This after-sex cleanup product reveals just how ridiculous our hygiene hangups have become

The market for devices to help sanitise sex is worth billions – but the myriad products it churns out are unsexy and unnecessary. Instead, let’s embrace sex’s dirty reality

Do we really need a vaginal sponge to remove all evidence of a romantic encounter? (come&gone)

The politics of “femtech” is a tricky area. In theory, it’s a way to improve women’s lives and to address problems that have been ignored because of institutionalised sexism. In reality, it’s more often than not a way for companies to get things spectacularly wrong. A case in point: come&gone, a new product from a US company.

The invention is a sponge on a stick that you pop up your vagina after sex so that it can magic away your partner’s semen. Describing the product, come&gone write on their website: “He finished, and you… need to go to the bathroom and clean up. Come&gone can help you with that. Say goodbye to your old towel, T-shirt and half a roll of toilet paper – forever.”

The vision of a woman sitting on the loo, scrubbing at her vulva with “half a roll” of loo paper is unutterably depressing – and what’s more, it’s entirely unnecessary.

In reality, there is nothing sexy about sex. It’s a funny, messy and embarrassing – a thoroughly undignified practice. Silly noises, bodily odours and embarrassing faces are part of sex. And yet we’re obsessed with trying to strip all of that away.

We pour flavoured lube on our genitals so that they smell and taste like cherries rather than anything human. We play music to cover any noises that aren’t up to an a-grade porn standard. We wear lingerie to disguise anything about our bodies that isn’t perfect. And now, apparently, when it’s all over, we can effortlessly remove the evidence that we’ve had sex at all.

Rather than trying to get rid of the things that come with sex, why don’t we try to enjoy them? Springing up the moment you’ve finished to have a shower and change the sheets is miserable.

When we talk about “dirty” sex, we usually mean wearing knickers with bits cut out of them or tying each other up. But the kind of dirty sex we should be striving to enjoy is sex where you allow yourself to be literally dirty.

Women commonly report not allowing our partners to give us oral sex unless they’ve very recently showered. Similarly, 60 per cent of us report that we “need” to remove pubic hair to have sex.

Women are missing out on sexual gratification because we’re at war with the natural state of our bodies, which is so often perceived to be “dirty”. Bodies are supposed to have hair, smells and tastes. Your sweat contains pheromones, which are biological aphrodisiacs; smelling like you is far, far sexier than smelling like four layers of deodorant and half a bottle of perfume.

Despite the fact that every gynaecologist or doctor you ask will tell you that you should never soap your vagina because it’s self-cleaning, there’s an enormous market for products which make vaginas smell like something other than a vagina, at least in the short term. The feminine hygiene market is valued at around $15.2bn (£12.3bn). That’s $15.2bn for products that we literally do not need.

I’ve slept with men who got up straight after sex and went to shower. It was borderline offensive. When asked why they seemed surprised that I wasn’t going to do the same. I’ve also slept with men who like to change the sheets immediately afterwards – which means if you have sex three or four times a week you develop a form of RSI called duvet cover arm.

I understand that people want to feel clean and comfortable, but there’s something so hollow about skipping the afterglow, lying in bed holding each other, in favour of removing all of the evidence that sex happened.

Most of us have had sex that we’d rather forget, and fair play to you if you need a shower to erase the reality that you went back to your ex for the fifth time last night and slept with him even though he still only has one pillow. But in a relationship where you like or even love the person you’re sleeping with, after sex can be the best part.

Where once you’d have shared a cigarette, now you lie together and check your phones or chat idly. It’s an imitate, unpolished moment while you readjust to there being other people in the world, and it matters. Maybe you do smell of sweat, and yes, maybe there’s a wet patch, but there’s nothing gross about bodily fluids. They’re just a natural aspect of having sex.

The market for buying toys so that you can have dirtier sex is set to reach a value of $35.5bn by 2023 – but honestly, the most radical way that you can enjoy “dirty” sex is to do it even if you haven’t just had a shower, to let your partner go down on you after you’ve been at work all day and to lie there afterwards, steeped in everything you’ve just done, without legging it to the bathroom to sponge off your residual lust.