The Quality Makers: Emily Sauer of The Pelvic People

Originally from a little city outside of Philadelphia and now based in upstate New York, founder Emily Sauer of The Pelvic People has made it her mission to end painful sex. The ‘inventor by necessity’ created their flagship product Ohnut on Kickstarter in 2018. Soon after, institutions like Mayo Clinic and Harvard's Cancer Research Center began carrying this iconic product, only for it to be referred by just under 7k healthcare practices in the US alone. The brand team strongly believes the future of Pelvic Health requires letting go of culturally ingrained narratives around sex, and redefining pelvic health through the lens of people. 

Proudly paving the way for a new category of evidence-based tools in pelvic health, they have earned the title of respected authority in pelvic pain innovation, and they’re just getting started! More recently, The Pelvic People introduced Kiwi, also now recommended by experts. This company is revolutionizing at-home options by bridging the gap between toys and medical devices, globally. Learn more in our conversation with Emily below.

What does it mean to be an ‘inventor by necessity’?

The Pelvic People is a patient-founded, clinically trusted ecosystem of tools for the millions of people with vaginas who will have painful sex today. 1 out of 3 women reported pain the last time that they had sex, but we wouldn't know how common it is based on how little we talk about it. The ‘inventor by necessity’ title was inspired by my own journey. After over 10 years of feeling powerless in a body that I didn’t understand, it became incredibly empowering to launch The Pelvic People and change the narrative for the millions of us who feel alone in a shared experience. Interestingly enough, when it all started back in 2018, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to get a job again if my name was linked with a sex-related product. But Ohnut needed to exist, and I had a story to tell. Now 5 years later I’m proud of the work that my team and I have done to lead the way in pelvic health innovation.

How is your personal journey related to the creation of The Pelvic People?

I experienced on and off deep pain during sex ever since I started having sex. I am also 4’11”, so I just assumed that given my height, this might be an anatomical issue. The thing is, it never totally went away, and I never really shook its hand and said hello. I just shoved it under the rug, never telling anyone or any partners about it. My concerns were dismissed during yearly GYN appointments, especially because nothing showed up on any of the equipment they tested me with. I didn’t know, at the time, that gynecologists aren’t trained to treat sexual health or chronic pain conditions. The problem was, I also wasn't referred to any other kind of specialist. 

Over the course of 10 years, when you're constantly told that nothing is wrong with you, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself, and with that comes an intense degree of blame, guilt and shame. It wasn't until I was in a tough relationship, that pain during sex got worse, and every time was a reminder that I wasn't who I identified as. It reminded me that I wasn't the partner I wanted to be. I wasn't the confident Emily that I am. So at this low point in my life, I thought of this wild idea to put a pink frosted donut on a penis to control how deep the penetration went inside my body. This crazy idea was the antithesis of the darkness that I had been feeling for so long. I got to this point of frustration where I couldn't do nothing, so when the idea struck and I had this proof of concept, it was like a light bulb went off. All of a sudden, I didn't blame myself anymore for the years of pain that I had been experiencing. Then, I not only had a choice to feel good, but I could share that with others.

For the first time, I had the confidence to talk about my experience. I was enthusiastic about it! I would tell any and everyone that I was having pain during sex, and because I was expressing it with that sense of confidence, it was received with a sense of curiosity and reflection. More times than not, people responded with: “I’ve had this too,” “I know someone who's had it,” or “I had sex with someone who seemed like they were in pain, but I didn't know what to do about it.” From there, it had a heartbeat of its own. It was the community that really launched the whole thing.

What did your design process look like?

I knew nothing about product design, development, the manufacturing process, the supply chain, even business or e-commerce. I just understood the problem so well, and I had the drive to figure out a tool that could be helpful for both the people who needed it and the clinicians who could refer it. I worked with multiple engineers to get to the final design. It became very clear that the product needed to be customizable, it needed to be comfortable for both partners, and it needed to be clinically viable. 

I actually started going to medical conferences. I became exposed to the education that I wish that I had had. I wasn't just making a physical product, but I needed to be the catalyst that brought the education that was coming from our doctors to a mainstream audience. So while The Pelvic People puts physical products out into the world, the brand represents much more than that in how we support people in their journey. 

