The Future is Sensual (Tech)
In sensual sex, the senses are heightened. You become fully present in the moment. You taste and smell your lover. Every touch is electric. Every moan is arousing. Your pupils dilate with sexual hunger. The mind quiets.
Except, the mind isn’t quiet. You feel disconnected from your body and its senses. Your experience falls flat somehow.
Could technology help?
Technology may seem like the enemy of intimacy, but this need not be the case. It is a tool that we can use to enhance and enrich our lives. This includes harnessing our senses for a more intimate and fulfilling sexual experience.
A Brief History of Sex Toys and Technology
Going as far back as pre-civilisation, sex toys have been found amongst the tools used by humans. As sex and gender historian Hallie Lieberman cites in her book Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (2017), 30,000 years ago, Palaeolithic humans were carving dildos out of siltstone. Before the Common Era, the Ancient Greeks and Romans commonly recorded dildo use in their art. Ben Wa Balls (kegel exercisers) can be dated back to at least 500 CE in Japan, along with Indonesian cock rings made of goat eyelids.
A common myth in the historical account of sexual technology began in 1998, when tech historian Rachel Maines hypothesised in her book The Technology of Orgasm that during the Industrial Revolution, Western doctors invented vibrators called “manipulators” to treat hysteria in women. Although Lieberman exposes this assertion as a myth, she does provide evidence that these devices (for example, see this image of a Macaura’s Pulsocon) were recommended as a treatment for male patients to increase sexual power “by vibrating their perineum” (the area of skin located between the genitals and anus), thereby indirectly stimulating the prostate gland. This is not to say that these devices were never used by women, only that they appear not to have been used to treat female hysteria as Maines originally proposed.
WISP Product Development.
In the 20th century, things began to change. By the early 1900s, electric vibrators were being sold in department stores as health devices for everyone, marketed particularly to women as “beauty appliances”. Fast forward to the 1970s when, following the Sexual Revolution, the now-famous Hitachi “Magic” Wand hit the shelves, albeit for muscle-relieving purposes rather than for sexual relief. Nevertheless, sex educator Beddy Dodson declared it the vibrator for the female orgasm. She introduced it as part of her sex workshops during this period, and continues to promote its use to this day. Even so, it was not until 1992 that the device was actually advertised as a sexual vibrator.
In more recent years, there has been an explosion in the development and retail of such devices. More technologically advanced products such as smart vibrators, automatic fleshlights, teledildonics, and virtual reality pornography have begun to flood the market, with artificially intelligent sex robots in the works, although according to professor of cultural AI Kate Devlin, not anytime soon.
To describe this growing industry, entrepreneur Cindy Gallop coined the term “Sextech” in 2015 when she founded MakeLoveNotPorn, and since then, a female-led community of innovators, educators, and business professionals known as Women of Sex Tech has taken form. Whereas the tech industry is typically male-dominated, this segment is being led by sex-positive women who represent multiple sexualities. As a result, brands and products are increasingly focusing their attention on better sex education, sexual health advocacy, and sexual wellness. Enter sensuality.
The Birth of Sensual Tech
The branch of Sex Tech known as Sensual Tech is focused not on genital stimulation or goal-oriented sex, but on the journey of arousal and the pleasures that are experienced through each of the senses. Unique to every individual, the possibilities for Sensual Tech are vast.
The industry began to take shape in 2013, when designer of the Vesper vibrator necklace, Ti Chang, officially launched Crave, along with a line of foreplay jewellery. As the first crowd-funded sex toy and the first sex jewellery to include technology on the market, Chang laid the foundations for sensual tech to be introduced into the mainstream, dismantling societal taboos around sex.
By 2016, product designer Wan Tseng took inspiration from sex tech and sensual jewellery to create a product that would stimulate the senses rather than simply the genitals. Tseng founded WISP, a sensual tech company focused on developing these kinds of innovative products. This paved the way for Sensual Tech more broadly, encouraging sexual exploration through non-genital experiences and sensual wellbeing outside the “normative” (i.e. orgasm-centred) sexual realm.
WISP’s products began with conceptually futuristic designs that developed into high tech wearables and now exist as SENS Sensual Jewellery. Throughout this process, each prototype stimulates the senses of touch (from a feather to a massage stone) and smell (from an electronic atomizer to a patent-pending scent-releasing mechanism). The resulting design is a customisable piece that reflects the tastes of the wearer, who may choose from a selection of fragrance orbs or massage stones that are interchangeable with the jewellery. These elements are used to stimulate an individual’s sensuality, whether it is to encourage sexual exploration for oneself, or sensual intimacy with a partner.
Sensual Touch
Other sensual tech products have also centred on the experience of touch, perhaps because studies have found that touch — whether through a hug, stroke, massage, or kiss — has incredible health benefits, releasing the love-bonding hormone oxytocin, which combats the stress hormone cortisol. This is evident in the kink scene, where tactile techniques are used to inflict pain, causing the mind to quiet and igniting pleasure receptors. With thousands of nerve endings in every square inch of our skin, the entire body is an erogenous landscape of potential sensual experiences.
