Anna Walsh, a former police officer in the Rape and Sexual Assault Unit in Glasgow “will never tell a woman that she should report a crime to the police.” Although she wishes she could encourage women to report, she’s found through personal experience that “criminal justice systems around the world are not ready to adequately look after victims.” Fast forward several years later, Anna is now the founder of happymash., a sexual wellness company that makes vibrators for women, by women. As stated on the happymash website, Anna is a “businesswoman, mother and feminist,” passionate about closing the orgasm gap, especially for women over 35. For Anna, happymash. is not only about encouraging self pleasure for women, but helping survivors of sexual violence own and explore their sensuality.
Anna started her career as a police officer in the Glasgow police force, finding herself the most invested in calls from women and children. She then worked in the Rape and Sexual Assault Unit, which “felt like wading through mud, just to collect enough evidence, and just to jump through all the Court’s hoops in order to get cases to court.” While she notes that survivors are “treated much more fairly and empathetically” in Scotland than other countries, the conviction rates are extremely low, often due to lack of forensic evidence. Support for survivors post reporting is also lacking, as the “ trauma of clinical evidence retrieval directly after an assault is a terrible thing to have to go through, no matter how well-trained and empathetic the clinicians are.”
After moving to Australia, where she lives with her partner and two children, Anna started happymash, blogging about sexual empowerment for women and girls. As the company progressed, it reached “a definite purpose: to ‘close the orgasm gap’ which really [permeated] into so many other aspects of our lives – wealth gap, pay gap, health gap, career-choice gap.” Happymash now offers six different vibrators, in addition to Anna’s blog posts, to “[empower] women and young girls to really experiment and get to know themselves and their pleasure.” Anna hopes to focus the company on 35+ women, combating stereotypes of post-pregnancy and perimenopausal women and allowing them to experience pleasure, “perhaps for the first time in their lives.”
Being a parent to a young son and daughter has made Anna even more aware of the societal expectations and constructs of gender. She notes that with “the continual education of boys, alongside sexual empowerment for women, the stats for these types of crimes will continue to reduce.” This is why she plans to focus on her son with conversations around sex education and sexual assault prevention, writing that “at four years old, he is sweet, innocent and shy but he will, after all, grow up to be a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed white man, and he must understand why it is wrong to embrace any advantages that this status affords him.”
When I asked Anna what she would like to share to allies and survivors of sexual violence, she emphasizes the emotional toll of reporting sexual violence. “I simply cannot ask another woman to do the same now I’m not in uniform. I can only encourage her to seek the appropriate therapy in order for her to gain some sort of control over her trauma and hopefully one day, some form of closure. It really feels like women helping women to clean up after men and their dicks.” Happymash hopes to be a part of that closure for survivors, allowing them to rediscover themselves, their bodies and their desires.
Ilana Slavit
Hi, I’m Ilana, a 2020 Film and Media Studies graduate of the University of Oregon. I’ve always been passionate about representation of sex and gender in the media through a social justice focused lens. As a survivor, I am grateful to be a member of the Education Team in order to spread awareness of consent and pleasure. I am in the process of becoming an ASSECT certified Sex Educator through the Institute of Sexuality Education and Enlightenment. In my free time, I like to write, make short films, go to (now virtual)
