When startups take on taboos | Philonomist.

When startups take on taboos
Could intimacy be tech’s new playground?
is a journalist with a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Rennes and a graduate of Sciences Po Rennes. For nine years she worked for HuffPost, namely as head of the news site’s “Life” department.
Did you just spot a cuddly toy shaped like a vagina on Instagram? Don’t panic: you’ve just caught your first glimpse of “taboo tech”: startups offering solutions to so-called “taboo” problems, such as death, sexual health, or intestinal disorders. But can we still speak of a taboo when a subject is brandished around and marketed in this way? We took a closer look at this growing sector.
What do menopause, semi-erections and a dead uncle have in common? Depending on the situation, these are all topics that can be tricky to talk about. At best, you walk on eggshells, at worst you dodge them altogether. And for good reason: they’re said to be “taboo”.
But these subjects have something else in common: they now each have their own dedicated startup. While some are aspiring to help people mourn differently, others are dreaming of a day when we can all talk casually about hot flashes, vaginal dryness, erectile dysfunction, or bothersome intestinal bloating. Gambling on a taboo subject to build your business may seem paradoxical, not to say counter-intuitive. Indeed, how can you capitalise on something no-one wants to talk about? How to acquire new customers if they’re burdened with the weight of the taboo? Yet this is precisely what this whole ecosystem is doing, by turning disturbing, intimate, or hidden subjects into banners that the concerned consumers can take up at their leisure.
Detabooing
If there is one subject that is said to be taboo, it’s death. “Neither the sun nor death can stare at each other,” reads one of François de La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims (1664). If we willingly disregard our own (“What makes me happy is to see that men absolutely refuse to think the thought of death”, Nietzsche rejoiced in The Gay Knowledge, 1882), death has always represented one of society’s greatest fears, though this fear is expressed differently from one culture to another. Many put off writing their will or organising their funeral. Yet the fear of surviving loved ones is great, and the grief sometimes insurmountable. This is where Happy End comes in. You’re bereaved? You can take part in an “after-death drink”. Does the thought of your own funeral bother you? The website will help you organise it. “Death is a taboo subject, which we don’t want to talk about,” says Happy End’s founder Sarah Dumont. “The only times it’s discussed is with funeral directors, or when signing a funeral contract. It has moved away from the realm of the intimate.” For her, it’s time someone offered other solutions.
‘Talk about menopause should be luminous, not pejorative’
—Jane Douat, CTO of Omena
While some subjects are simply not spoken about, others suffer from a very negative, even shameful perception, which some startups are now making it their mission to “destabilise” – to use the expression of Jane Douat, CTO of Omena, a French application she launched in January 2022 to support women going through menopause. “Since it’s a taboo subject, it’s often viewed negatively by women who come to our app. Talk about menopause should be luminous, not pejorative, because all women go through this period of transition which can be accompanied by a new freedom,” she explains.
Founding taboos
But what are we really talking about when we say that death or menopause are taboo subjects? “Today, taboo is an overused word that refers to the notions of intimacy, something sacred or hidden,” says anthropologist Fanny Parise, who specialises in the evolution of lifestyles and consumption. Overused, because it’s far removed from the definitions first given to it, namely in the works of famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud in the last century. The word itself, of Polynesian origin, initially designates “major and structuring prohibitions that touch on the sacred,” says Parise. Their transgression calls into question the very structure of society and undermines community life. In this sense, taboos are constitutive of civilization.
The greatest of these taboos, which is still studied to this day, is that of incest. In 1949, Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote in The Elementary Structures of Kinship that the prohibition of incest “constitutes the fundamental step thanks to which, by which, but above all in which, the passage from nature to culture is accomplished.”
In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, published in 1913, we also find this idea that taboos are the foundation of all civilizations. “There are three founding taboos: incest, murder for pleasure, and cannibalism. These are phenomena that cross society but that cannot be repressed outside of it,” says Samuel Dock, doctor in psychopathology and co-author of the New Malaise in Civilization (in French, 2017). There is, however, a fundamental difference between taboo in anthropology and psychology: “Psychology speaks of prohibitions linked to taboos, while anthropology argues that these are obligations to follow certain rules for the smooth functioning of life in society,” Fanny Parise further points out.
“Society has appropriated the word ‘taboo’ to explain a lived and perceived reality that is too difficult to explain”
—Fanny Parise, anthropologist
Taboos everywhere, taboos nowhere?
Behind the anthropo-psychological aspect of this definition, we can see that sociopolitical issues are emerging. Because if the existence of taboos in the first sense of the term is inherent to life in society, what about the taboos of today? The word has taken root in everyday language. “Society has appropriated it to explain a lived and perceived reality that is too difficult to explain,” Fanny Parise continues. The things that go unsaid about menopause, people’s sex lives, or their intimate health are in no way essential to the proper functioning of life in society, nor are they forbidden. They’re therefore not taboos in the strict sense of the term.
