Welcome to the fascinating world of Sex Technology – fast developing, cutting edge and at times jaw-dropping!

In this episode, Leslie is joined by the smart, clinically savvy, sextech expert somatic psychologist and sex therapist Dr. Holly Richmond to talk about what is available to men and women in the current age where sexual devices, remotes and robotics are now at our finger tips.

Sex technology is here to stay and Holly has immersed herself in the understanding of it and how it can enhance our relationships, intimacy, sexual experience and sexual pleasure.

We have an opportunity in this discussion to learn about all that is available and where technology is advancing in the sexual arena and discover new ways to enhance our own sex lives whether we are in the same place with each other or we are far apart.

Sextech provides new novel ways of connecting with our partners. For those who are needing ways to expand and enhance their intimate lives against the backdrop of being home and together more, listen closely!

The “controversial” aspects of sextech are confronted as well and Holly has much to say about how to use the new technology in sexually healthy ways and who may be able to benefit from the specific devices and how.

Originally, they were hailed for their ability to make partner play less awkward and more enjoyable; remote control settings mean the vibrator can remain in place while you adjust the settings, so there’s no gap in pleasure. As they’ve gained popularity, remote control vibrators evolved to include synchronized stimulation for partners and a way to spice up date night, with wearable panties and insertable bullets for the couples who simply can’t keep their hands off each other in public.

“Novelty is the key to desire,” says Holly Richmond, Ph.D., certified sex therapist and sex technology consultant. “When you’re with a long term partner, bringing in this novel technology can be hugely erotic.”

But these offer so much more potential beyond a little extra risqué fun during date night. Thanks to improvements in technology, remote control vibrators evolved to now include Bluetooth- and app-controlled toys (granting them their own name, teledildonics) for the couple who may not just be across the couch from one another, but across the country. And in the current climate of social distancing—where some people are quarantined away from their partners or are trying to start up intimate relationships from afar—the availability of this technology is more valuable than ever.

“Most people have experimented with FaceTime sex and masturbating together but now there’s that added level of connection to participate in each other’s pleasure,” says Richmond, explaining that some devices allow you to sync vibration speeds and patterns according to your partner’s desires.

Vibrating panties, bullets, hidden wands, are all varieties of the remote control vibrators available for people with vulvas, but people with penises can get in on the play, too, with wearable sleeves. Dr. Richmond says this ups the ante for long-distance couples as they can masturbate together, with some form of control over the other’s device through secure phone applications. “You can be miles away and literally come together,” she says.

This may be enough for you to click ‘add to cart’ right now, but in case you’re still on the fence, Patty Brisben, founder of Pure Romance, says that using toys together can also strengthen your relationship beyond the physical realm. “Sex toys allow couples to explore together and spark a great dialogue about wants and desires,” she says. (See: How to Introduce Sex Toys Into Your Relationship)

But (!) “before moving into partner vibrators, you need to know what works for you,” says Richmond. When you know what you like and can communicate it to your partner, “it naturally elicits a deeper conversation about pleasure.”

From vibrating panties to male mastubraters, browse this list of nine remote control vibrators to find the right fit for your situationship or relationship—and regardless of your choice, don’t be afraid to use them outside the bedroom.

KIIROO Onyx Cliona Couples Set

KIIROO poses the question, “Why should you play alone if your partner can play with you?” (To be fair, playing alone is really fun and serves a different purpose—but I digress.) This set combines KIIROO’s Cliona, a waterproof, pocket-sized clit vibrator and Onyx, a male masturbator that can reach up to 140 strokes per minute. Richmond favors this tech-savvy set for couples in a long-distance relationship; the ability for synchronized masturbation offers up a pleasurable virtual sexual experience when you can’t be together IRL. (Psst: Here’s How to Make Mutual Masturbation Insanely Hot)

Buy It: KIIROO Onyx Cliona Couples, kiiroo.com

Lovense Osci 2

The oscillating mechanisms of the Osci 2 are unlike your traditional vibrator; the end makes small circles in addition to vibrating so you can score super intense G-spot stimulation. Osci 2 is fitted with a Bluetooth chip, which lets you control it through the Lovense smartphone app. Whether your partner is across town or across the country, they can log in to the app and design up to three vibration sequences using a variety of intensity levels and patterns, allowing them to control your next solo session or virtual masturbation. You may want to test them out a little before you get hot and heavy so you have a little bit of an idea of what works for you, says Kate Balestrieri, Psy.D., sex therapist and founder of Modern Intimacy, who notes Lovense is one of her go-to teledildonic brands. “Be sure to have plenty of lubrication, and curate a setting that feels sexy and safe for you both.”

Buy It: Osci 2, lovense.com

Pure Romance Butterfly Effect

Turn any panties into a vibrator with the all-encompassing design of the Butterfly Effect. The butterfly wings target your vulva and clitoris (which, BTW, includes so much more than the part you can see externally) and the insertable shaft provides internal pleasure. For that reason, “I call it a triple threat,” says Brisben. Paired with a wireless remote, this vibrator can be used up to 30-feet away. Brisben suggests leaving the panties to the side and having a spa night with this toy. “Hand your partner the remote and tell your partner they’re in control of your orgasm then go take a long, sensual bubble bath.” This toy, along with the majority of Pure Romance’s toys, are fully submersible to add to the fun.

Buy It: Pure Romance Butterfly Effect, pureromance.com

Mystery Vibe Poco

Lovense Nora

Hidden Agenda

For the uninitiated, a Bluetooth or “smart” vibrator is any toy that uses a  Bluetooth-connected app that acts as the toy’s high-tech, long-distance remote control. It can be a cock ring, butt plug, male masturbator, clit vibe, G-spot stimulator — basically, anything that vibrates. Couples love them because they’re good for “spicing it up.” You can use them for long-distance sex, playing discreetly in public and experimenting with consensual power exchange (giving your partner an app that’s synced up to the toy in your ass for them to do what they want with it is a unique date night, to say the least). Some of these toys even come locked and loaded with tiny cameras, a chat function and the ability to sync its vibration patterns to the beat of your favorite song, because nothing beats cumming to the drum solo in Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” Cool, right?

Well, yes… until they get hacked. So far, white hat hackers and security testers like SEC Consultants and PenTestPartners have discovered that Bluetooth sex toys from brands like Lovense and Vibratissimo can be hacked to “remotely pleasure” people over the internet. It’s also possible to access the video being broadcast from this endoscopic dildo’s internal camera. Further, some sex-toy makers have been sending more information back to the vendor than users may be comfortable with(though that company is no longer doing so).

