
The Oh Collective is reclaiming Asian women’s sexuality
This Asian-owned sex toy and education company is all about female empowerment
The four founders of the Oh Collective.
Courtesy of the Oh Collective
Words by Diamond Yao
When I was growing up, conversations around sexuality and sexual health were very infrequent in our Shanghainese household. I remember getting my first period at 11 years old on a trip to visit family in Shanghai. Sitting in my aunt’s bathroom, I completely panicked about the fact that I was bleeding, and had no idea what to do. With no menstrual hygiene products on me and too embarrassed to tell her what was going on, I cried until my mother found me. When we got back to our own apartment, she handed me a thick pad and instructed me on what to do. The incident was not spoken of again.
A few years later, I was on my period while on a short trip with family friends that included swimming. Not wanting to miss out, I packed tampons for the occasion, but did not know how to use them. So this time, I did ask my mother for some guidance. She confessed to me that in spite of living decades with her period, she too had no idea how to use them either. Tampons, after all, only started being sold in China in 1993, and although they’ve gained in popularity in recent years, are still uncommonly used by menstruating Chinese people. But I was determined to go swimming and fumbled for an hour in the bathroom trying to insert the tampon correctly. I don’t remember whether or not I succeeded, but I do remember that for the whole hour, impatient aunties knocking on the bathroom door, screaming my name and wondering if I was alright.
It turns out that I am not the only Chinese person who grew up ignorant about these types of things because my family rarely discussed sexuality and sexual health. Diana Lin, Eden Chiang, Simona Xu and Winxi Kan, founders of the Netherlands-based sex toy and sex education company Oh Collective, also had similar upbringings, despite growing up in vastly different places. Lin is from the United States and Chiang is from Canada, while Xu and Kan are from the Netherlands. “Growing up in an Asian household, it was always like, ‘Don't get a boyfriend, just study really hard from high school, all the way to university.’ And then all of a sudden, after university, you graduate, they're like, ‘Why don't you get a boyfriend and get married? You’re in your early 20s now!’ And then, once you turn 25, ‘Why don't you get married and have kids?’” Chiang explains. “I'm like, wait, hold on a second, you're telling me don't get a boyfriend when I was young, and then all of a sudden, after I graduate, you want me to get married and have kids immediately?”

One of the Oh Collective's many workshops.
Courtesy of the Oh Collective
Today, the four women, now in their mid-30s, laugh at those memories, and do not blame their parents for their silence around anything related to sex. They realize that the previous generation was raised viewing sexuality as functional. “Our generation is about intimacy. It's about pleasure, about having a good time. Whereas my parents' generation was about, ‘Let's have a family. Let's have kids. Let's make money. Let's make the next generation live a good life, so we can maybe bring the kids abroad and let them experience a whole new life,’” Chiang says.
But that silence nonetheless still affected them. The foursome met in their mid-20s as expatriates working at Nike in Shanghai. They realized that due to their lack of sexual education, they were all having extremely bad sex. Chiang believes that while their Chinese upbringings around sexuality contributed to their situations, the Western influences they were exposed to also didn’t help. She wasn’t even taught what a clitoris was in sexual education class. “Growing up in the generation of Cosmopolitan magazines and, you know, movies like American Pie...it wasn't very female-led, nor sex positive in any way. So in my teens, it was a lot about how to please a guy and the pleasure wasn't so much on the woman.”
To counter this problem, on weekly their girls’ nights out, the four women would challenge each other to sexual dares for the upcoming week. The challenges included taking a look at their vulvas in front of the mirror, finding the clitoris, and giving and receiving oral sex from a long-term partner. “If you don't do it, next week, you have to take a shot!” Chiang recalls. They created a group chat and added other women to it, to share what they learned each week about their sexuality. Those discussions led to the group holding workshops on the weekends to teach women how to masturbate, and how to use the clitoris and the vulva for their pleasure. Then they thought, why not just make their own sex toys? “Four years ago, for us living in China, we didn't really see any products we liked that we wanted to give to our own sisters or moms,” Chiang says. “So we decided to create our own and that's basically how we started the Oh Collective.”
“That was also our way to show people that, ‘Hey, you can be whoever you want and be sexual as well.’ It's not just the ‘dirty’ girls out there who can be outspoken about sex!”
Today, the Oh Collective features a small selection of sex toys for people with clitorises, in-person and virtual events on pleasure and sexuality, as well as articles and a podcast providing sexual education. On their podcast, they interview many women in corporate jobs, who are not traditionally associated with sex, about their sexuality. “That was also our way to show people that, ‘Hey, you can be whoever you want and be sexual as well.’ It's not just the ‘dirty’ girls out there who can be outspoken about sex!” Chiang emphasizes. “We don't like to be deemed as that dirty girl. We're just normal people, and everyone has sex, and that's why we wanted to interview everyday people as well.”

The Oh Collective ran a sexual awakening workshop at Wonderfruit Festival.
Courtesy of the Oh Collective
The reception to their content has been positive. The co-founders claim that they had many other Asian women tell them after their events about how nice it was to see their experiences reflected in sexual education content. “We have a tagline that we use that's called ‘Just like you.’...Oftentimes, when women are going through female health issues, or sexual health issues, or sexual wellness problems that they're encountering, or intimacy problems, (they) internalize it and often feel like (they)’re alone in the process,” Chiang explains. “We wanted other people to feel like they're not alone...All they need to do is just be okay to talk about it, find a safe space to talk about it, and (they)'ll find other women who are in the same stage.”
In a world where women’s rights and reproductive rights are increasingly under attack, the Oh Collective’s message of female empowerment is all the more urgent. Chiang strongly pushes back against the societal narrative of Asian women being cute and petite and always willing to serve their dominant partner. “I want all Asian women to reclaim that power and use it to their strength,” she states. “And it all starts with understanding your body, reclaiming your body, and then being able to express that, and being the one to give consent. That's what we really want every Asian woman out there to feel.”
Published on January 15, 2025