The Vagina Bio-Hack That Wasn’t: How Two “Startup Bros” Twisted and Took Credit for a Young Woman’s Company

Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, of biotech start-ups Cambrian Genomics and Personalized Probiotics, announced at last week’s DEMO conference, "New Tech Solving Big Problems," that they had created a bio-hack to make women’s vaginas smell like peaches.

Yup, you read that right; these “startup bros” think a vagina that doesn’t smell like a peach is a Big Problem to be solved.    

Following on the heels of Heinz’s promise to make dog poop smell like bananas, the duo led their audience to believe they had genetically engineered a probiotic supplement using Heinz’s DNA laser-printing technology in order to bring the world the never-awaited product, “Sweet Peach.”

But don’t worry; they assured incredulous journalists that there would be “practical benefits” too such as preventing yeast infections, and even “loftier” ones about “personal empowerment,” because controlling the way you smell could help “connect you to yourself in a better way."

Obviously, women would totally have equality and self-acceptance if only they smelled like peaches.

These two have clearly been spending too much time around their lasers because they seem to think vaginas are “less complicated” and “stable,” with “only one interference per month." In a hilarious commentary at Gawker, Nitasha Tiku pointed out that someone “may want to tell them about vaginal intercourse.” Or, maybe they need to know that most people have moved on from seeing the vagina as some kind of “an absence” to realize it’s a highly complicated organ, with a lot more purpose than providing pleasure for men.

Last week, it would have been easy to leave it here: Oh look, more computer nerds that have to use Weird Science to interact with the women of their dreams! But this particular example of the actual Big Problem of sexism and misogyny in the tech industry (1, 2, 3, 4…) goes even further.

It turns out that Heinz and Gome did not even create Sweet Peach, though they were happy to take credit, while credit was being given. The CEO and founder of Sweet Peach is actually a 20-year-old woman, Audrey Hutchinson, whom they failed entirely to mention either in their presentation or in their subsequent interviews. Heinz owns just 10 percent of the equity of her company; meanwhile Gome has no connection at all (though apparently making vaginas smell like food is a key interest of his).

Hutchinson, who was the recipient of the Distinguished Scientist scholarship at Bard before pursuing her company, is a self-described “ultrafeminist” who wanted to develop a means for women to take control of their own reproductive health. She has now explained that “Sweet Peach” was never intended to refer to a scent at all, but to the fact that peaches have been a literary symbol for vaginas for hundreds of years. The point of the company is to provide individualized probiotic supplements for women based upon an analysis of their vaginal microbiome in order to promote optimal health.  In Hutchinson’s own words, "A vagina should smell like a vagina, and anyone who doesn't think that doesn't deserve to be near one."

Heinz did not consult with Hutchinson before he chose to debut, and mischaracterize, her product. She told Inc.’s Jeff Bercovici, "I'm obviously sort of appalled that it's been misconstrued like this because it was never the point of my company. I don't want to apologize for [Austen], but at the same time I want to apologize to every woman in the world who's heard about this and wants my head on a stake."

No one should hold their breath for a real apology from Heinz. Even after his own lawyer informed him that “you look like Bill Cosby right now,” he responded that all this media attention “[is] great for Audrey, but for me, I did lose a lot of money today."

He really just doesn’t get it.

But you don’t have to listen to Heinz for long to realize he doesn’t think the smell of women is all that’s wrong with us. His visions for “human perfection” are far-reaching, and he believes technology will soon catch up. He told CNN’s Morgan Spurlock, “We’re literally printing life” and “we make the DNA to fix the mistake. You can take out what’s existing and put in what you want.”

This particular brand of unperturbed arrogance seems to be proliferating in the tech industry. Writing in The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi really just nailed it:

[It reflects] the male-dominated, megalomaniac conviction that a complex world can be boiled down to a series of discrete problems to be solved via algorithms, flowcharts, “culture” and an answer that it’s all in the name of “progress”…

There is a crusader-like zeal to the way in which startup types talk about how they plan to change the world, how they plan to hack the future and disrupt the present – “inspiring”, as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick put it this week, “the public at large”. There is a sense that all technological advancements are positive advancements and that while to err is human, to code is divine. (The current controversy around Uber’s internal data-mining feature, referred to within the company as “God View”, is a case in point.) But innovation is only really meaningful if it contributes to a more equitable society – and much of what Silicon Valley terms “disruption” is simply a bleeping, blorping version of the same social status quo.

There’s nothing inspiring or empowering about two male CEOs taking credit for a young woman’s work while twisting the entire purpose from being about reproductive health to being little more than a joke. But a 20-year-old ultrafeminist scientist who’s about to launch her own company? That will be something to watch.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Dear Facebook, Please Don’t Tell Women to Lean In to Egg Freezing
• From “the Dangerous Womb” to a More Complex Reality
• Selling the Next False Hope? How Experimental IVF Techniques Could be Legalized Despite Increasing Evidence of Potential Harm