Since then, the rise and proliferation of Bluetooth-enabled “smart” vibrators have raised concerns about just how secure these devices actually are. Stoking these worries is a rash of alarming articles from sites like Motherboard, Forbes and Wired which outline, in painstaking detail, what the security flaws of Bluetooth sex toys are and what kind of life-ruining effects the hacking of them could wreak on your happy home.

https://youtu.be/UhLZbKH-Vb4

Problem is, if you’re a Luddite like me, you have no idea what any of this means. For instance: What the hell is an “insecure API?” Also a problem: I can’t find a single example of a real person’s sex toy being hacked outside of a penetration test (no, not that kind — get your mind out of the gutter), hacking conference demonstration or unsubstantiated Reddit claim. This, of course, paints a different picture than news headlines like “Your Dildos Will Be Hacked” or “Hackers Can Locate and Control Your Smart Sex Toys.” It also raises some important questions: How easy is it to hack one of these things, actually? More importantly, how scared should you be? Are the sock drawers and well-hidden toy chests of America truly abuzz with the haunted whir of hacked sex toys rattling on for nobody? And is it already time to revert back to analog masturbation?

To find out, I called up Brad Haines (code name RenderMan), a Canadian white hat hacker with nearly two decades of infosec experience who’s taken it upon himself to become the world’s foremost expert on sex-toy security. His advocacy website Internet of Dongs has fast become the go-to resource for sex-toy companies to learn about security best practices, for white hat hackers to present their findings to the industry and for everyday people like you and me to learn about how to keep our data safe. Figuring he’d be just the person to demystify the actual danger of hacked sex toys, I ask him to explain to me how it all works on a level an eighth grader (but like, a precocious one with good hair) could understand.

According to Haines, there are multiple ways a Bluetooth sex toy can be hacked. The first is to use a Bluetooth scanner app on a phone or specialized hardware like Bluefruit or Ubertooth to intercept the signal between the device and the app that controls it.  But since no user data is stored on the toy itself, a hacker can’t see all that much using this method; Haines says hacking a device’s Bluetooth only reveals the basic commands used to control it. That means they can tell that it’s on, see what speed and pattern you’re using and even take remote control of the device itself. Meanwhile, in 2017, a report by PenTestPartners revealed that many Bluetooth-enabled sex toys beacon out a default name that disclose the device’s presence, making them vulnerable to this kind of attack (if it’s not already connected to their phone).

However, while the actual hacking skills you need to do this are pretty minimal, Haines says this type of hack is highly unlikely to occur in the wild. For one, the device has to be on (or in sleep mode) to be hacked. Even if you use your toy every day — which you probably don’t — the chances of you using it for more than 30 minutes at a time are slim, something that gives hackers an incredibly small and random window during which your device is available to be broken into. Hackers also have to be within Bluetooth range of your toy to pick up its signal, which is problematic because, according to Haines, a Bluetooth signal can only travel about 4 to 5 feet if you factor in the walls, furniture and body tissue that stand between a toy and an app (or scanner).

“Let’s just say that if someone is hacking your sex toy via Bluetooth, there’s a good chance they’re right next to you and should probably get punched in the face,” he says. Also, many newer devices make it possible to change the name of your default Bluetooth signal, so if you felt like concealing your Vibrating G-Spot Delight from prying eyes, you could easily just rename it “AirPods” or something innocuous like that (though you’d have to remember what you named it to connect to it in the future).

In other words, if you turn off your toy completely when you’re not using it, make sure no uninvited guests are within 4 to 5 feet of you, and christen your toy’s Bluetooth with a nondescript name, the chances of it being hacked via Bluetooth are pretty much nil.

That, however, doesn’t mean you’re in the clear — hackers can attack the servers that store user data and accounts from Bluetooth sex-toy apps. One way they do so is by “intercepting proxies” to view and tinker with information like login info; email addresses; control commands for the device such as speed or pattern; chat logs; dates and times the toy was used; and information about who it was used with. Some companies even store GPS data, which means a hacker could see exactly where you are in real-time as your toy is being used. And though this data is often encrypted, Haines says hacking it isn’t particularly difficult; In fact, he’s seen a 14-year-old use an intercepting proxy to figure out a toy’s control commands.

On their own, these data points might not seem like a big deal (big whoop if someone knows that time of day you masturbate), but Haines says sex-toy companies often underestimate the risk of hackers using these data points to exploit, harass or out their users, the consequences of which could be dire. “Attacking the vendor’s system could allow you to compromise account information, exploit someone for blackmail, hijack accounts, control the device remotely from anywhere without someone’s consent or impersonate an authorized partner,” says Haines. All of that is illegal and could be prosecuted as some form of cybercrime, but in many states, the latter two could also be charged as rape or sexual assault. “Being deceived or having your consent violated through a hack can be just as traumatizing as an assault in real life,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important that vendors take this stuff seriously.”

He also cautions that leaking this sort of information could be particularly risky for people who live in countries where sex toys or certain sexual expression are illegal. For example, if two men are found to be using something like the Kiiroo Onyx male masturbator together in Saudi Arabia, where both homosexuality and sex toys are illegal, they could face fines, prison time or worse. Or if a stalker were to hack into a company’s server, they might be able to see exactly where their victim is (if the company is logging GPS, that is). Haines even says he’s waiting for the day sex-toy data is used to prove a spouse is cheating in divorce court. “It’s not a matter of,” he believes. “It’s when.”

That said, not everyone sees these kinds of hacks as inherently threatening. “How dangerous a sex-toy hack is depends on who you are,” says sextech expert, sex therapist and clinical psychologist Holly Richmond. “Personally, I couldn’t care less if someone knows when I’m masturbating or what toys I’m using. Everyone masturbates, and for me, that’s not point of shame or secrecy. But I’m a sexuality professional who works in sex tech. I already put this information about myself out in the public to some extent, so I don’t find the idea of people knowing those details about my sex life to be particularly damning.” And though she fully acknowledges that other people might not be in a position to say the same thing, she says she just doesn’t see sex-toy hacking as the looming sexpocalypse it’s been made out to be.

“There’s a little bit of sensationalism to stories about sex-toy hacking,” she says. “We still view sex as something that’s private and shameful, so we tend to balk at the idea of our sex-toy data being hacked more than we do our emails or credit card accounts. In reality, there isn’t a lot of additional information hackers can get from your sex toys that they can’t from anywhere else.”

All of which brings us back to the question at hand: How scared should you actually be that some crazed maniac in a Guy Fawkes mask is going to discover that you use your buttplug every Wednesday at 1:47 p.m., and then again at 8:15 p.m.?

“Not very,” says Richmond. “While it’s obvious that hacking sex toys is possible and potentially harmful in certain situations, I’ve never even read anecdotally about a real user’s toy getting hacked. Mostly, this stuff happens at conferences, in labs or in hacking circles just to prove it’s possible.”

In fact, to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the experts quoted in this piece, there hasn’t been a single known example of a customer’s sex toy getting hacked by anyone with malicious intent, ever. Quite the opposite actually: According to Haines, as far as anybody knows, the only hacks that are happening right now are being done by responsible parties in the service of keeping everyday users safe. That’s a serious departure from Wired’s assertion that “smart dildos keep getting hacked,” or Metro’s that Bluetooth sex toys make it possible for hackers to “pleasure you remotely over the internet,” exaggerated claims that make it sound like your vibrator is going to crawl out of your drawer and up your leg at midnight like some sort of X-rated Gremlins reboot. And while what they’re saying is technically possible, it’s important to note that as of now, a world full of sex-toy data blackmails and remote sexual assaults is one that doesn’t exist yet.

