【[EP05] Lovely Ladies Dormitory】

Imagine a sex ed class that taught you not only basic anatomy and [EP05] Lovely Ladies Dormitorydisease prevention, but also encouraged you to reclaim sexual pleasure after a traumatic experience, helped you unlearn the shame associated with growing up in a religious or homophobic household, and non-judgmentally listened to your curiosities.

Now imagine that class taught by a sex ed professional who's bringing such wisdom straight to your laptop or smartphone via livestream.

What you've just envisioned is O.school, a new 18-and-older digital platform launching Friday that hopes to build a safe online environment for people to learn about sex and pleasure in real time.

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Andrea Barrica, O.school's 27-year-old founder, describes the platform as a middle ground between Planned Parenthood and online porn -- a community that's neither too clinical or singularly focused on gratification.

The idea for O.school sprung directly from Barrica's personal experiences. Raised by Filipino immigrant parents in a Catholic household, Barrica didn't begin earnestly exploring her sexuality as a queer woman until just a few years ago. She was disappointed in what the internet, with its "heteronormative" articles on how to give a better blow job, had to offer.

"What if you’re queer and grew up in a religious household?" Barrica says. "None of the resources spoke to what I was looking for."

It wasn't until Barrica started attending in-person workshops with sex educators in safe spaces that she felt knowledgable and empowered. As an entrepreneur with startup experience, Barrica is looking to mimic that experience with O.school, which will host livestreams with well-known sex educators who focus on topics like masturbation, body image, shame, trauma, and spirituality, and can answer questions via chat.

For now the company will use a pay-what-you-can model for each livestream, though it may eventually introduce paid replay access and a premium membership option. Viewers can also tip the "pleasure professional" who teaches their course.

The first livestream, debuting Friday at 4 p.m. PT, will feature Barrica talking about the importance of pleasure and sex education in the wake of #MeToo, the viral campaign that prompted women around the world to share their experiences with sexual harassment and assault. She loathes the narrative that the "most [women] can ever hope for is not to be assaulted."

While Barrica wants O.school to be for anyone who feels out of touch with any aspect of their sexuality, she's particularly hopeful that women, LGBTQ people, and people of color will find refuge in the platform, which is moderated by humans -- not an algorithm.

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Moderators have been trained to recognize classic signs of abuse and harassment, like aggressive self-promotion and excessive use of all caps and emoji. They will have the power to ban or mute viewers who violate O.school's community guidelines, which include no tolerance for racism, sexism, transphobia, and other types of bias and bigotry.

At the same time, moderators will work to "call in" viewers who may not know or understand how to use inclusive language when talking about different identities. Think, for example, of someone who is supportive of transgender rights, but uses outdated or offensive terms to describe gender identity.

"We have absolutely no tolerance for abuse, but we also want to be tolerant of people who haven't had this education," she says. "It's part of our job to share that language in an accessible way."

Barrica is frank about other challenges she'll face in growing O.school. It's nearly impossible to advertise content about sexuality on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook without violating the companies' rules against porn ads. That means Barrica has to rely on word of mouth and cultivating potential viewers at in-person events like sex education workshops.

But Barrica remains hopeful, partly because she's personally experienced the benefits of holistic sex ed.

"These people are medicine to the world," she says, referring to pleasure professionals. "What keeps me up at night and gets me up every day is how do we make that available to as many people as possible."

With the launch of O.school, she's just a little closer to making that a reality.