SEXTECH INDUSTRIES AND CULTURES: TOWARDS MEDIATED PLEASURES AND DATA JUSTICE

Abstract

The industry of sextech is on the rise. But while the term sextech has been applied to a wide range of intimate technologies, it is often understood in terms of technologies that enhance or improve sex in an individualist manner. This panel instead furthers an understanding less concerned with sexuality as a question of technological optimisation, and more invested in sextech as technologies, not only for pleasure and health, but also for regulation, surveillance, and biopolitical management. We explore the growth of the sextech industry and its relationships to surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, data governance, and politics of pleasure. Drawing from empirical data with sextech users, retailers, developers, and founders as well as collaborations between industry and academia, the papers explore how sextech industries outsource labour, upscale automation, and shape intimate connections through digital technologies. While we consider the interplay of sextech and public health, we do not seek to evaluate the therapeutic utility of sextech use. Instead, we adopt a sociotechnical approach, reflecting on how cultural assumptions around gender, sexuality, health, and pleasure guide and inform sextech markets. The panel is structured by moving from broad interrogations of the issues within the sex tech industry to case studies of specific platforms, before finishing with a consideration of user experiences of queering sextech to explore some possible futures. In these case studies, focusing on industry practices allows us to see how sextech is marketed as simultaneously sexually empowering, a source of self-knowledge, and a solution for social inequality and injustice.