Still, security flaws do exist and their implications are very real. That’s why people like Haines are trying to get ahead of them by approaching companies with the results of their white hat experiments in the hopes it’ll open their eyes to weaknesses in their product’s security. Already, he’s helped a handful of companies like LELO, Kiiroo, OhMiBod and Lovense improve their security, and he’s currently conducting audits of dozens of other companies so he can do the same for them. At the moment, he’s the only person conducting regular, comprehensive audits of this nature.

One of the most significant changes a company has made thanks to white hat hacking of a Bluetooth toy comes from We-Vibe. In 2016, a pair of hackers at Defcon created an app that mimicked We-Vibe’s We-Connect app to demonstrate it could be remotely controlled via Bluetooth by an unauthorized party. Following that incident (and a lawsuit over the company’s data collection methods), We-Vibe completely overhauled its app’s security, going so far as to stop collecting individualized data on users at all. As We-Vibe’s Marketing Communication Manager Denny Alexander tells me, users must opt-in to share their anonymized and aggregated data if they want to… but there’s no longer any way to connect a device with any one person. Instead, should a hacker feel inclined to take a peek at what’s there, all they’d find would be aggregate data, things like “481 We-Vibe devices are currently in use” or “most people use the highest setting.”

“Since users don’t register within the app, they don’t share any personal info with We-Vibe, and we much prefer the security benefits of doing it this way,” says Alexander. Even Haines approves — he lists We-Connect on the Internet of Dongs (IoD) site as one of the most secure sex-toy apps on the market.

For other Bluetooth sex toys, Richmond recommends a few precautions you can undertake yourself. First, she says, buy toys that are set up with something called “Bluetooth Encryption Mode 3” and make sure the apps you’re using with them have undergone a security code review (both of which you can do by checking out a company’s FAQ section, sending them an email or giving them a call; unfortunately, most companies don’t specify these things on the product packaging or website). Next, if your toy or your toy’s app has GPS, turn it off when you’re not using it, and turn off your toy completely when you’re done to avoid discovery by Bluetooth scanners. Finally, you can always visit the IoD website to see what your sex toy’s security strengths and vulnerabilities are (they don’t have every toy on there, but you can see some of the more popular ones here).

Of course, none of that will make you completely invulnerable to attack, but as Richmond says, it might allow you to enjoy what you set out to do in the first place: treat yourself to a much-deserved good time by enjoying your toy alone or with a partner. “The positives of Bluetooth-enabled sex toys like long-distance sex, public play and VR far outweigh the negatives, which, if you think about it, are really just the possibility of someone knowing that you’re masturbating,” she says. “That’s not to say I want anyone controlling my device or using my data against me, but the chances of that happening are so minuscule that I don’t think they’re worth sacrificing the pleasure and connection you could have with a Bluetooth toy.”

And if you’re still not convinced? Revert to the old-school way: masturbating with your hands, a less high-tech toy or any safe and comfortable object that can’t be downed by a massive Y2K-style event. Classics are classics for a reason.

How can technology serve human-human couples from an intimate and sensual point of view?

Can we use innovation to spice up this Valentine’s Day?

Often times, when we think about romantic relationships and artificial intelligence the first thing that comes to mind is human-robot relationships. Ex-Machina and HER may trigger both curiosity as well as fear of what these developments could mean for humanity (thanks Hollywood!) However, AI is already present in many aspects of our relationships in a much subtler way. Dating apps utilize AI to help singles “swipe right” on what it recognized as your “best matches”, hoping they will build a long-lasting connection, or at least have some fun. AI can also predict whether a couple will stay together with a 79.3% accuracy by recording and analyzing the cadence, tone, length of intervention, etc while the couple has a conversation.

Marta Plaza and her team at Desire Technologies decided to capitalize on AI to enhance and facilitating healthy, long-lasting, and may I say spicier relationships. Desire app is a love game for couples that aims to enhance date nights through real-life, sexy “challenges” that help strengthen human-human relationships.

At Desire, AI serves human-human couples from an intimate, sensual and communicative point of view. Their technology analyzes how the human brain thinks, decides, and behaves while playing and communicating with a partner, and then uses the outcomes of this analysis as the basis for developing intelligent game dynamics that can predict what the partner might want at a specific time, maybe some words of encouragement or some sweet messages.

Apps like Desire help couples begin what can sometimes be an awkward conversation: the necessity to manufacture spontaneity, novelty and desire in one’s sex life. This is especially helpful for couples who have been together for a long time and need to be intentional about playfulness in their intimate lives, as could also serve newer couples who might feel shy about bringing up fantasy or certain desires.  When couples are busy or overwhelmed with their day to day, it could be very helpful to have a resource that can help build anticipation, as well as jog and inspire their erotic minds. Desire can help people stay erotically engaged and there is much evidence to support that gamification helps in behavior change – why not in the bedroom?, says Shula Melamed, MA MPH, Relationship and Wellbeing Coach.

At A Time When Long-term, Monogamist, Relationships Seem Unattainable, AI Comes To The Rescue

It’s been well-researched that couples that have sex with a frequency that both partners estimate as satisfactory – whether that’s 4 times a week or 2 a month – experience benefits like increased overall happiness and wellbeing, developing a stronger bond with the partner, and a higher likelihood of staying together. However, cultivating this balance is one of the trickiest challenges, as long-term partners juggle responsibilities and obligations.

Love relationships are wonderful and sometimes we forget to take care of them and enjoy them. Plaza, says “it’s important to play and make the time to enjoy each other. The app enhances communication with your partner and gives you tools and ways to connect in real life, discovering desires together and creating great spicy and romantic memories. It’s a way to remember how important your relationship is. Our wish is to make happier relationships!”

Generally, there is a negative bias, a sense that technology will interfere with authenticity and create a literal barrier—our screens—in our ability to connect intimately. Many couples I work with complain about this. From this perspective, AI is a double-edged sword—it can be the cause of people feeling more isolated and less intimately capable (Millennials are having less sex than any generation in recorded history, if you haven’t heard), but it can also be the cure, says Holly Richmond,  Ph.D., Psychologist and Sex and Relationship Therapist.

Novelty is the seat of human desire and arousal which presents a big opportunity for AI, as it has the ability to facilitate adventure and playfulness in long-term relationships. “I appreciate that Desire helps couples feel connected, integrating novelty through games and actions. AI will best serve human to human relationships if it is used as an augmentation for intimacy, not a replacement for it ”, added Richmond.

In a time where we might feel more isolated than ever, it’s time for the next tech wave: Augmented intimacy .

By 
Isabelle Kohn

I’m lying on a bed in a well-lit room, my hairy, masculine legs stretched out in front of me. I have a flat chest, a bulging package and the interior-decorating sensibilities of a newly divorced dad who wants his suburban guest bedroom to look presentable for his soon-to-be-visiting adult son.