Between the creation of Ohnut, the pain perception project, the pelvic gym and now kiwi, we've spent hundreds of hours interviewing clinicians, patients who are currently going through the experience, patients who found triumph in their own way, and that is 100% what shapes what we put out into the world.

Tell me about the two products you offer.

Our flagship product is Ohnut ($75), which is designed to help folks who have deep pain during sex, like a stabbing, achy, sharp feeling deeper inside the body. Then we have Kiwi ($115), which is designed to help with entry pain, which can feel like a burning, tearing, feeling at the entrance of the vagina.

The way that Ohnut works is that it’s a series of stackable stretchy rings that are worn at the base of a penetrating partner. The rings are worn during penetrative sex, and it allows you to control how deep penetration goes. You can take the rings off at any point during any position to really figure out what feels good for both partners.

Kiwi is an entry pain massager that encourages muscle relaxation to address the underlying physiological causes of pain at the entrance of the vagina. It’s shaped like a comma, it has different massage ends and a shallow insertion piece. It goes inside the body about an inch and a half deep, it focuses on the muscles at the entrance, and you have the option to introduce clitoral stimulation with that shallow entry. 

When you’re introducing vibration in a massage or therapeutic way, it also feels good, which is a huge part in how the musculature of the pelvic floor functions. There are lots of underlying causes of entry pain, and the one that Kiwi helps with is the extremely common musculoskeletal kind. There's different root causes: hormonal,  inflammatory or dermatologic, but they all result in pain that causes the body to guard and protect, a protective mechanism of the pelvic floor muscles. A fear or avoidance of things that initiate pain begins to build, so when you start to incorporate vibration, a very non threatening tool, we're also rewriting those anxiety patterns. Our company is coming from a perspective that someone might not want to put anything near their vagina, so that you can associate a very minimal amount of insertion, if you like, with enjoyment. 

Within the creation process, how did you consider the concept of pleasure?

Pleasure is an interesting concept for me personally. During my experience of discomfort during sex, the pressure to feel pleasure made me not want to have sex at all. At The Pelvic People, we recognize the importance of pleasure, but if you start with pleasure without establishing a foundation of safety, of understanding, of communication, then pleasure is forced. There's an intrinsic motivation to achieve pleasure, but the path to get there is limited.

Before even buying a product like Ohnut, you have to acknowledge the pain inside your body. Recognizing that that pain exists and that it's not your fault, coming from a place of curiosity, and then having the agency to figure out what the next steps are, is very brave. Then there's also a conversation that needs to be had with a partner, and that conversation in the bedroom is different. Before, there was this fear of admitting that sex was painful, fear of ruining the moment, or offending a partner, and now, there's this unbiased third party that makes you want to ask the other person: “how does this feel for you?” All of a sudden, there’s this shift in dialogue. Only then, does play, enjoyment and relaxation become possible. We put pleasure into this bucket of: stimulation, vibration, clitoris, orgasm, etc, but pleasure can be as simple as closing your eyes when you eat a raspberry. In the development of our products, pleasure started from a very different place than most people would define it as.

Are there other brands like yours in the industry, and if so, what differentiates you from them?

What differentiates our brand is that we're carving out a new space between sex toys and medical devices. We're approaching real health concerns that are ignored by the medical system. Regardless of where people are in their journey, whether they've been seeing doctors and not getting help for decades, or whether they watched Sex Education on TV and realized that they might have vaginismus, we validate their experience and let them know they're not alone. We've placed such emphasis on the clinical validation of our product. 

Whenever I see Ohnut or Kiwi at a physician's office, I take a moment. Because what that says, is that these clinicians are keeping up to date with the latest innovation, that they’re championing businesses that actually care about the whole human. It’s really important for us to not only move a mainstream audience into a particular conversation, into a particular awareness, but it’s just as important to move these bureaucratic medical bodies in a much more productive direction as well. I'm proud to say that the education we put out on social media is accurate and purely research-based.

What do you hope people will take away from your brand?

A sense of hope and capability. So much of marketing now tells us that something could be better, that sex doesn’t have to be painful. Well sex is painful, so now what? When people come into our ecosystem, their experience is validated and that fire is lit. That fire that reintroduces someone to the best parts of themselves. The part of themselves that they’re been looking for. The future that I envision for the company is one in which we keep asking questions, we continue to think outside of the box and we provide genuinely helpful tools that move society forward. 

Join The Pelvic People’s mission to end painful sex here.