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Absence makes the heart grow fonder … and more lusty. Imagine that you and your lover are a plane flight apart and want to get it on. Until recently, your best option was phone sex. But if you want something closer to actual partner sex and have around $600 to spare, you can now enjoy remote sex with sensations that approach real caresses. Welcome to the new tactile world of teledildonics, also known as cyberdildonics.
Here’s how it works. The woman has a high-tech dildo embedded with touch sensors. The man has an advanced penis sleeve capable of pulsating and contracting. The two lovers connect their sex toys via an app and connect to each other through FaceTime. When she strokes or sucks or inserts the dildo, he sees it on his screen and his sleeve pulses and squeezes, delivering sensations remarkably close to actual sex.
Or the man has an artificial vulva-vagina-clitoris embedded with touch sensors and the woman has an app-enabled vibrator. As he strokes or licks, her vibrator reacts and she can “feel” his caresses.
Teledildonics is still in its infancy and app-enabled sex toys aren’t cheap. For models and prices, visit kiiroo.com and lovense.com. But as teledildonics matures, prices are likely to drop, and “I’ll call you tonight” may acquire a whole new meaning.
From Letters to Teledildonics
Remote sex is nothing new. Ever since literacy, separated lovers have touched each other remotely through erotic letters, which recipients could hold in one hand while doing something else with the other. A good deal of correspondence between spouses survives from the Civil War, and some of it was quite steamy.
During the 20th century, remote sex migrated to the telephone, and even folks like Dear Abby have recommended it for long-distance lovers.
Of course, remote sex is not the real thing, but the body’s sexiest organ is the mind, and remote sex excites it. Teledildonics extends the potential excitement as never before.
The Biggest Market: Sex Workers
No doubt some long-distance lovers will embrace teledildonics and have juicy fun. But the largest market for Web-enabled sex devices appears to be sex work. The Web already contains a surfeit of sites whose women (and gay male) employees show their assets, touch themselves, and exhort remote users to masturbate.
Teledildonics not only makes remote sex work more lifelike, it’s also more personal. The phone-Web interface is more one on one, allowing consumers to feel closer to providers. In addition, teledildonics allows sex workers to earn extra money by fulfilling requests. Men can tip to see the sex worker fellate a dildo, and clients feel it. Tipping is almost too easy. Just tap your phone, and the fee gets charged to your credit card.
Many sex workers prefer remote sex to the real thing. The hours are flexible. They can work in the privacy of their homes. And compared with street-walking, massage parlors, hotel calls, or brothels, remote sex is safer—no possibility of violent customers, poor hygiene, or sexually transmitted infections, and no risk of arrest. Police generally focus on sex work on the street. They care much less about what people do behind closed doors on the phone. Teledildonics is also safer for men who pay for sex—for the same reasons.
The Biggest Losers: Women Who Abhor Porn
While teledildonics may be a boon to long-distance lovers, it’s bound to cause consternation among women who feel threatened by their men masturbating to porn. Instead of the man stroking himself to some random video image, with teledildonics, there’s a real live woman at the other end of the connection stroking, licking, and inserting a Web-enabled sex toy. Many men are likely to find that more compelling than porn.
By some estimates, as many as 25 percent of coupled individuals have peeked into their partners’ devices looking for evidence of porn use or affairs. In the not-too-distant future, intimate snoops can also be expected to check for teledildonics apps and scour closets for web-enabled sex toys.
As teledildonics becomes more established, we can expect the news media to treat it breathlessly, with sympathetic profiles of long distance couples who enjoy it, and hand-wringing by those who consider it a threat.
Personally, I find app-enabled sex toys a fascinating new wrinkle in the age- old quest for erotic satisfaction. I’m not terribly concerned with what it all means to civilization. Phone sex and commercial phone sex services haven’t led us to Sodom and Gomorrah. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but lust is often the father of necessity.
I’d be curious to hear from anyone who has tried teledildonics. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? I’d also like to hear what readers think about sensor-studded sex toys and tactile apps. Are there implications—either good or bad—that I’ve missed?