I’m just starting to get a bearing on the scene and my beefy man body when porn star Kendra Spade storms into the room. She looks upset. “My Instagram just got deleted!” she cries, throwing herself on the bed next to me. “And by ‘Instagram got deleted,’ I mean I just lost all the money I make by posting people’s brands on Instagram!”

Before I have time to question how that line made it into the script, she sidles up next to me and starts to run her fingers down my chest toward my nether regions. I can almost feel the warmth of her hands through my boxer-briefs as she inches closer to my junk, and I imagine what it must feel like to get hard. “You know this is an emergency,” she says. “I know you’re always willing to help me out in an emergency.” As she begins to straddle me, it becomes readily apparent this is the kind of emergency only 40 minutes of aerobic activity with my fast-hardening cock can solve.

Though I’m actually a cis woman wearing a VR headset alone in my bedroom, I feel like I’m just the man for the job. This is virtual reality, after all. You can be anyone you want — or so I’m told.

In the few years since its debut, VR has been marketed to consumers as the “future of of porn,” a disruptive game-changer that has the potential to transform both the way we get off and what we get off to. As sex-tech expert and clinical psychologist Holly Richmond explains, “Shooting a video in 3D means the entire process of writing, directing, shooting and acting in porn has to be rewritten. Theoretically, it’s a chance to redefine what people can experience, and to make porn better.”

Yet, it’s still unclear whether 3D porn delivers on those promises. While interest in VR porn is increasing, the buzz around it seems to have fizzled since it hit the market in 2015 — Google searches for “virtual reality porn” topped out around February 2017, and have plummeted by roughly 90 percent since then. So while there are plenty of adoring articles that gush about how realistic it feels and how far the technology has come(pun unavoidable), I still don’t know anyone who suits up in a five-pound headset to jerk off.

Which made me wonder: Is VR really the future of porn? Or is it more like the self-driving car — just another needlessly high-tech solution to a problem that doesn’t exist?

I decided to do my best to find out.

* * * * *

After renting an Oculus Go VR headset (retail value $199) from a place next to SpaceX in South L.A., I affixed it to my cranium and settled into bed to explore what 3D porn had to offer. On Richmond’s advice, I steered my VR ship toward one of the largest, most-talked about VR porn sites to date, BaDoinkVR. The company, she informed me, was making some of the most realistic-feeling VR porn on the market, but they’d taken things a step further by expanding into virtual sex therapyfor both men and women (their educational video for men was actually the most downloaded thing on the site in 2016).

The site’s glossy, high-def teaser images of textbook silicone stars painted an instant picture of the type of porn BaDoink makes: scripted, high-production and porn-star-driven. It’s in the same vein as Brazzers makes — DVD porn; the kind you might mute your volume on to save yourself from the cringe-worthy dialog. Not so coincidentally, it’s also exactly the type of porn your average male might enjoy, which explains why the vast majority of scenes are shot from a male POV. “It’s such a new field that porn companies have to go off what they know people will pay for,” Richmond explains. “Unfortunately, that means it’s predominantly male gaze and male POV right now.”

Perfect, I thought. I’ve always wanted a dick.

As I cruised the site’s categories section for a porn star who appealed to my virtual penis, one video popped out at me from the din. It was called “Under the Influencer,” and its description went like this:

“Kendra Spade is your stereotypical millennial. Sexually liberated, progressive, and of course, she makes her money as an influencer on the Gram. Today though, she’s had her profile shut down. Although she claims she didn’t breach any of the terms and conditions, the last photo she posted of her bare ass wasn’t exactly SFW. Anyway, Kendra now needs a shoulder to cry on, either that, or a dick to suck. Despite her entire source of income disappearing in the blink of an eye, Kendra is hornier than she’s been all week. It’s time to get under the influencer.”

It was perfect — so cringingly contemporary in its unholy union of virtual reality and social media that I couldn’t look away.

As the video loaded, I wondered what sorts of sensations I was about to experience. I’d been told by Richmond and others that VR gives you the ability not to just watch, but to experience something. Would comforting Kendra with my pixelated penis feel real, like I was really there? I fully expected to feel sensations I’d not known possible, and was excited to find out what it was like to be inside — gasp! — an influencer.

At first, the video really delivered. I was blown away by how realistic the view through the Oculus Go was. Aside from a bit of pixelation and blurriness toward the outer edges of the frame and the way it gently squeezed the blood out of my brain, it had almost the exact same depth perception as natural human sight. That meant that while Kendra blabbed on about losing 100,000 followers and the ability to target them with ads, I could shift my gaze away from her face and down toward her crotch, which looked as close to my face as any crotch has ever been in my life. I also made sure to check out the curtains behind her. They looked nice. IKEA, maybe?

Next, Kendra climbed on top of me. The image of her felt so present that my body seemed to sink and move with the bed as she shifted her weight. She whispered something into my right ear, begging me to show her a “really good time.” Her breath was hot, and the swish of her whisper bristled my skin. We locked eyes — VR eye contact is amazing — and she asked me if I liked watching her suck on her fingers like she’d suck on my cock. Though no one could see me doing so, I nodded yes anyway.

However, the magic instantly faded once she started to give me head. It was the strangest thing — the moment my cock was in her mouth, the video started to look and feel no different from the porn you can find on any tube site anywhere, ever. Instantly, I knew why — the most enticing quality of VR is that you can look almost anywhere in the scene and see it with similar dimensionality and perspective as real life, but when your head is still and you’re just looking straight ahead at the action, it doesn’t seem half as immersive as it does when there’s movement.

It also didn’t feel any more physical than 2D porn. Though I’ve read that more immersive visuals can lead to heightened pleasure and intensity, the fact that I could neither feel my dick nor control what I did with it, left me just as curious about what it’s like to use it as when I’m binging on XVideos. I tried imagining things from Kendra’s perspective, but I didn’t feel them any more or less strongly just because she looked like she was actually on top of me. The fact that the male in the video — aka me — just laid there silently while Kendra did all the work was a turn-off, too. I was basically dead virtual-fishing, and it wasn’t hot.

Suddenly bored, I tried to skip ahead, but I ran into a problem: BaDoink’s video timeline doesn’t tell you you where you’re skipping to. Unlike 2D internet porn, there isn’t a tiny frame that pops up on the video’s timeline to tell you what’s coming next, so it’s anyone’s guess where you land. And so, after waiting for more than five minutes for the video to scrub to where I’d selected, I closed the player and hunted for another video, a little peeved that my right to choose what part of a video I watch had been stripped.

For anthropological purposes, I tried a few other videos to see if my quickly souring impression of VR could be saved. I checked in on a 360-degree group sex scene called “Cumming Full Circle,” and I sat through a few minutes of “The Mating Room,” one of BaDoink’s rare female POV offerings in which two patients waiting to see what I hoped was a psychiatrist have spontaneous, yet clinical-feeling sex to pass the time. However, I found them to be as frustrating as “Under the Influence” — the dialogue was just as bad, the chemistry was just as flat, and again, it wasn’t any more thrilling than POV porn on a tube site. It just felt more present.

