Vibrator today and join us in May for another adult science project! Can you believe it’s already been an entire year of Sexperiments?
Effortlessly keep track of when you masturbate, how it went, and what you can do to make it better.
Shop Lioness now and start masturbating smarter in just a few days!
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For almost a decade now, Lioness has been using advanced technology previously only seen in research settings to help everyday women understand the nuance of their arousal and orgasms. While this started as integrating sensors and advanced data filtering, it has since evolved with other technologies to include data visualization and machine learning.
Simply put, the Lioness began as “just” a smart vibrator and has become a full fledged AI vibrator over time.
From Terminator to HER to Mass Effect, popular culture has had a certain way of looking at AI. Whether it’s evil or friendly, AI is anthropomorphized as… well, an artificial version of us.
In reality, even the most advanced LLMs (language learning models) like ChatGPT are statistical models. They have more in common with the linear regressions taught in high school statistics classes than they do with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s characters.
In the past, we’ve relied on AI algorithms running in the background to help Lioness users “clean up” their data. Whether it’s compensating for user movement — a daily complex problem that even research labs have failed to address well — or filtering out artifacts from how close the sensors are to a powerful motor, we’ve had small “AI’s” running around behind the scenes doing a ton of work.
In 2020, we took it one step further and rolled out our one-of-a-kind hotspot algorithm. This feature (available by default in the Lioness app), uses AI to predict and highlight areas of smart vibrator sessions where orgasm was most likely to occur. What looks like a simple heat map in the app is actually the work of over 30,000 Lioness sessions and an AI-assisted app.
Since ChatGPT and AI exploded onto the scene, many have speculated on its dangers, most of which aren’t necessarily in the scope of a women’s sexual health company.
And while we cannot speak to how other ai vibrator companies are considering ethics, there are two things that are in our scope and on our radar at Lioness: privacy and power/climate change.
Lioness has always been extremely transparent and clear on where we stand on privacy. Your data is anonymized, kept private, and protected with best practices in cybersecurity. We don’t sell or share your data, outside what we describe as “enthusiastic consent”—which as of now, has only been in cases with our research platform where users have opted into sharing data to advance our medical research knowledge of female pleasure.
This is why Mozilla lauded us as going “above and beyond” for protecting privacy and security. Anything that has personal data has some level of risk. However, if we didn’t collect and use personal data… there wouldn’t really be a Lioness vibrator that’s of any use to users.
Ultimately, our highest priority is to collect the minimum possible to give the maximum benefit to our users.
In relation to our use of AI, and the Lioness as an AI vibrator in general, this approach and policy don’t change at all.
Since AI started to gain steam, countless commentators have raised the fears of its impacts on our power grids and climate change. Power consumption isn’t that extreme yet, but every ChatGPT query is a few seconds of an air conditioner… which adds up. That being said, power costs have been falling through the floor...
Each generation of LLM has seen prices fall significantly—because underlying power costs have also been falling with more efficient chips.
...at the same time, Meta has been looking for a 4GW nuclear power plant and Microsoft is trying to re-open the shuttered Three Mile Island power plant. This isn’t from power costs for the same queries staying the same—it’s from expected scaling of the number of users accessing it and pushing the boundaries of the AI.
Still, the global landscape of AI power regulation and provision is not really something that a small sexual wellness company can do stuff about. However, we can ask questions about our own responsible use of AI.
There’s a massive difference between transformer models like ChatGPT trained on essentially the entire text base of the web… and our models, which are multiple orders of magnitude smaller. How much smaller?
x.ai trained their new Grok model on 100,000 cutting-edge NVIDIA GPUs. We trained ours on mixes of a Mac Studio and one single old NVIDIA consumer GPU.
OpenAI spends $4B a year on inference costs (meaning running the models, after training). We run ours on a small, power-efficient server that would cost likely maybe $2,000 per year if run from a cloud server provider like AWS.
If our features turn out to be super popular, this will likely scale, but the kind of scale we’re talking about is still night and day. The amount of power we will consume even if we increase our user base by 100X is likely less than an average American home.
