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.”

In the sunny living room of a Mediterranean-style house in Oakland, California, Rosalind sips coffee through a straw. The 24-year-old research assistant wears a thin green utility jacket and has large brown eyes and dark wavy hair with pin-up-girl bangs. Sitting on a couch as SLR cameras record her, she gets ready to tell nine people, none of whom she’s met in real life before, about the first time she masturbated.

“I can’t believe I told you guys about the shower masturbation,” says Rosalind (not her real name). “That’s literally the first time I have ever said that out loud.”

A few crew members chuckle. They’re filming for OMGYes, a site that hosts a series of online videos about how to sexually satisfy a woman.

OMGYes is one of a number of companies ushering sex education for the 18 and older crowd into a new era. Serving a space somewhere between the staid, impassive lectures many sat through as students and a pornography industry that values entertainment above all else, these companies use interactive and user-generated digital media to explore the more emotional, intimate and vulnerable sides of sex.

“The internet has offered, along with a lot of really disturbing images and ideas, a lot of potential for positive education,” says Peggy Orenstein author of “Girls & Sex” and “Cinderella Ate my Daughter,” which examines how modern culture sexualizes young girls. Sites like OMGYes, Orenstein says, “have the opportunity to do an end-run around traditional sources of education — and miseducation.”

On the set of OMGYes. The company is in the process of producing its second season. Lynn La/CNet

Can’t Keep My Hands to Myself

Launched in 2015 by U.C. Berkeley graduates Lydia Daniller and Rob Perkins, OMGYes is a startup dedicated to “the science of women’s pleasure.” Its videos feature one-on-one interviews with women like Rosalind who share their sexual history and favorite techniques.
Other videos are interactive.

Viewers can, for example, use their fingers to rub and tap digital renderings of female genitalia on a touchscreen. These images are created from thousands of composited, high-definition photographs stitched together from some of OMGYes’ interviewees, who range in race, age and body type. As you touch, a voice-over softly guides you where to touch and how fast. The lessons end when the screen fades to white. If you do everything “right,” the voice lets out a satisfying sigh. If not, she suggests you stop and take a break.

Online videos have attempted to educate about sex before. In addition to the YouTube channels Sexplanations and Hannah Witton, there’s Laci Green. The 27-year-old YouTube personality has talked about sex and dating since 2008, and has over 1.5 million subscribers. But while videos by Green and others simply require passive watching, OMGYes infuses its tutorials with a level of visceral interactivity and immediacy that video blogs, books and magazines can’t offer.Though the tutorials can be titillating, OMGYes is serious about the facts and techniques it presents. In partnership with Indiana University and The Kinsey Institute, it gathered feedback from more than 2,000 women, ages 18-95. With this information, OMGYes offers a platform for women to talk about a subject that at worst is seen as taboo, and at best, unimportant.
“Why aren’t we talking about pleasure? Like actual pleasure,” says Sybil Lockhart, lead researcher at OMGYes. “When we went to look up what the research was on pleasure, we found that there really wasn’t any. What gets funded generally is pathology. It’s anorgasmia or dryness or soreness.”

The first season of OMGYes is currently available for a $40 flat fee (about £30 or AU$50), and includes lessons about delaying and intensifying orgasms, stimulating the clitoris and communicating in the bedroom. For its 200,000 current users, OMGYes wants its upcoming second season, which doesn’t yet have a release date, to cover internal vaginal touch. It brought in Rosalind to talk about experiences including female ejaculation. After Rosalind wraps up her onscreen interview, the team breaks for a late lunch of Chinese takeout. Later, Rosalind will shoot her touch-and-talk scene, where she’ll masturbate on camera and narrate what works.At the end of all this, she’ll fly back home to DC and return to her job at a university. She hopes her contributions to the project will help form a more sensible, but still joyful, narrative around sex.
“Having more resources like this gives [people] a positive interaction with the actual ins-and-outs of human sexuality, rather than the facade we see in pornography,” Rosalind says. “Fantasies are great, but demonstrate them in a way that are actually attainable.”

Women talk frankly to the camera for OMGYes.

Let’s Make a Movie

The “facade of pornography,” and its entertaining but often unrealistic depictions of sex, motivated Cindy Gallop to find Make Love Not Porn (MLNP) in 2012. A former publicist and marketer who now heads her own consultant firm, Gallop is everything you’d expect an ad exec to be — fast-talking, blunt and charismatic. She created the site after discovering many of the men she slept with made false assumptions about what she wanted in bed.
“Porn, by default, becomes sex education, and not in a good way,” Gallop says. “But the issue is not porn. The issue is that we don’t talk about sex in the real world.” The combination of free streaming online pornography and society’s reluctance to talk openly about sex, Gallop says, results in people taking their sexual behavioral cues from pornography.