By this point, too, the blurriness and the pixelation I’d initially been able to ignore started to mess with my vision. My head felt pinched, and my eyes felt like dry balls of trash. A sense of nausea — spawned by the disconnect between sitting still in reality and moving around in surreality — crept in as well. I ripped my headset off and spent the rest of the day feeling like a vertigo-ridden Lucille 2 in Arrested Development.

* * * * *

According to a Wired profile on BaDoink, VR porn was, in part, a response to streaming services gutting the profits of traditional adult film producers. “For years,” Peter Rubin writes, “adult film studios did what they could to fight the tide, jumping on whatever technology might help them make some money again: 3D TVs, ultra high-def resolution. Nothing worked, because nothing made porn seem fundamentally different.”

After a taste of VR, I get the sense nothing worked because from a consumer perspective, nothing about the way porn is consumed needed to change (besides becoming more authentic and inclusive). Streaming porn is free, accessible and has a staggering amount of content to choose from, all which is easy to blaze quickly through in your search for the perfect masturbatory moment. You don’t need fancy equipment to watch it, and your imagination does a pretty bang-up job putting you in the action despite the flat dimensionality of it all. In that way, VR is kind of like the turducken of porn — cool, but a bit of an overreaction.

At the same time, VR companies like BaDoink aren’t necessarily seizing the opportunity to, as Richmond hoped, “create better porn.” While some more inclusive directors like Erika Lust and Angie Rowntree are getting into the VR game, the vast majority of VR porn is still in the vein of BaDoink — confusingly scripted, predictable, fake-feeling and very heteronormative. Adding a third dimension doesn’t automatically make them any less male gaze-y, nor does it necessarily involve any more consent, female pleasure or chemistry. As it stands, unless you write, act and edit those qualities into a 3D porn, all virtual reality does is make the same tired scenes bigger.

So, to answer the titular question — no, VR isn’t the future of porn, at least not for the average consumer, and definitely not without some experiential upgrades that would make it competitive with the ease of 2D. However, Richmond says it does foreshadow the direction porn — and sex in general — is heading. “Technology is more a part of ourselves than ever before,” she explains. “Though virtual reality isn’t exactly mainstream-ready, and is really only accessible to certain income levels at this point, the sort of immersive, somatic experience it offers is going to become more and more useful for things like sex therapy, sex education, experiencing fantasies that are hard to pull off in real life, trauma processing and gender affirmation.”

As for how VR fits into this equation, while Richmond still thinks it has a ton of potential — especially in conjunction with teledildonic sex toys — she also envisions other technologies like augmented reality and deepfakes becoming a bigger part of people’s sex lives. “Tech that actually implants a viewer in the scene is coming,” she says. “There’s really no barrier to what you can experience, the tech just has to catch up.”

In fairness, too, BaDoink, like most VR companies, is still in its infancy. It’s only been up and running since 2015, and what it’s been able to accomplish during that time has been legitimately vast and boundary-pushing. I also have to admit that I only watched a few videos, using one headset, and doing that by no means makes me an expert. I’d be more than willing to try VR porn again once they’ve figured out how to not make me puke.

When that time comes, I’ll happily get back “Under the Influencer.”

Look, I’m a fan of anyone who’s willing to go to prison doing what they love, but there’s no reason Klemm had to end up there. Public sex can definitely be a challenge to pull off — especially in the middle of a retirement hometown square — but there are so many ways to get away with it without sacrificing the risk that makes it hot. So for your sake and the sake of future generations, let’s talk about how to have sex in public in a more intelligent, responsible way than dear Peg (bless her heart).

Assemble A Consenting Audience

Bar none, the best way to do public stuff is in front of people who want to watch you. There are so many benefits here — you get the validation that having eyes on you provides, you can play in public in a private, legally sound space and you don’t have to clutch your pearls about whether you’re shattering anyone’s innocence or ruining their day. And, if you’re with people who have consented to be a part of your fantasy, watching you might also be a part of theirs.

Everyone wins.

Sex clubs, play parties, swingers parties, in-home orgies, certain Jamaican resorts and cam sites like Chaturbate are great places to find the kind of people who might appreciate your public display of affection. The kinky social media site FetLife and the alt-sex app Feeld are also handy ways to organize an enthusiastic audience — just make sure everyone’s clear on boundaries and whether you want them to watch or participate (or both).

But Isn’t Part Of The Fun that People Might “Accidentally” See You?

Not so much. Let’s pretend I’m walking to work, and I happen to look to my right and see you fellating a gentleman by a streetlight. By flagrantly doing deeds in front of me, you’re passively involving me in your sex life, and using my unwilling or unexpected presence to fuel your erotic fantasies. That counts as a violation of my consent, and according to criminal defense attorney Lou Shapiro, as lewd conduct.

Given that I’m a grumpy, Evangelical housewife in this example, I’m probably gonna bust your ass.

Oh, No! What Kind Of Ass-Busting Am I Eligible For (And Can Everyone Watch As My Ass Is Getting Busted)?

In most states, public indecency and/or lewd acts in public are your most likely charges. Both of these things are misdemeanors, but in some places like Florida, you still have to register as a sex offender if you’re charged with either or both of them.

However, if you’ve got a good lawyer or you live in a more permissive area, you might just have to write an apology letter. Each state handles public sex a little differently, though — so make sure to Ask Jeeves what your state’s laws are before you decide to get it on in public.

I Hate Misdemeanors And Apology Letters. Where Can We Do This And Not Get Caught?

According to Shapiro, the safest, most legally protected way to have public sex is in a place where there’s a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” In other words, if you have sex somewhere you “thought” no one could see you, you have a better chance of getting away with it if you’re arrested or tried in court.

That makes spots like hotel windows, high-up balconies, private rooftops, reasonably secluded private beaches, your friend’s bathroom during a house party, your own house with the windows open and cars parked in hidden locations not accessible to the general public really hot, really smart options for more legally sound bouts of exhibitionism. If you’re caught in one of these places, you could reasonably complain your privacy was being violated by whoever reported you.

However, if you’re into taking bigger, more daring PDA like fucking on the red carpet at Cannes, you can’t make the same argument. The more public you are, the more intentional your behavior will seem, and the more illegal it’ll be.

If the payoff is worth that risk to you, the world is really your oyster. Pick the ski-resort gondola, airplane lavatory or cop car that turns you on the most, and thentake the necessary steps to avoid getting caught.

For example…

Check For Cameras. Cameras Are Everywhere.

You can get away with anything if there are no cameras. I had sex in the hallway of a hotel right outside some stranger’s door at 3 a.m. because said hotel had too much vintage charm to install a security system to defend their honor from people like me. However, I only accomplished this feat of excellence because my partner and I had spent 15 minutes scouring the hallway for security devices.

