Tara Langdale-Schmidt, a determined startup founder, isn’t here to sugarcoat the facts. Her product, VuVa, aims to relieve the pelvic and vaginal pain that far too many women experience. Yet, instead of celebrating this innovation, Amazon has played gatekeeper, arbitrarily shutting down VuVa’s listings as if they were spiteful toddlers refusing to share toys.

Last year, Amazon infamously blocked VuVatech from offering a discount coupon, just because it identified the product as “potentially embarrassing or offensive”. Imagine that! Who would have thought helping women manage their health would come with a side of corporate shame?

“We just have to stop this insanity with being embarrassed about things,” Langdale-Schmidt says, with a straight face, hoping someone at Amazon is listening. “Your vagina is just another part of your body, everyone has one, so why the stigma?” Fair question, Tara. The tech giants have made it clear, they’re all about sexual wellness until it makes them uncomfortable.

An Amazon spokesperson claimed that they’ve neither blocked VuVatech’s products nor violated their adult policy, but Langdale-Schmidt argues that she has simply ceased listing new items out of sheer frustration. According to her, if you type “vaginal” into Amazon’s search bar, good luck finding anything substantial. Meanwhile, “erectile” generates a volcanic explosion of suggestions, illustrating a troubling bias in the algorithm’s training.

The struggle doesn’t end with Amazon. Recent surveys have shown that many organizations promoting sexual health face excessive censorship from not just Amazon, but also social media titans like META, Google, and TikTok. According to Jackie Rotman, CEO of the Center for Intimacy Justice, these platforms are missing out on valuable business opportunities by ignoring women’s health. “Bots and algorithms shouldn’t decide what is or isn’t valuable,” she insists. And honestly, who would argue with that?

While they claim to protect users, especially minors, from potentially sensitive content, it certainly feels like sexual health information takes the brunt of this unnecessary filtering. Is it too much to ask for technology that understands the difference between a health product and something rated NC-17?

And in an age when women are reclaiming their health narratives, platforms like Amazon should do better. The health of half the population isn’t something to be brushed under the proverbial carpet simply because it makes the algorithms blush. Let’s hope the future brings a little less embarrassment and a lot more empowerment to women’s voices, and health, online.