A jam-packed week for me. As with most things, there are a lot of moving parts.
Dissertation wise, I’ve been pondering the feedback I’ve received and considered how to move forward. I have gone back to look over comments and feedback from throughout the process, as well as many of my notes, draft versions, sketches and so forth. As discussed with my advisors this afternoon, there has been a lot of feedback that, frankly, I have struggled to assimilate. I do think I’m starting to get it though.
I like writing big, high theory. I’m trying to be precise, but clearly that approach isn’t what is needed for this project. So, I want to reframe this project in a way that emphasizes the C, the R, and the DM but sticks with original approach of critical making as a way to explore embodiment and subjectivity through sex in the digital age.
It seems like, despite so much cutting, the scope of the project has remained too wide/unfocused. So, dialing this in to a very specific (answerable) question without getting bogged down in novel ontologies is the new approach.
Clarity and simplicity become the watchwords of a revision round focused on implementing the more structural feedback received in the prospectus meeting.
Some cuts are easy to make: Chapter 3 (ABDL) and Shane Denson. Focusing in on a Feminist New Materialist exploration of sex toys. Starting with teledildonics, the project seeks to extend this niche field’s analysis to other types of devices and connections.
Talk Sex with Dr. Elmo Johanson
Here’s my attempt an ELI5:
I want to tell you about something cool about how people have fun and feel close using special toys and gadgets.
You know how sometimes we play with toys that buzz or light up? Well, some grown-up toys do that too—but they help people feel happy and close even if they’re far away from each other!
This project looks at three special toys:
- The Pishock: This toy sends tiny zaps that tickle your body in fun ways, like a magic buzzer that talks to your skin and your feelings. Elmo wants to learn how these zaps and feelings travel through the interent and make people react.
- The Pup Hood: This one is like a fun mask that people wear to pretend and play together, even with friends online. I want to know how wearing this mask helps people feel like they belong to a special team, whether they’re in the same room or far away.
- The Chastity Cage: This toy is like a little lock that changes how people think about their bodies and feelings. I want to find out how this lock helps people play different games with who they are and how they show love.
The big question is: How do these toys help people share feelings, play together, and feel close, even if they’re using gadgets or far apart?
But I’m not just looking at these toys, I want to build my own toys and go out and play with them to see what I can learn.
It’s like learning how special toys and magic gadgets make friendships and love grow in new and surprising ways!
Oscar the Grouch Version
How many people are you having sex with?
Drawing on Feminist New Materialist theories this project seeks to extend thinking from teledildonics to understand how digital networks (and sex toys that interface with them) are reshaping the ways we talk, think, and practice sex.
Sex is not a private act between two autonomous individuals.
It is materially distributed across bodies, devices, networks, platforms, and infrastructures.
What forms of collectivity and mediation emerge through the use of networked sexual devices? What is the rhetorical ecology of sex in the digital age?
When a person uses a practices networked sex, who is involved?
- The remote partner (when present)
- The device manufacturer
- The Devices themselves
- The platform server
- The data infrastructure
- The app interface
- Algorithms
- Spectators (if streamed)
- Interactors (through media platforms)
- Cultural scripts
- Supply chains
Ok, so digital sex entails a complex assemblage. Where is all this coming from?
- Post-pandemic intensification of remote intimacy
- Platformization of private life
- Datafication of sexuality
- Expansion of consumer sexual technologies
- Blurred boundary between kink subcultures and mainstream markets
Perhaps the moral panic about Gen Z sex is misplaced, maybe new forms of seuality simply aren’t legibile to older frameworks or understandings of sexual practice. This project seeks to interrogate these changing landscapes through three specific devices and their distinct shades of embodiment.