“It’s more of a rule that brings us back to the intimate than something taboo,” adds Samuel Dock. “In psychoanalysis as in anthropology, the taboo is present but never spoken. This is why, when we talk about menopause, for example, we confuse difficult or uncomfortable subjects and taboo subjects, because we can still talk about it.“ We can talk about it; and we can even take ownership of it.
“The ‘taboo’ in the modern sense of the term connects people around their vulnerabilities, and brings together communities of solidarity around solutions”
And this is how we end up on Instagram liking a tent or a soft toy in the shape of a vulva (as seen on the Vulvae account); or get caught up in another trend which gathers thousands of views on TikTok, called “hot girls with IBS” – supposedly attractive young women who aren’t paralysed by the idea of ​​talking about constipation, bloating, and farting, or “internal showers”, which are supposed to improve their or other people’s transit – not exactly the kind of subjects you would want to broach at the next family dinner…
Speaking of intestinal, there’s another company that goes by the name Cacré, which describes itself as a “poop shop”. And special mention should go to one of the latest videos by Boku, a company selling Japanese toilets, with the aim of “making your butt a priority”: in it we see a man dressed like Santa Claus, sitting on the toilet, singing a Christmas-themed song rife toilet humour... Result: more than 43,000 views on Facebook; which shows that in its own way, “taboo” subjects in the modern sense of the term are connecting people, because they’re bonding over shared vulnerabilities and finding a sense of solidarity in their quest for solutions. In this sense, the startups striving to “detaboo” these subjects are simply bringing them to light, whilst helping to resolve some underlying societal problems. And in doing so, they’re driving consumers to question the political balance of power that maintains these taboos in society.
Political taboos
“Around the 19th century, we realised that female pleasure wasn’t necessary for procreation and ovulation. So it was relegated, hidden, even psycho-pathologised,” says Paola Craveiro, co-founder of Vulvae, launched in March 2021 to support women suffering from chronic vulvar pain, by addressing sexual health-related subjects that mostly go unsaid, and that some women carry as a burden.
Reducing women to fertility also lies at the heart of the issue Omena is trying to tackle. “Menopause isn’t just a health issue. For many women and a patriarchal society, for example, it’s seen as a catalyst for ageing,” notes Jane Douat.
Menopause is something we “don’t think about, it’s an embarrassing subject, censored if not outright taboo. We talk about old age as a stage of life, but not about the threshold where everything changes,”writes anthropologist Françoise Héritier in Male Female. The Thought of the Difference (in French, 1996). She sees the gendered organisation of society – which gravitates towards gender differentiation – as a social construction serving as the basis for male domination. What distinguishes women from men is the possibility of creating life. As soon as a woman enters menopause and she can no longer reproduce, she is no longer really considered a woman.
“In our time, questioning the power of an individual can be taboo”
—Samuel Dock, doctor in psychopathology
On another note, the German company Regimen was created in 2020 with the aim of helping men suffering from erectile dysfunction – “not only to self-medicate, but also to take care of their intimate health,” its co-founder Max Kersting explains. In its own way, Regimen also takes on the “taboo” of sexual health, and more specifically that aspect of it which is seen as a marker of individual power. As Samuel Dock points out, “in our time, questioning the power of an individual can be taboo.”
Faced with these strong injunctions – fertility, virility – these companies pose as committed actors wanting to return the power to change things to the consumer. And so, by expressing themselves on various social platforms and promoting their taboo cause, the latter become activists.
‘The taboo often comes with business limitations, especially on Facebook or Google’
—Max Kersting, co-founder of Regimen
Marketing the taboo
But even for these startups that are working to dismantle them, the term taboo is difficult to hold up like a banner. “I would like to say that we’re not a taboo tech, because it’s not without its limits. The taboo often comes with business limitations,” says Max Kersting, namely on advertising platforms like Facebook or Google, which ban the content or limit its scope, but also on the part of some investors, who don’t want to invest in certain types of companies. Same story for Vulvae: “vulvas are still linked to pornography,” Paola Craveiro complains. She prefers to describe her company as “fem tech” or “sex tech”.
It’s these very labels that allow investors and consumers to quickly identify the object or the cause for which they will now be campaigning. Taboo tech, fem tech, sex tech, death tech – choose your banner. Through the commitment and trust of their communities, startups are managing to unite consumers around a chosen issue. In doing so, and even in the absence of financial success, they have already won an important battle – and this reflects in user feedback, which Omena, Vulvae, and Happy End all describe as extremely positive.
With the help of these startups, some of the taboos of our time are diminishing, and might continue to do so until they disappear altogether. Without raising the question of whether life in society is even possible without some taboos, other important questions are emerging: whether companies are helping us to get rid of taboos or not, to what extent does this power belong to them? Should it be up to private companies to take on the responsibility of social solidarity? Is treating taboos as a symptom and providing an entrepreneurial solution enough to get rid of it? These problems are often deeper than they seem, and will therefore also have to be addressed on a political or societal level.