Today the fabulous Violet Blue took the stage at LeWeb, wowing the geeky crowd so used to listening to rich male entrepreneurs claiming that "money is bullshit", with her sex robots and empowering views on sex
The title of her talk was "The Future of Sex", and to be honest, I had never thought about whether or not there was a future for sex. Sex is just sex, right? And in the future there should be a lot of it...right?
Oh how wrong I was. Apparently the future of sex is virtual. It's digital. It's mechanical, pumped with AI and completely uninhibited.
Instant orgasms appear to be a huge part of sex's future, according to Blue. Giving us numerous examples from films of sci-fi's past such as Barbarella, Violet Blue showed us that "orgasms on tap" have been hinted at all throughout science fiction's history.
Part of this idea of unlimited orgasms is the world's utter fascination with sex with robots, and sex with what are, essentially, machines. In fact, there's even a company manufacturing a sex robot named Andy (or is it Andi?) that you can customize to fit "your kink". Andy can gyrate, using 36 activators in her torso, or she can even be programmed to perform oral sex, come equipped with G-Spot, or come with special little extras such as lactating or menstruating if that's your thing.
(And if that is your thing, I'm sorry.)
However, what I thought was really interesting was that Violet made a huge point of making sure that everyone knew that these robots and machines and the future of sex was not only about pleasing men - as screwing things void of feeling does sound like something typically male - but about what women want as well.
Violet pointed out that the fascination with having sex with machines is a very female thing, as - hello - women do love vibrators and electrically run sex toys. In fact, Violet even directed us to a NSFW website called Fucking Machines, which features only women,um, fucking machines, and really, really liking it.
The subscriber base is predominantly female, the women who run the site love the job, and we're assured by Miss Blue that the allure of screwing a machine isn't about having sex with something that is void of feelings and emotions, but about having sex with something where you can change the size, speed, rhythm and enjoy vibrations that a human cannot replicate.
Of course, Futuristic Sex opens up a whole can of worms and questions such as, "Is it cheating if she isn't human?" However, what I loved about Violet's talk was that she explained that the future of sex is a place where women can explore and enjoy and be empowered by sex - not be suppressed by it, or be told by crappy magazines or the current pornography industry what they want.
Whether it's through playing sex games on your DS, screwing a dude dressed as a squid on Second Life, or enjoying a sex toy that learns remembers what its user likes, the future of sex seems pretty titillating - but most importantly, Violet Blue says that the future of sex is a clean slate for everyone anyone to write our own rules, and to be uninhibited about sex.
(Afterall, a robot can't judge your love handles now can it...wait, can it??)
Image via Violet.Blue's Flickr