To counter this, MLNP encourages users to upload and share videos of themselves having sex or masturbating. Subscribers can rent videos for $5 (about £4 or AU$6, converted) and stream them for three weeks. MLNP has two requirements for submissions: all those involved must consent to the whole process (the recording, the submission and most importantly, the sex itself) and participants must be having the sex they’d have in real life.One video shows a woman getting into a coughing fit while her partner rubs her back and offers a tissue. Another features an orange tabby cat jumping on the bed, indifferently watching its owners have sex and walking to the foot of the bed to lie down. There is small talk. There is silence. There are women with body hair. There are naked men wearing socks.MLNP doesn’t consider its videos to be pornography or even amateur, and to label them as either would be a bit reductive. These videos don’t feature professional actors contractually paid to have sex. The stars are everyday people experiencing genuine sexual connections.
“It’s not performing for the camera,” says Sarah Beall, MLNP’s curator and community manager. “What we’re doing is creating a space to show that real-world sex comes in all different varieties and it isn’t less valuable, pleasurable or worthwhile.”

Other services have goals similar to MLNP. The YouTube channel Fck Yes, for example, shows how people can seek and receive sexual consent. There are only four complete episodes so far, and while the videos use explicit language, they’re relatively safe for work and don’t depict actual sex.MLNP videos include actual sex, and that they are crowdsourced and shareable online is key to MLNP’s overall mission. Anyone with the moxie to whip out a phone and record themselves can spontaneously upload a video and share it with MLNP’s 400,000 subscribers. In the five years since the site launched, 200 users have submitted 1,500 videos.
The company likens users uploading their sexual adventures to MLNP to social media users posting their latest meal on Instagram or vacation photos on Facebook.
“We’re building a whole new category on the internet called ‘social sex,’” Gallop says. “Our competition isn’t porn. It’s Facebook and YouTube. Or it would be Facebook and YouTube if they allowed sexual expression.”
By making more down-to-earth depictions of sex as accessible as possible, Gallop hopes sex will be viewed not as something scandalous or fantastical, but as something intrinsically human.“Nobody ever brings us up on how to behave well in bed,” she says. “But they should. Because there is empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness. All those are as important [in sex] as they are in other areas of our lives where we’re actively taught to have those values.”

Love You Better

Empathy, sensitivity and kindness aren’t terms usually used to describe pornography. But porn production company BaDoinkVR hopes to change that. Founded in 2006 and based in Rochester, New York, BaDoinkVR specializes in virtual reality porn.
Although the majority of its content falls into what you’d typically see on a porn site (blond, blowjob, threesome), two of its videos, “Virtual Sexology I” and “Virtual Sexology II,” aim to educate viewers about sexual positions and techniques through a first-person point of view.

On the set of Virtual Sexology II.

Viewers are in the front seat, engaging in foreplay and having sex with an encouraging partner. Sometimes, an omniscient female voice-over gives tips, chiming in about the benefits of pelvic exercises or sex toys. During one scene, when the actress is on her back in a missionary position, the voice cuts in to remind viewers that “pulling the legs back to the chest or close to the ears can create deeper penetration, which can be uncomfortable or pleasurable depending on her body preference.”
“The porn industry’s primary objective is to entertain viewers,” says Dinorah Hernandez, a producer at BaDoinkVR and director of “Virtual Sexology II.” But porn can also be used to educate viewers, she says, adding that in the end, “Virtual Sexology” was created to “help people become better, more confident and more attentive lovers.”
BaDoinkVR isn’t exactly alone in its endeavor to educate within the industry. The video streaming service PornHub, for example, launched a sex education and sexual wellness portal in February 2016. But while the portal functions more like an info center, BaDoinkVR is creating original and engaging video content.

A voice-over gives full context of a sex toy that actress August Ames introduces in “Virtual Sexology I.”

Geared toward straight men, “Virtual Sexology I” has been downloaded over 50,000 times and was BaDoinkVR’s most downloaded video of 2016. For the sequel, which is about female arousal, Hernandez enlisted Holly Richmond, a psychologist who specializes in sex therapy and supervised the techniques and advice featured in the video.
“VR will be a paradigm shifter,” Richmond says. Because of its level of immersion, it “gives us the opportunity to teach empathy, facilitate connection and feel more relational” compared to 2D content.

