Sex play online: Body and/or soul?
Both men and women use the internet for love and sexual purposes and usage patterns can be related to both gender and age. For the majority, using the Internet for these purposes is perceived as having positive outcomes while for a minority it may become problematic. The anonymity on the internet is a major factor contributing to make it a popular venue for love and sexual activities; not only because of the safety and security it provides by keeping others at a distance while being intimate, but also because it allows people to engage in activities that would be difficult or impossible to engage in offline.
Kristian Daneback, Love and Sexuality on the Internet
Broadly speaking, sex online today can be divided into activities freely engaged in by adults consensually without payment and those where one person pays for some kind of sex-related activity. New forms of sex work that fall between the categories of pornography and prostitution, such as performing on a web cam, could perhaps be called "interactive pornography" rather than "sex" or even "prostitution." But to the extent that pornography tends to be one-way, passive, and consumer-driven, it may not be accurate to use this term too loosely. Paid interactive entertainment like camgirls is presumably similar to stipping and lapdances - somewhere between porn and performance. (I don't personally have experience of interactive camgirls and have never even been to a strip club, but I assume it makes sense to think of this as "interactive entertainment" rather than sex .)
Fans of eroticized "textual intercourse" point to the important ways in which this sort of "spiritualizes" sex and makes for more erotic activity which, however virtual, is in certain important ways actually likely to be more "real" (authentic) than some physical sexual encounters are. This way of thinking should be familiar to those who have been following the arguments about how people who play MMORPGs may actually be more fully themselves in their online avatars. One of the side effects of this seemingly flat and cerebral kind of eroticism in online text chat is, according to many advocates, a deeper sense of erotic intimacy and connection!
The intemet can provide an opportunity for the participant to create his own [erotic truth], interactively, and to imbue it with intimacy, and make it an extension of a romantic or sexual fantasy. Thus, the text can become a vehicle for intimacy "not so much because the loved one is idealized—although this is part of the story—but because it presumes a psychic communication, a meeting of souls which is reparative in character" (Giddens, p. 45).
At present, a large number of online erotic encounters still occur through the medium of reading and writing. Even VR hookups, such as those that can occur within Second Life or online game environments, are often largely conveyed via text chat. As such environments become more sexually "explicit," with the idea of third-party "plugins" taking on startling new meanings, the romantic or erotic (imaginary and self-expressive) aspect of that virtual eroticism wanes, at least according to many critics. In the "noughties," blogger Kate Amdahl (2006) took us through the finer points of buying yourself a penis in Second Life ("a penis the size of a baseball bat is not universally sexy, but a penis that matches your skin color is usually appreciated" [Amdahl 2006]). But other experts in this field have warned that the more focused on the objective qualities of the virtual body the sexual encounter becomes, the less interesting it tends to be:
There's a basic confusion about cybersex that Xcite [the main company providing sex add-ons in SL] helps to feed. Despite what a lot of people think, cybering is not porn; it's a dialogue between two eager minds. In a nutshell, it's creative writing with more than one author. But Xcite has brought a pervasive air of porn to sex in SL, and many residents are letting that become a substitute for quality cybersex. (Welles 2007)
Porn is largely about objectification, whereas online eroticism can be a kind of "conversation" (a word that long ago was used for sexual intercourse, just as the word "intercourse" used to be used to refer to conversation!). Many researchers have found that the fact that much online socializing in general requires that one read and write (good old print culture stuff!) leads to deeper, more thoughtful, more "spiritual," and ultimately more authentic and in some sense even "intimate" interaction - and all this can be a big turn-on. But can it be sex without physical contact of some kind?
Teledildonics
Surely touch is necessary for anything we are going to call sex - and ideally is part of a what a lot of people mean by love too? (Or am I mistaken?) So in a future where virtual physical presence (virtual reality involving all five senses) is likely to take the place of our text-based erotic exchanges, will we be more or less "into" virtual erotic encounters? In terms of our thoughts and imaginations, perhaps less! Ironically, the body can put limitations on amorous creativity, especially if one is focused on objectifying it. There's nothing like pure imagination for eroticism. But is that sex? Let alone satisfying sex? Could technology extend our physical reach and potential as well as our imaginative capabilities? The extended grind, if you will allow a small pun.