We were lucky there weren’t any, but just about every public place has at least one. From parking garages to street lights to elevators, there’s a good chance that if you’re in public — especially near anything human-made — you’re being recorded. Maybe that turns you on — in that case, face away from the cameras and wear nondescript clothing.

It’s not just security cameras you need to worry about, though. Every man, woman and precocious toddler has a production studio in their pockets thanks to the intrusive miracle of the smartphone, so be aware of not only establishments, but people who can film you, especially if those people are already in a situation where their phones are out, like at an amusement park. Word to the wise — if you fuck in broad daylight in front of a bunch of teens, they’ll probably Snapchat it.

Nail Your Timing

According to somatic psychologist Holly Richmond, many people into public sex choose a place where the risk of being caught is fairly low. Part of that, she says, is knowing when that location is likely have the least amount of people and police around. Unfortunately, this couple who decided to have sex on escalator in a crowded train station while holding a baby didn’t get the memo.

A good stake-out can help you figure out when that time is, but a little common sense helps, too. For example, if you’re dying to have sex at a playground like this Florida couple, chose a time when no kids are going to be there. Want to have sex on the beach? Pick an overcast off-day in a secluded area or try your luck in the middle of a hurricane. Want to copulate against the wall of a bait shack in the town square of your retirement community? Do it while M*A*S*H is on — no one goes outside when M*A*S*H is on, Peggy Klemm, no one.

Dress The Part

Public sex is all about dressing intelligently. Stick to clothing that’s easy to pull up or down, but that you don’t have to take fully off — dresses, skirts, sweatpants, things with penis flaps you can pull your dick out of, etc. Klemm was caught with her pants literally down, but had she been wearing a skirt, she could have easily said her lover was just cracking her back.

You want to stay as clothed as possible when you’re fucking in public. For one, because it’s not as obvious what you’re doing when you’re slamming your bodies together in head-to-toe tie-dye, and two, because the more visible your body is, the more likely you can be hit with indecent exposure if you’re caught. That said, taking off your underwear beforehand can streamline things considerably.

Also, try to avoid brightly colored or sartorially obvious clothing. Not only does it make you more visible, it makes you more memorable to anyone who might call the cops to bust up your little Cracker Barrel parking lot romp.

Consider The Humble Blanket

When I was an aging teenager, my boyfriend fingerbanged me at my stepsister’s soccer game in the middle of a crowd of screaming helicopter parents. Everyone was so fixated on their kid’s burgeoning athletic prowess that we were the last things on their minds, and even if they had turned to look at us, they wouldn’t have seen anything questionable — we were sitting next to each other, straight-faced, looking like we really loved children’s athletic programs, with a blanket up to our chins.

No matter where you’re having public sex, bring a blanket or a towel to throw over you. According to Shapiro, a viable defense in court is that there was no sexual act taking place, it just “appeared that way.” When you’re all covered up, there’s no telling what you’re really doing under there, especially if you’re fully clothed (see above). What happens in the blanket stays in the blanket.

Foreplay Another Day

The whole point is to get in and out before someone catches you, so if you’re operating in an exposed location like a public park, the beach or the bathroom at your friend’s baby shower, skip the proverbial appetizer and go straight for the main course (whatever that means for you). That’s not to say that some level of warming up isn’t in order — public sex should still be good sex, after all — just that the risks of being in public can give things a sense of urgency. Related: The longer you’re at it, the more opportunity you give voyeurs to record you and post the video to eBaum’s World, so giddy-up.

Shhhhhhh

Heavy, rhythmic breathing, suspicious squishing, slapping sounds, that smacking noise wet kisses make and a long, wailing, “Ooooh yeaaah” can alert people to your presence, so try to shut the fuck up and be mindful of your audio output as much as possible. A hand consensually placed over you or your partner’s mouth can be a hot way to stifle any erotic wheezing.

Use A Toy

For those times when want to jump each other’s bones but simply cannot, a remote or app-controlled toy lets you play in public without even touching each other. Check out WeVibe — they make app-controllable vibrating toys for all body parts that work anywhere in the world where there’s wifi. That means I can be in Canada at work and you can be in Malaysia feeding orphaned lionfish, and you can still be sending me little vibrations that make me squirm in my ergonomic office chair.

Go To Mexico

Hope you like Andrés Manuel López Obrador, because Guadalajara just legalized sex in public.

This All Sounds Hot, But I’m Still Scared…

That’s okay, a computer can have public sex for you.

According to Richmond, while certain widespread security cameras and smartphones have made it harder to get away with sex in public, other technological advancements are now making it easier to pull off that fantasy in a safe, legal way.

Some virtual reality companies like BaDoinkVR let you have avatar-based public sex in any public scenario you can imagine, and the emerging technology of deepfakes allow you to superimpose your face into actual erotic scenes where the actors are the ones taking the risk, not you.

“The point of VR and deepfakes is to feel real, so this works well for a lot people,” says Richmond. “They still get the rush of doing something socially forbidden.”

A little reflection….

Why is sextech so exciting right now? This is our first step into somatic (body-based) technology. We are moving from something we hold to something we wear—the technology, and thus our sexuality, is more a piece of us than ever. Immersive technologies like VR, AR, MR, teledildonics and intimate companions facilitate experiential knowledge and connection through kinesthetic learning and eye contact that engenders competency, agency and mastery. People can try things with immersive technologies they may not try IRL. I believe my job, maybe even my mission, is to communicate to any industry that is interested in relationships, sex and intimate connection that they can’t miss this opportunity for enormous change and positive influence. How we connect intimately and sexually with others as well as ourselves will be dramatically different in five years, and astonishing, almost certainly mind-blowing in 20.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Dr. Holly became interested in sex tech
• Developments happening with teledildonic
• Using sexbots as part of sexual health treatment
• The pros and cons of using sexbots
• Understanding that sexbots are an addition and not replacement to your sex life
• How can we use healthy eroticism in our sex lives?
• Ways in which defects can affect couples’ agreements and relationships
• Best places to start when researching into using teledildonic

By Emily Dreyfuss

At the techworld’s glitziest gala, the massive Consumer Electronics Showcase held in Las Vegas this week, you could find rows of devices only for women: breast pumps, fertility trackers, breast massagers, skin care gizmos. This embrace of women’s health as a category for tech innovation is a huge shift from just a few years ago, when it was much easier to find a scantily clad “booth babe” hired to hawk some random fitness tracker than it was to find anything geared toward women as consumers—unless it was a pink version of a mainstream gadget.

But while women’s skin care, fertility, and general health have come to represent entire categories for gadget makers, women’s pleasure is apparently still too taboo.

A robotic vibrator, developed in consultation with Oregon State University’s robotics department, was initially accepted into the show and given an innovation award, only to later be excluded because it didn’t fit into an existing product category, according to the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES. (Before its award was revoked, it was honored in the category of robotics.) The device was also called “immoral” and “profane,” according to statements CTA made to the press.

The Ose, as the device is called, looks like, well, a gray robotic penis. Where a scrotum would be, the Ose has a microrobotic bulge that uses biomimicry to stimulate a woman’s clitoris the way a human mouth and tongue might. The hands-free device responds in real time to a woman’s body, and can supposedly adjust according to her needs.