“Virtual Sexology” is still pornography, and it features attractive actors who moan, squirm and gyrate in all the right ways. But they also do things you don’t usually see in porn.
For example, the (male) actor begins the video by looking into the camera and saying, “I know we’ve been through some hard times with our sex life, but I strongly believe that we are on the best way and path to improve.” They also go through breathing exercises and politely thank “you” after orgasming.
BaDoinkVR hopes to add installments that tackle more complex issues like fear of intimacy or erectile dysfunction.
“These are serious issues for many, and more often than not, people are either too embarrassed or too afraid to admit to them,” Hernandez says.

Tell it like it is, and how it could be

As a porn company, BaDoinkVR benefits from its other, traditional content too, and was able to make “Virtual Sexology” free for download. But services like OMGYes and MLNP don’t have the advantage of working within a multibillion dollar industry. They face an uphill battle, as it’s difficult to get potential investors and partners to distinguish the difference between porn and more nuanced adult content.

One major operational challenge for MLNP was payment processing, due to PayPal’s policy against “sexually oriented digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium.” Email marketing service MailChimp also prohibits sexually explicit content and it took MLNP four more tries to find an email partner. You’ll also never see MLNP or OMGYes in the Apple App Store or Google Play because of strict rules against sexual content.
With such operational roadblocks, it’s hard for companies to get sexually explicit but educational services off the ground. As such, there’s less choice and variety for people looking to learn about sexual behavior, intimacy and well-being. Not only can this be a detriment to individual consumers, but, some would argue, to society as a whole.
“We live in a media culture that is absolutely saturated in sexuality,” Orenstein says. “But we’re utterly silent about what healthy sexual behavior ought to be. That is the real bizarre discontinuity with our culture right now.”

By Lynn La

In early 2014 Ela Darling, 31, a pornographic actress, recorded her first virtual reality sex scene. She was in a college dorm room at the University of Maryland dressed in an R2-D2 swimsuit and high athletic socks. She sat on a twin bed, next to a wooden desk, and spoke to the camera as if it were a real person. There was no story line and no other actors.

“It was a solo masturbation scene,” she said. “I was coy and flirty and then a little bit dirty. I felt sexy as hell.”

Ms. Darling had been filming pornography since she was 22 and took her job seriously. It was her responsibility to convince audiences to connect with her physically and emotionally. She tried everything, including acting out bondage fetishes, performing erotic electrostimulation (“electrosex”) on another woman and dressing as a real-estate agent. Yet no matter what she did to entice and engage, the results had always been voyeuristic, since there was always a screen separating her and her fans.

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

Adult entertainment with added value

Technology-pessimistic experts often see VR eroticism as a trend towards interpersonal isolation. On the other hand, Dr. Holly Richmond. From a clinical perspective, VR offers numerous and unique opportunities to treat disorders, anxieties or pa- tient-specific problems.

This technology thus enables a perfect symbiosis of entertainment and sexual pedagogy. Instead of simply watching, users of VR eroticism find themselves in the middle of the scene and experience the love-play at close range. It is precisely in this feeling of “dipping” into another world that so much potential lies and promotes the process of healing.

Especially women benefit, according to Richmond. To see a video from the perspective of an actress helps women to intensify their exploration of their own feelings and the rediscovery of pleasure. VR also offers an ideal supplement in combating sexual trauma or promoting empathy. Practical example: A big, strong man looks at an erotic all-round clip from the perspective of a petite woman and vice versa. This is an aid to every therapist.

Industry will benefit

Richmond also sees the pleasurable as well as the pleasurable: for her, sex is always good sex, as long as it happens satisfactorily and freely. Therefore, the possibility to try out your own wishes and preferences in VR is ideal for a better understanding of your own body and the psyche, which inevitably leads to a greater self-esteem. Due to the abundance of benefits, people will also be more willing to spend money on 3D movies. A fact that will also help the industry to produce high-quality content on the latest technology.

About RealityLovers

RealityLovers , awarded the VENUS Award as the “Innovative Product 2016”, offers erotic films in FullHD for virtual reality. In the 180-degree perspective, users experience the happenings from the viewpoint of the performers and thus actively participate in the play. Interested parties choose between different subscription offers.

Original Article: http://www.digitalbusiness-cloud.de/sexologin-ist-sicher-vr-erotik-befluegelt-die-lust