IDG seminar

[squirmelia]

The Interaction Design Group Seminar at the University of Melbourne this Friday, by Judith Glover, sounds interesting. Shame I'm not still in Melbourne, so can't go to it. Here's the abstract:

'Sex Toys – Design, Technology and the Future for Human/Machine Sexual Interaction

Sex toys and their precursors are not a product genre you will find mentioned in the canons of design history and theory. In fact, as a field of research, they appear infrequently in any field of study. Yet they are manufactured and consumed in their millions year after year and have done so for decades in their modern form. There is evidence they have been manufactured for thousands of years and Victorian England and America supported a thriving vibrator industry treating middle class women for hysteria. As mass produced objects they are embedded with the socio-cultural meanings of constructed gender ideology and sexual control. As technological objects they are as complicated and harmless as an electric toothbrush. So, 30 years after the sexual revolution, why are they still socially taboo? What if they weren’t and what if they were designed using the innovation methods and strategies of industrial, product, multimedia, interface and HCI designers?'

Comments

Not that taboo?

[desika.livejournal.com]

Maybe not in the UK. Here in the Victorian States of America, though, it's a different story.

In fact, up until last year it was ILLEGAL to sell sex toys in my state. To the best of my knowledge it's still illegal in two others.

People got around this, of course, by calling them "personal massagers" or "novelties" or "cake toppers" (yes, really) and making sure they didn't look like the "real thing." It made for some very interesting designs. Blue spaceships, pink bunny rabbits, purple butterflies, weird green anime creatures, silver dragons, you name it. But if you sold a vibrator that was flesh-colored and dick-shaped, you could go to jail for two years.

Re: Not that taboo?

[apple31415926.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to compare Texas and Sweden for vibrators and prostitution. In Texas, selling vibrators is a serious crime, for which you can go to jail and get put on the sex-offenders register. In Sweden, vibrators are advertised on TV, after a certain time in the evening. In Texas, prostitution is technically illegal, but in fact is so widely accepted that if a man stays at someone's home, it is common to offer him a prostitute. In Sweden, prostitution is really illegal, and men who are caught hiring prostitutes are criminally convicted.

My theory is the following. In Texas, men have much more political power than women: they ensure their own sexual satisfaction, but want to keep the women sexually-dependent on them. In Sweden, women have relatively more political power: they ensure their own satisfaction, but want to keep the men sexually-dependent on them.

The real results are not the intended ones though. Women who do not get satisfied at all tend to have their sexual energies blocked up, and so do not become more dependent on men. Men who are seriously sexually frustrated tend to become weak and unappealing to women.