follow another path

"with teledildonic suits and cybersex, how is a girl to keep up?”

“Tomorrow's Carnal Knowledge Engineers may develop a woven fabric of sensors — a membrane that simulates human skin— that can be worn over human genitals and used to digitize and record Sensual and sexual touching. Slip into your gloves, helmet, data-shorts, and get ready for a real joy ride!”
- Future Sex, Issue #2 (17)

"Virtual worlds serve as a landing ground for both legal and illegal sex work and sexual experience and education, and, from the internet’s conception, the arena of cybersex and teledildonics has been fraught with tensions between empowerment and degradation, feminist and misogynist. Teledildonics, quite literally broken down into tele, referring to distance, and dildo plus “onic” taken from electronics, refers to the “woven fabric of sensors” that “digitize and record” sexual experience. While Lovense in appearance is, for the most part, nothing like that of the cover of Future Sex Issue 2 (1992), the core idea of teledildonics as presented in the magazine is there.

Lovense offers many features pertinent to long distance relationships or those yearning for the simulation of a relationship; the app features modes of interaction such as Dom and Sub mode in which one “sub” can be controlled by multiple “doms” in succession, each controlling for a limited time (19). Interestingly, Lovense’s app not only functions as a hosting platform in this instance, but as social media, allowing users to discover other doms and subs to interact with through the discover tab. These interactions can be direct and real time events between users, or subs can choose a pre programmed setting created by a dom. The best of these, if you ask anyone who’s tried it, are f4f or female for female. Lovense also features toys that are compatible with each other, allowing for long distance sexual encounters.

The Max 2 or the Calor masturbator sleeves paired with a Nora rabbit dildo vibrator allow an experience that doesn’t require an app, video calling, or texting, for a seamless experience. These toys respond to each other’s movements, as stated on the Lovense site: “they thrust there, you feel it here” (18).

These toys and apps bring to life the concepts and hopes of Future Sex and the creators within the pages. Their hopes represent a desire for a new type of love that's been represented in various shades throughout the time of the internet. Lovense is the perfect home for alienated lovers in cyberspace.

The yearning for another level of alienation coincides with a growing obsession with porn online and the pornification of various forms of media such as video games, music, and film. Within Future Sex Issue 2, article “The Sugar Daddy of Sexware” documents the work of game developer Mike Saenz who creates sex simulations using early Macintosh software (17).

Virtual Valerie, an example of one of Saenz works, exists as a “distillation of popular fetishes and things,” rather than a specific reflection of Saenz sexual interests. Valerie is meant to be an everywoman and a “toy for boys.” Mike Saenz, through his virtual simulations of sex, creates a new generation of sex toys in which the user removes the subject of sexual desire, often the woman, from the equation. There is no woman to assault, no woman to see cry, no woman to offend – Valerie only feels pleasure and a playfulness that never comes across as “no.” Intimacy and connection is hard when it takes leveling with another human in a deep and personal way, without the interface of a screen, teledildonic technology, or distance to help cope with the intensity of being known so closely for who we truly are.