For example, just like the vibrators that are designed for vulva stimulation, wearables such as Vesper by Crave, Palma by Unbound, and Fin by Dame use vibration technology to invite exploration in alternative erogenous zones. Vibration was also a key element in products showcased at a Sex Tech Hackathon in London in 2017, where one of the winners was a wearable blanket called SucCUMb that vibrated in alternative erogenous zones. These vibrations corresponded to a visual display where raindrops or rose petals would fall on the screen in sync with the vibrations.
SuCUMb Blanket at the Sex Tech Hackathon. Photo by Paul Clarke.
Although the SucCUMb blanket has not yet moved beyond the concept phase, its use of haptic technologies (which have been used in gaming for decades) is significant because they are increasingly used in the sex tech world. For example, in teledildonics, the leading brand Kiiroo uses haptic technology to allow users to feel corresponding touches on a dildo and masturbatory sleeve. Haptics and long-distance kinaesthetic touch have also been utilised in a remote kissing technology called the Kissenger, which is a product that attaches to users’ phones and transfers the tactile experience of one person’s kiss to another.
These kinds of touch technologies are not just useful for long-distance sensual connection, but also for people who are, for whatever reason, not quite ready for human physical contact. Design graduate Nienke Helder, for example, created a collection of sensory objects for people affected by sexual trauma who want to rekindle their sexuality in a fun way that is not focused on the “end goal of penetration”. In this way, Sensual Tech allows an individual to gradually reconnect with their body at their own pace, using the sensation of touch.
Sensual Smells
WISP Scent Releasing Mechanism
Thus far, scent technology has mostly failed (e.g. the iSmell in 2001 and more recently the oPhone in 2014), but the sensual power of smell cannot be denied. Our olfactory system has approximately 100 million nerve receptors, making our sense of smell quite keen. This system also directly links to the amygdala and hypothalamus regions of the brain, which are responsible for our emotions and memory. This is why certain smells can trigger such strong emotional responses.
As noted above, WISP’s Sensual Jewellery engages the sense of smell by including wearable perfume and allowing the wearer to choose when to release their preferred scent throughout the day. Each fragrance is concocted to evoke an emotion of relaxation, reconnection, or nostalgia, and is intended to create a momentary sensual experience where the wearer is encouraged to be present in their body, whether in the bedroom or out, with a partner or alone.
Raspberry Dream Labs is another company using smell to create a user experience. Similar to WISP, the fragrances are uniquely developed to prompt individual sensations, but here they are combined with audio-visual stimulation. Raspberry Dream Labs runs an ongoing immersive study called “sensory seduction”, which uses a virtual reality headset and wearable pieces of haptic and olfactory technology to create multi-sensory environments. In the study, the wearer chooses to be either a “giver” or a “receiver”, and offers personal feedback of arousal data to help develop future experiences.
Sensual Sounds
Hearing is a third sense that is ripe for Sensual Tech’s engagement. In the last few years, there has been a rise in audio erotica, with websites and mobile apps including Quinn, Dipsea, Tease Me, and Femtasy, to name a few. On Reddit and YouTube, visitors can listen to independent artists read sensual stories, perform erotic ASMR (Autonomic Sensory Meridian Response) and engage in amateur audio porn. Even Pornhub hosts a significant amount of erotic audio, because the imagination can run wild with sensual sounds, which is something that visual pornography limits.
Sensory Seduction by Raspberry Dream Labs
The positive effects of audio erotica were discussed on the podcast Audiophiles, where its potential benefits for health and wellbeing were highlighted — particularly for those with a low sex drive. One guest described the liberating effect of audio porn after they experienced sexual side effects from antidepressants. According to them, when they felt numb during masturbation, audio porn helped them connect with their physical body and increased arousal.
Other sexual wellness apps that prioritise sensuality and intimacy through sound include Ferly and Emjoy. Both apps feature audio guides that include soundbites to encourage mindful sex. Even some mindfulness meditation apps, such as Simple Habit, are introducing intimacy and relationship categories. Some offer guided masturbation practices while others include sensual body mapping, which prompts the listener to observe their body and notice where it feels numb, warm, or where it tingles to discover new erogenous zones using the power of mindfulness.
Conclusion
Sensual Tech is a movement for deeper intimacy with ourselves, our partners, and the world around us. Where Sex Tech may typically prioritise goal-oriented and genital-focused sex with toys and visual porn, Sensual Tech offers a whole host of benefits for people who want to slow down their pleasure and find therapeutic qualities in the process, making it a fuller-bodied experience.
Many people fear that technology will disconnect us even further from ourselves and one another, and of course, it sometimes does. But it can also be used to reconnect us in ways that enhance sex and intimacy. Rather than shying away from sensual technology, we should embrace the possibilities it offers. Let us celebrate sensuality as a core part of sexuality, as a means of enhancing the erotic experience. Let us reimagine sex through our senses of touch, smell, and sound — not necessarily in opposition to sight or direct genital stimulation, but in synergy with it.
Published Mar 1, 2020
Updated Dec 22, 2022
Published in Issue V: Taboos