Pretty neat robotics, the point of which is to help women achieve a so-called blended orgasm, or an orgasm reached through internal and clitoral stimulation. Lora DiCarlo, the company that makes the Ose, considers the personal massager a health device. CES features thousands of other health products, from wearables to “baby tech.” But its leadership concluded that, despite this being a hands-free biomimetic robotic device, it was appropriate for neither the category of wearables, nor biotech, nor health and wellness.

“By excluding female-focused Sex Tech, CES and CTA are essentially saying that women’s sexuality and sexual health is not worthy of innovation,” Lora Haddock, the CEO of Lora DiCarlo, wrote on her website after news of the controversy broke.

But wait: Is having an orgasm a health issue worthy of innovation? According to sexual health experts, scientific studies, and the United Nations, the answer is yes.

The UN’s World Health Organization includes pleasure in its definition of sexual health—for men and women. The Global Advisory Board for Sexual Health and Well Being has even argued that sexual pleasure is a human right. Yet, scientific study after study has shown that there is a huge gap between male and female sexual pleasure. Dubbed the orgasm gap, researchers have found that though 87 percent of heterosexual men will orgasm during intercourse with their partner, only 49 percent of women do. The Ose, in its robotic way, it intended to help bridge this gap.

Sex therapists and researchers WIRED spoke to this week said this gap harms people in all sorts of ways. Not only does it advance the patriarchal norms that say women’s bodies are merely for the sexual pleasure of men, the taboo against female sexual pleasure in our society leads to its own health problems. Inability to experience sexual pleasure can contribute to depression and anxiety, poor self-esteem, or sexual coercion. It can also promote the misconception that pain is a normal and acceptable part of sex for women, according to psychology professor Laurie Mintz, author of Becoming Clitorate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It.

Women’s sexual pleasure is so dismissed in our society that women complaining of pain during sex are often not taken seriously by their doctors, even when such pain could be helped with physical therapy. In fact, some gynecologists in the US are not even aware of the existence of pelvic floor therapy, which can help minimize pain from intercourse. In some parts of the world, the taboo against female pleasure leads to the violent removal of the clitoris.

This affects more than individual lives: It also defines the pace of science. The full shape of the clitoris wasn’t mapped until 1998! Sex researchers say that there are far fewer studies into why most women do not have orgasms during sex, or why so many women experience pain.

“God forbid you have erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation—you’re going to get a study and we’re going to find out the best way to help you. Do you think there is any on female pleasure? Barely,” says Holly Richmond, a psychologist, certified sex therapist, and sex tech consultant. “It just hasn’t been prioritized.”

When women’s sexual health is prioritized, it’s usually in terms of reproduction. Kimberly Resnick Anderson, a certified sex therapist, calls this the “acceptable procreative zone.” It plays into the age-old stigma that women’s sexual utility is defined by her ability to bear children. Her pleasure? Not so important.

Indeed, you can see this “acceptable procreative zone” reappearing in the consumer electronics space. Last year, CES awarded the groundbreaking Willow breast pump with an innovation award in the wearables category. The showroom floor is filled with innovations in breast pumps, breast massagers, fertility gadgets, and an entire section for “baby tech.”

Including a robotic vibrator on the show floor at CES wouldn’t undo a centuries-old taboo, but it would help. It would reinforce the idea that women’s sexual pleasure is not an afterthought, or some unimportant, raunchy diversion. It’s the same reason why it was so galling when New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority refused last year to place ads in the subway for female-focused sex toy company Outbound, and again just this month for sexual wellness company Dame’s sex toys—despite having run Viagra ads on the trains for years.

For the CTA to recognize female sexual pleasure as worthy of technological innovation would also go a long way toward helping the rest of the tech industry. Creators of female sex tech products report having a very difficult time convincing venture capitalists that their products matter. Richmond, who advises sex tech companies, says seeing a device like Ose at CES could bring more opportunity to “all of these really cool amazing women in sex tech who are running up against some pretty huge walls when they’re trying to get funding and credibility.”

It would also, frankly, help CES overcome its history of sexism. The show has consistently come under fire for including women as “booth babes” but not as innovators, entrepreneurs, or keynote speakers. And this year’s refusal to let the Ose on the show floor smacks of hypocrisy, given that sex robots and VR porn have both been presented at past shows. The difference? Sex robots are for men to stick their penises into—you know, for fun. According to the world’s consumer tech show, women’s pleasure still just doesn’t matter.

By Pip Usher

Not just the domain of gamers and geeks, VR is now being pioneered as a tool to help women in a host of different ways, from educating workplaces about sexual harassment, to exploring the heights of female desire, and even managing the pain of childbirth.

In November 2016, digital expert Morgan Mercer woke up with the idea for Vantage Point, a sexual harassment training programme delivered via virtual reality. A two-time survivor of sexual violence, she’d become increasingly interested in how people could relate to thorny issues – such as racism or sexism – that may never impact their own lives. Virtual reality, she realised, would lend an uncomfortable intimacy to training sessions that seminars and manuals could not. By the time her product launched, the #MeToo movement had gained global traction, with high-profile cases emerging everywhere from the Hollywood Hills to governmental offices and corporate boardrooms. In this new climate, Mercer’s idea seemed not only prescient, but essential.

“It’s hard to explain a feeling that you’ve never felt before, right?” she says. “It’s really hard for me to to tell you what love feels like if you’ve never felt it; it’s really hard for me to tell you what it feels like to be scared if you’ve never been scared.” With that in mind, Vantage Point places participants directly in the experience. As with most video games, it starts with picking an avatar, who subsequently bears witness to a fellow employee being harassed in the workplace. Throughout the training, the avatar is presented with a range of choices that will directly impact the situation’s outcome. One decision leads here, another will lead there, but each choice has a consequence. Much of the emotional stimuli found in real-life harassment – the subtle tonality of dialogue, an invasion of personal space – is replicated to create a build-up of tension. Mercer says that, after undergoing the training, male participants have approached her to say that they’d had no idea what harassment felt like until now.

While most of us first encountered VR in 1999’s The Matrix, today it’s an affordable household reality; an Oculus Go headset currently retails at around £199. With Mark Zuckerberg announcing plans to get a billion people using virtual reality (Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 for $3 billion), momentum is gathering – and Mercer is one of a slew of entrepreneurs looking to broaden VR’s fanbase beyond gamers in darkened rooms.

Filter out the gimmicky thrills, multiplayer shooter games and workout experiences, and you’ll discover an emerging function for virtual reality: that of change-maker. In creating powerful experiences beyond the realm of users’ own scope, VR has the potential to be pioneering and disruptive. And it turns out that its immersive qualities are well suited to issues that impact women – from a project that takes you inside a college party sexual assault to managing pain during childbirth.