And, in this case, we’d hopefully be providing some real benefits in terms of helping people understand their sexuality—and being happier and healthier from it—well exceeding the power consumed. Nevertheless, it is something that we have considered and kept an eye on—and have kept our operations very efficient, both because we care about the impact of it.
AI existed far before ChatGPT exploded onto the scene. In fact, some major milestones came years ago, with image recognition suddenly making massive leaps in performance in 2012 (including with a paper authored by researchers including Ilya Sutskever, who would go on to become a co-founder of OpenAI) and hitting human-levels around 2015.
Those leaps were made using deep learning, which were ideas that originated all the way back in the 1940s and 1950s, but finally reached maturity with refinement of techniques, advances in computational power, incredible availability of data. In particular, in 2017, Google published the Transformer model that would become the basis of all Large Language Models (LLMs). (Funny enough, one of our co-founders was also playing with Language Models in 2014).
So what is Lioness working on? We’ll have many exciting announcements, but we can say that it uses deep learning (and some of our models are even using Transformers models directly). Stay tuned by signing up for our newsletter!
It’s been 10 years since we made it our mission to change the lack of research around female orgasms and sexual pleasure. For women and people with vaginas, sexual function is still a taboo subject that doctors and partners are all too comfortable shying away from.
But we believed then what we still scream from the rooftops now: knowledge is pleasure. Especially when it helps women actually enjoy their sexual health, not just “manage” it.
Ten years, top researchers and doctors from around the globe, and about 300,000 smart orgasms later (yes, we’re counting — wouldn’t you?), we’ve learned some seriously juicy things that prove it.
Here are our top 6 favorite things:
Back when we started Lioness, we knew definitively there were three orgasm patterns that a person could have. Thanks to the Lioness, we’ve actually broken down the percentage of users who experience each one too! (Thank you to the 10,663 users who opted in to make this possible!)
Back then, we thought it was only possible to have one of these types. Over time, however, Lioness users have shared their data with us and the proof we were wrong is in their pleasure! Orgasms can and do actually vary by pattern, and even our co-founder Anna Lee has experienced this phenomenon (feminomenon?). As she puts it, “I’ve always been a consistent Ocean wave, but when I practice edging to high arousal, my data has look like an Avalanche instead.”
Whether using our Orgasm Selector or real-time marking in Live View , Lioness users have been marking their Os for a while now. From the simple act of highlighting orgasms, we’ve been able to aggregate this data and find the average female orgasm lasts ~24.4 seconds.
The coolest part? The Lioness data lines up with some incredible research conducting in the 80s and 90s:
…and that’s about what it takes to snap a skinny Hot Cheeto in half! (Or a regular one if you’re not into that type of spicy.)
We’re often asked if you have to insert the Lioness to get orgasm data, and the answer is yes! That’s because those sensors need to be inside the body to track pelvic floor contractions (aka orgasms).
Thanks to the many, many Lioness users inserting the Lioness and tracking their orgasms, we’ve found that the average force of a vaginal orgasm is 69.9 gF — and the average force of an anal orgasm is about 100 gF! In the world of food, that’s enough to squish a blueberry. (We know because Anna spent a lot of time figuring this stuff out to make gF make more sense.)
We live in a day and age where everyone wants things fast and optimized — the quickest route, the fastest delivery, the most instantaneous response. But it appears orgasms are not into instant gratification!
After a year of Sexperiments, we have seen a consistent correlation between longer sessions and longer, stronger, higher-rated orgasms. Here are some of the most notable increases we’ve seen:
On an aggregate scale, session length increased by 5 mins and 24 secs, while orgasm length increased by 9 secs!
See the data here.
Overall average session length increased from 7 mins 43 secs to 9 mins 59 secs, while the average peak force of orgasms increased by 9 gF.
See the data here.
On average, Lioness users who masturbated with CBD serum or CBD suppositories saw an overall increase in orgasmic force and star rating. Users also found they achieved orgasm faster!
See the data here.
One of our favorite researchers, Dee Hartmann (pelvic floor physical therapist and co-author of the Pleasure Prescription) led a study with 26 Lioness users to see how their data compared depending on age ranges between 21-60, five of whom were peri or post-menopasual.