Apparently, the most intimate of touching can be mediated by electronics! There are technologies that provide prosthetic genital physical contact over the Internet. Originally dubbed "teledildonics," but now often referred to as "remote sex toys" or "remote sex tools," these technologies aim to make it possible to feel intimate contact with a partner over a network. (These are a sub-category of the larger family of haptic technologies, devices and protocols designed to communicate touch of various kinds across a network.)
These might initially sound outrageous or creepy to some of you, but if we think of these tools being used by a married couple to continue (and indeed expand on) their sexual intimacy when they cannot be in the same city, for example, it's hard to see what the down sides of such technology would be. Like "video sex" via chat that couples use today, these would allow us to feel more together when we are apart.
As I've mentioned a few times, on the whole our current versions of virtual reality fool only two of our senses: vision and hearing. Many speculate that when versions of virtual reality are perfected to address all five of our senses, we will be able to have fully embodied virtual experiences, including technologically mediated experiences of sex. Some people are blazing those trails now. Often this is for the purpose of porn or prostitution, but there's no reason the same technologies couldn't allow you to get it on with a partner you know and love when you are separated physically.
Presumably, in the near future couples (or even groups!) will not have to live in the same city to share fully intimate physical lives; at night they will be able to get themselves into some sort of body suit or virtual contraption and snuggle on the couch "together" - or whatever activity takes their fancy. Many long-distance lovers already fall asleep together with Zoom or FaceTime on. A new innovation is the "connected pillow," such as the product PillowTalk, which lets you hear and feel your partner's heartbeat across the Internet. There are apps that let you kiss, and there seem to be more and more genitally-oriented devices also.
Many fans of VR now take it for granted that soon almost everyone who is looking for a real-life partner with find these people online and may get to know them quite well, intimately, through immersive VR experiences before ever meeting them in the flesh. And perhaps never meeting them in the flesh at all, but engaging with them as lovers in the virtual flesh made available by VR that covers all five senses. You could be virtually embodied in that space in a simulation of your own physical body, a tweaked version of it, or in some engineered form that you feel bodies forth your soul more faithfully than the body you were born into does. Fernando Velázquez thus ends a 2019 article on "The Virtualization of Intimacy" with these rhapsodic reflections:
VR love brings two minds together with phantom bodies, but in a positive way it can make us define what it truly means to be human, and how we understand our sense of self in connection to others. It may allow us to explore who we are and reveal, how we love without the looks or traits that we feel define us physically. The long-term results and impacts of love and relationships in virtual reality are yet to be seen and felt, but the fact is that they are happening. With more questions than answers, we can only wait and see where the tech revolution turns next: at this rate VR will be the primary tool for falling in love in the first place. (Velázquez 2019)
I'm not sure what advances have been made in the last few years (I imagine the pandemic may have fueled development), but a useful short documentary was made in 2015 that went through some of how things were changing then, and looked at issues such as "virtual infidelity," commodification, love vs porn, entrepreneurial opportunities, and the normalization of "socially sharable sex" and sexual fluidity:
While sexual extensions to our physical bodies seem almost certain to become mainstream fairly soon, and the advantages for a wide range of humans - those who must carry on long-distance relationships being only the tip of the iceberg - are fairly obvious, there are those who worry about where this sort of technology will take us. Into further seperateness and objectification, unless we "escape the trappings of porn," according to Cindy Gallop, whose 2009 Ted Talk Make Love not Porn is excerpted in the documentary.