But does virtual reality really have the capacity to generate genuine perspective-altering empathy for others? In a TED talk titled How Virtual Reality Can Create The Ultimate Empathy Machine, filmmaker Chris Milk claimed that it profoundly connects people in a way that other forms of media cannot. His mini-documentary, Clouds Over Sidra, created in partnership with the UN, allowed viewers to follow a 12-year-old Syrian refugee living within a refugee camp in Jordan. After it was shown at a humanitarian fundraising conference, pledges reached $3.8 billion, over 70 per cent more than anticipated.

Professor Jeremy Bailenson, who has been studying the correlation between VR and empathy at Stanford University since 2003, has found that VR can indeed empower users to better understand the perspectives of others. However, not all of his experiments have yielded positive results, notably when it comes to race. “It is a powerful experience to inhabit the avatar body of a minority and experience a scenario in which you are discriminated against, but a VR scenario can’t hope to capture all the subtle aspects of discrimination that a person experiences in her life,” Bailenson writes in his book, Experience on Demand. In other words, even virtual reality has its limits.

Vantage Point’s sexual harassment training is taking such shortcomings into account. Participants’ decisions are reviewed and feedback is provided on where they failed to act constructively. If they witnessed a chance to intervene and didn’t, the aim is that next time they’ll engage with the harassment sooner. If they failed to intervene and treated their colleague coldly, the hope is that they’ll learn to react with increased empathy. Then they take the training again. “It’s continuous improvement,” Mercer says, “until everybody has a sense of accountability.”

Barcelona-based Dinorah Hernandez has utilised VR’s heightened sense of intimacy for something rather different: the furthering of female pleasure. As head director and content manager at BaDoink VR, she specialises in producing virtual reality porn for a predominantly male gaze. Last year, however, she turned her hand to female-focused content with Virtual Sexology II: What Women Want, a VR experience that blends female sex education with adult content. “With VR, you can enter a fully immersive environment in the comfort and privacy of your own home,” Hernandez explains. “Our thinking is that Virtual Sexology gives you the opportunity to practice and explore on your own, so when you are with another person, you will have more confidence and experience.”

Hernandez’s first attempt at appealing to the female gaze proved tricky. Do women want a lot of eye contact? How do you strike the right balance between sweet and steamy? The result was a 48-minute film with a cast of characters that includes Jay Smooth, a floppy-haired porn star whose genial looks avoids the industry’s usual clichés (“Women don’t typically want this very muscular, chiseled man,” notes Hernandez). “I want you so much,” Smooth purrs as he looks towards the user’s avatar, a role played by actress Katie Morgan. Morgan’s body acts as that of the user’s; when Smooth begins to suck and nibble her toes, the viewpoint is that of lying supine and gazing down the bed at him.

As the action escalates between Smooth and Morgan, a voiceover interjects to explain the psychological and somatic benefits of intimate touch on couples who are struggling to connect sexually. The next scene follows a platinum-blonde female actor, plus the avatar, exploring sex toys and sensual breathwork together while the narrator explains womens’ path to arousal. To add legitimacy to the project, BaDoink teamed up with a certified sex therapist to develop sex-positive content that sought to engage meaningfully with female desire.

After four years behind the camera, Hernandez can vouch for the surreal power of VR. She recalls a shoot in which an actor flicked her hair close to the camera. Hernandez felt a breeze sweep across her face – even though she was stood at a distance and wearing huge goggles. After hours of filming, her brain had started to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, filling in the sensory blanks for what she was watching.

“It’s a hyper-realistic experience,” she admits. “You can totally lose yourself in this world.”

As the scene unfolds, it moves from massage, to oral, to penetration, all accompanied by kissing, caressing and compliments, masterfully choreographed by Los Angeles-based sex therapist, Dr. Holly Richmond. She’s pioneering a new wave of virtual reality porn, focusing on sex-edutainment, training women to explore every kink and fantasy in a safe space. “This is Virtual Sexology, season two,” she says. “Women have desires that need to be explored and these videos are a way for them to experiment and enjoy themselves — it’s a more intimate experience.” The actresses certainly enjoy themselves. “Normally, I run to shower after a shoot,” says porn star and former HBO presenter Katie Morgan, as she leans against the wall, stretching out her tanned lean legs post-shoot. “But I don’t feel dirty now, I feel satisfied.”

This porn is a sequel; the first released in the Virtual Sexology series was male focused, teaching men ways to control and prolong their orgasm. It’s  currently the most downloaded virtual reality video BaDoink has ever made (out of 500+ films). But today’s shoot flips the script — it’s all about the woman’s pleasure. A new space for porn company BaDoink VR, but one they say is growing. “This is the year of women and VR porn,” says director Dinorah Hernandez. “Most of our videos are made for men 18-30, but women are starting to be more open about their sexual fantasies — and VR —  and this explores that.” This is true industry wide— women make up around  26% of all visitors to porn aggregator PornHub, and searches for virtual reality porn have risen over 650% in the last year. Researchers at Newcastle University recently published research discussing how VR porn could be problematic — but adding that if done correctly, it could benefit men and women alike, opening them up to new experiences and greater personal freedom. “In our research, we also saw suggestions that VR could deliver more embodied sensory experiences, with more emphasis on subtlety and the relational aspects of sexual experiences,”  writes researcher Matthew Wood.

Around this time last year, I penned a piece about the lack of virtual reality adult content targeted at women, but I’m glad to say that’s not the case anymore. No doubt, it’s still a hugely male dominated content space, but as demand has grown for VR porn from all types of consumer, a growing number of female directors are stepping up and creating female focused content.

“We launched maybe a week after your piece came out,” Lily Campbell, the Portland based director and producer for Yanks VR, tells me. Yanks VR is part of the Yanks.com porn empire, which she’s been part of since 2009. Yanks’ whole schtick is that they’re about real sex and that all the orgasms you see are genuine. Their tagline is 100% female produced, 100% real girls and real orgasms. The women on the website are stunning, but they’re also very real — more diversity in body shape, skin color and tattoos then you’d find elsewhere. And real doesn’t mean poor quality; these are glamorous amateurs who like playing up to the camera.

But Campbell, 32, wanted to push the envelope further, and offering VR content seemed like the next logical step. As more and more companies started creating VR porn, she realized there was a wide range of quality; from professional shoots to amateur efforts with blurry shots and vomit inducing motion swings. She found that the wide majority of this content was aimed at men — suggesting there was space for something new. While Yanks isn’t strictly a for women website (it’s designed to appeal to all genders) their aesthetic and focus on female pleasure makes it tick all the right feminist boxes.

However, producing VR isn’t just about buying a VR rig and going wild, and she found the learning curve steep,  experimenting with a number of different VR setups to get it just right. Campbell knew that having a good experience would be the deciding factor in people sticking around to watch more, and this came from personal experience. “The first time I tried an Oculus headset on I was turned off,” she says. “I got nauseous. But I could see the cool and creative possibilities of it and it became apparent it had a huge potential in the adult market.” She’s had to change her whole way of working to integrate VR — she shoots her VR scenes around six times a month with three to five videos per day and her regular scenes on different days.

By Zara Stone