Her research showed that women ages 31-40 yo took the longest to orgasm (~598 seconds) but produced the longest orgasms at ~30 seconds. Women ages 51-60 , however, Hartmann found took the least amount of time to achieve orgasm (~219 seconds) but experienced the strongest orgasmic peak force of 1425 gF.
Much to our surprise, mutual masturbation was incredibly successful at creating opportunities for longer sessions and better O’s. Here’s what we reported in our Sexperiment wrap-up:
“Two heads are better than one has never been more true! On average, Lioness users who masturbated with a partner saw an average peak force of 86 gF during orgasm compared to 62 gF during baseline sessions. Here’s what else they found:
So if you’re not foregoing partnered sex for some mutual masturbation, we highly recommend giving it a try.
From myth-busting orgasm patterns to measuring the force of a Hot Cheeto snap, we’ve turned pleasure into power — and we’re just getting started.
If there’s anything ten years, 300,000 orgasms, and a boatload of pelvic floor contractions have taught us, it’s that when women are given the tools, they will explore, learn, and rewrite the rules of their arousal.
Join us as we look toward another 10 years and beyond of better, smarter, orgasms. We’ve got our Lioness vibrators in hand and our data at the ready — do you?
Masturbationas a part of your daily or weekly routine has a lot of merit. Reliable solo pleasure in a comfortable place can be good for your mental and sexual health, your sleep hygiene, etc.
But there’s also something to be said for shaking it up and introducing a little novelty in the mix. In fact, novelty (especially for women and people with vaginas) is scientifically proven to improve pleasure, arousal, and orgasm.
So before you pull out your Lioness Smart Vibrator for a little play time in your bedroom again take a look around your home and consider trying somewhere new.
If you’re wondering why should I masturbate somewhere different, perhaps the better question is, “why not?” But there’s actually a science backed answer to the initial question.
As humans, we suffer from a phenomenon known as "habituation to stimulus.” This is just a fancy way to say that as we have increased exposure to certain things, we get used to them and they stop impacting us the same.
For masturbation, this means that the same bed, the same pillow, and the same spot on the ceiling you lock eyes with as your orgasm naturally lose their pizazz over time.
Fortunately, changing locations is an easy, accessible, and effective way to make flicking the bean feel exciting again.
If you haven’t looked around your home and thought, “I should try masturbating there,” this one’s for you. Just remember, each location comes with its own necessary precautions!
Grab a waterproof toy (like the Lioness Smart Vibrator) and hit the showers the next time you masturbate! If you really want to make it fun, play with the water temperature or your positioning to find what really works for you. Just remember, if you’re going to use a toy in a bath tub full of water, make sure it’s water proof, not just water resistant.
Living rooms are generally open spaces that promote relaxation, hobbies, and connection. So what better place to have a little solo-play if the opportunity presents itself?
If you live with other people, this may be tricky so plan accordingly. Opt for the floor to avoid the couch if the space is shared, and prepare for bodily fluids by lying a blanket down first.
Sure, it might be small and dark but it’s also super private and definitely not your bedroom. Not much else to say on that, just trust us and give it a try!
Pro Tip: This one can be extra fun if you have any type of power dynamic in your relationship! Have a bratty sub that needs a funishment? Make them give themselves an orgasm in the closet before they get anything else from you. If you’re on the other side of the door, you get to listen in and if you’re not, they get the added fun of leaving proof behind for you.
Obviously, this one needs to be explored with caution. If you have neighbors that can see or hear you, it’s probably not the best option. If you have privacy, however, masturbating outside can be extremely exciting! There’s something to be said about fresh air and a little sunshine on your bare skin.
Another location that requires a lot of discretion, masturbating in the car is just taboo enough that it can really spice things up in a surprisingly hot way. Take precaution to avoid heat exhaustion for yourself in the vehicle, and not violating anyone’s consent outside the vehicle before you give it a try though. This location is best explored somewhere private where you can have the vehicle running or the windows open.
Whether you’re bored of the bed or just looking to see what happens when you touch yourself somewhere new, masturbating somewhere other than your bedroom is a great way to explore and enhance your arousal. Will it lead to a better, stronger, or longer orgasm? Well…the only way to find out for sure is to make sure you take your Lioness Smart Vibrator with you on your journey through your home!
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