Networked sex work
Clearly, it seems likely that in the future there will be forms of sex work that we (or at least I) can still only imagine today. Today, as I understand it, a person may go to a website and pay to watch another person strip or do other things on video, often at the request of the paying party. Apparently, sex workers are already beginning to use teledildonics for haptic interaction with clients in limited ways. In the future, people may be able to have full-body virtual sex encounters with such workers:
Augmented reality coupled with advances in robotics will allow sex add-ons to supplement traditional offerings. Future of Sex editor Meg White points to three emerging areas of commercial sex including virtual sex worlds, remote sex and robot sex. For instance, online sex workers increasingly will link their movements to remote sex toys or even robotic look-alikes. In effect, these new areas may reduce the risks associated with sex workplace violence and STIs, modernizing the online sex marketplace globally. (Empel 2012)
While on the one hand this seems like a positive thing in terms of reducing sexually transmitted disease and keeping sex workers safe from potential violence, stalking, and so forth - thus good for both the health and the well-being of the sex worker - many critics apart from Cindy Gallop worry that this virtualization of sex is just one more nail in the coffin of true human intimacy. Will people choose hyperreal objectification over embodied sex, just as they may choose parasocial television watching over embodied social interaction, or screened self-presentation through images over showing up in person?
The "hyperrealization" of sexuality may extend beyond sex work and porn into our real embodied interpersonal sexual relationships. Already many people watch porn while having sex, because the hyperreal turns them on more than embodied reality (section on porn still to come, no pun). Among the technologies being perfected a few years ago was a kind of couples' "deep fakes" platform called DaF Masking (DaF stands for Dreams and Fantasies). "Deep fakes," as you should be aware, are video and VR porn where AI has been used to put a celebrity's head on the body of a porn actor. So for instance, you could imagine you are experiencing porn featuring Ariana Grande or one of the Kardashians, or (though this has not been the focus so far) Idris Elba or Robert Pattinson, say. (Please just insert appropriate celebrity crushes here - I've never been one to follow celebrities.)
Sorry these examples are so straight! In a way, this whole lesson is too binary and hetero and focused on the technology straight guys make and want, I know. This seems to be where most of the issues with technology and sex become issues, however. Now that gender is loosening up, presumably heterosexuality will become less problematic too. I'd like to think, as someone who has been implicated in heterosexuality my whole life, that the sexuality itself is not to blame. I tend to agree with those who see the rest of the gender bias and privilege in society to be the more pernicious cause of things that are wrong with heterosexuality. As vlogger Tara Mooknee succinctly put it, "Ultimately, the downfalls of heterosexuality come from the downfalls of gender" (Mooknee 2021).
But maybe it's not only straight men's (and virtually everyone else's) objectification of women that makes these new technologies somewhat disturbing. Maybe it's everyone's addiction to hyperreal fantasies over physical realities. The company DaF Mask, as I was saying, has developed software and technology so that we can "see" our physical partner as someone else - a celebrity crush or a friend who turns us on or whomever, presumably (Dowling 2019). Couples have long engaged in role-play and sometimes cosplay during sex, but the use of VR visors and augmented reality software could now allow them to play at being celebrities or people they know having sex with one another while they physically have sex with each other's real-life bodies. In a world obsessed with celebrities and where so many people want to be a celebrity, it is a "natural" extension of fame to be a sex product, and possibly in the future the hypersexualization of celebrities that is common today will generally include pornographic and interactive sex components in some cases. "I just downloaded Tupac! Shall we get to it!"
We see this starting, perhaps, with a site like OnlyFans. Influencers, porn stars, celebrities, and anyone interested in doing so can offer erotic and pornographic media of themselves on the site, and for some it has become another branch of their online "brand." On the one hand, this has been viewed as a positive step toward self-management and control of "sex entertainment" work for women (and men), who are frequently exploited in the mainstream porn industry. But others find this a disturbing direction for women in particular, since it further normalizes turning oneself into a sex object, not just for money now but for attention and likes, which is the virtual currency of the online economy. The gender categories, misogyny, and homophobia that remain in our culture make this a feminist issue. As does capitalist commodification. Is there nothing we want to spare from commodification? If more and more women are going to turn themselves into sex entertainment products, it's certainly good if they can maintain complete control of their online presence and its monetization. But the message being sent to young women is the same as in 20th century broadcast culture: women need to be sex objects to get attention, get a man, get ahead - and getting attention as a sex object is another form of "success." This is part, I think, of the larger overall questions one can have about everyone turning themselves into media in general. The need and desire for successful profilicity, or "publicity," as I called it in the lesson on surveillance.
And what mechanization as a form of dehumanization? What about celebrity and deep fake sex robots, while we're at it? Because the sex robots are coming as well! Again if you'll pardon the pun.NEXT