Sorry, Apple Won't Allow a Female Masturbation App

Apple rejected an app which featured a cartoon vulva, designed to help teach women how to masturbate.

According to The Cut, HappyPlayTime was nixed by Apple earlier this week, via email to the app’s creator. Their message was pretty succinct:

Your app HappyPlayTime has been reviewed, but we are unable to post this version. For details, or to directly contact the App Review team, visit the Resolution Center in the iTunes Connect. Do not reply to this email.

The app is a pretty straight-forward (and relatively harmless sounding) game that aims to help women become more comfortable with touching their own bodies:

According HappyPlayTime, 46.6 percent of women masturbate less than once a month. The crowd-funded app was intended to help remove stigma and taboo associated with self pleasure. In the six-level interactive, a vagina named Happy gives anatomy lessons and visually instructs users on the how and where of self-stimulation. Gong hoped that by getting women really familiar with their anatomy, they’d get more comfortable taking control of their own sexual pleasure.

Here is how designer Tina Gong responded, via a post on her blog:

Today I got a solemn call from our reviewer who told me that HPT would not be allowed on the app store, even with a 17+ rating.

The reason given was that “the concept was not something that Apple wants to go forward with.”I knew I was taking a chance with building the game natively but I was optimistic, as our app was created with a mission and with the best of intentions. The reviewer herself sounded sympathetic, but it seemed like it wasn’t something she could control. A few minutes after the call, I got the rejection email in my inbox. I considered creating a petition to let us in, but as far as I know, Apple tends to be pretty steadfast in their choices to accept or reject something, even with a large supporter group.