Do you feel the progress of the project is hindered / benefitted / not effected by any stigmatism in western society? Do you ever find it hard to talk to friends / family / colleagues / strangers about this project?
As for talking to people about the project, I've been a public face for the field of sex tech since like 2005, so by this point I'm pretty used to it. It's on my resume, I have academic publications and book chapters on the subject, I've spoken about it at all sorts of conferences around the world, so I've kinda settled into being "The Buttplug Guy".
It took a ton of hard work and image building to get here though, so it's a cliff I don't really recommend anyone else try to climb without realizing how much work it is.
Openness about sex really is one way to improve the health of the societal zeitgeist.
As an example, one of the things I was working on right before COVID-19 hit was a book chapter on digital proxemics, i.e. how we map and relate personal space in digital realms. This project and how it's been utilized to augment online intimacy was a big part of that, and I turned in the book chapter to the publisher the week COVID-19 lockdowns started to hit in the US (still no pub date tho :( ), so it's been a lot of seeing how those ideas play out in large scale since.