Sex tourists are not an homogenous group

Western, white, male sex tourists have been travelling to ‘Third World’ countries for many years and there is nothing new about the sexual exploitation of local women in this context. Indeed, there is long history of sexual exploitation of women under colonial rule and western men have long projected racist fantasies onto the ‘primitive’/natural Other. But the long haul tourist industry is turning this kind of post-colonial fantasy into an item of mass consumption. Sex guides written by white western men, such as Travel and the Single Male by Bruce Cassier tap into the idea of ‘difference’ to justify the sexual exploitation of Black women in these countries. They tell tourists that prostitution does not have the same meaning in the Caribbean as prostitution in the West. The sex guides say that Caribbean women are not really prostitutes but ‘nice’ girls who like to have a good time. A key component of sex tourism is the objectification of a sexualised racialised 'Other’. As author and self-confessed sex tourist Bruce Cassier says: "You think of those incredible....women, ranging in colour from white chocolate to dark chocolate, available to you at the subtle nod of your head or touch-of-your-hat." The racist stereotype of the exotic and erotic Black woman is also an image that is used to sell sex tourism in countries like the Dominican Republic and Cuba. ‘Blackness’ and the ideology which constructs it, is part of the commodity that sex tourists are buying.

Sex tourists are not an homogenous group: they may be women or men, Black, Asian or white, homosexual or heterosexual, middle class or working class. Numerically, the main group of sex tourists are Western, white, heterosexual men. However it is important to recognise that even amongst this group, there is diversity in terms of sexual interests and attitudes towards prostitute use. Although it is necessary to recognise differences between sex tourists in terms of their sexual practices, I want to tentatively suggest that sex tourism offers all of them opportunities to affirm a particular ‘racialised’ and gendered identity. So far as white male sex tourists are concerned, it is not just cheap sex that they pursue. They also like travelling to ‘Third World’ countries because they feel that somehow the proper order between the genders and between the ‘races’ is restored. Women and girls are at their command, Blacks and Hispanics and Asians are serving them, shining their shoes, cleaning their rooms and so on. All is as it should be.

The Sinulator is a device that lets you connect a sex toy to your computer

The Sinulator is a device that lets you connect a sex toy to your computer so that other people can control it for you over the internet. After announcing to the room that I had one of these, I really had no choice but to open the box and pass the thing around.

If you've ever been to a baby shower, you're familiar with the "oooohs" and "aaaaahs" that ensued. We were all impressed with the surprisingly substantial vibrator, which features rotating plastic pearls in the shaft and a vibrating bunny for external stimulation. Also, it's pink.

Here's how it works. Your Sinulator package includes the transmitter, a vibrator and a receiver. You download the client application from Sinulator.com. During installation, you connect the transmitter to a USB port. (If you use Windows XP, make sure to read the installation note in the user guide and save yourself some frustration.)

When you're all installed and have the client running, you attach your toy to the wireless receiver and switch it on. Finally, you go to Sinulator.com and choose a name for your toy. After that, anyone who knows your toy's name can set your toy a-buzzin' using the Sinulator control panel. Neither of you has to register or divulge any personal information -- not even an e-mail address.

The control panel looks like a grown-up version of a driving toy for baby, with buttons and levers and sliders that you manipulate with your mouse. I laughed when I first saw it -- now you can have sex and drive a race car at the same time! If that's not a popular male fantasy, I don't know what is.

But it gets even better. You probably want to stick to the dashboard if you're at the office, but for home use, the Interactive Fleshlight is where it's at. The Fleshlight is a standard, sleeve-style vibrator for men, with a twist: It's also a transmitter. It measures the speed and force of each thrust and communicates those metrics to the software, which translates them into vibration and pulse on the other end.

In other words, a man can be thrusting in Cleveland while a woman is penetrated in Seattle, and the cybersex experience gets one step closer to the holodeck.

Cybersex is here!

The Sinulator lets anyone control your sex toy over the Internet!
The most fun you can have when you are apart...
The Sinulator lets someone control your sex toy over the Internet.

It installs in minutes and is easy to use. No web site or web cam is required. All you need is a PC and an Internet connection. Anyone can do it!

All your partner needs is access to the Internet. The controls will work on just about anything (Mac, PC, Linux, Palm, WebTV, airport kiosk, etc.). Within minutes - you'll be able to call or email anyone anywhere and let them control your sex toy over the internet.

ONE third of women who meet someone online have sex on the first date

ONE third of women who meet someone online have sex on the first date, and three quarters of these do not use a condom, according to a new survey.
The survey, published in the US journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy, is alarming for those who push the safe sex message - particularly as chlamydia and HIV infection rates in Australia are now at a 10-year high.
The US study, which surveyed 568 women, also found 27 per cent of respondents performed oral sex on the first date.
Felicity Percival, editor of Women’s Health magazine, said the results were worrying but not surprising.
“People do feel more comfortable with each other when they’ve had lots of conversations online, whether it’s through RSVP, Facebook, or any online social network,” she said.
“If you think ‘I know that person, I’m sure they’re safe’, you’re less likely to use a condom.”

The world's first "safe sex passport,"

The world's first "safe sex passport," aimed especially for users of dating and social networking websites, is due to be launched this week in the United States, the man behind the idea said today.

"Some years ago I met an individual who had intercourse with someone they met online, who didn't disclose that they had an STD," or sexually transmitted disease, Gonzalo Paternoster of Florida-based SSP BioAnalytics said ahead of the launch of the Safe Sex Passport on December 1, World AIDS Day.

"The idea popped into my head that people know but don't tell the truth, and we needed an independent way to verify someone's health status," he told Agence France-Presse.

The Safe Sex Passport will be available - at a cost - to anyone over the age of 18 who goes online and orders the credit-card-size article.

"online erotic ?community" places heavy emphasis on commerce

Red Light Center
This "online erotic ?community" places heavy emphasis on commerce. You can cruise 3-D porn malls and shop for pics and vids or set up your own shop to sell real and virtual sex toys. After a hectic day's work, hit a virtual nightclub and join an orgy.
How graphic: 3-D, but not soul-scarring.

Cruise swinger-friendly environments. Meet. Mate.

Naughty America: The Game
It's the next step for online dating.
Customize your avatar by going to salons, plastic surgeons, and clothing stores. Then hit the town, hook up, and switch on Sex Mode!
How graphic: Hand-drawn 2-D ?characters and relatively discreet ?depictions of bow-chicka-bow-bow.
Nookie upgrades: Turn on a webcam if you tire of toonsex.



3FEEL
Cruise swinger-friendly environments. Meet. Mate.
How graphic: Eeeeeek! The hi-res character models have very detailed faces and you-know-whats. Animations are motion-captures of South Korea's most famous adult film stars.
Nookie upgrades: Plug in a USB-compatible vibrator and enter the exciting new world of teledildonics.



Sociolotron
In this role-playing game, bumping uglies is a fact of life, just like ?battling monsters and crafting goods. Sex can be consensual or nonconsensual, and there's bondage, prostitution, STDs, and pregnancy.
How graphic: Anatomically correct characters mix it up in a 2-D realm.

loss of inhibition due to anonymity

Users of online chat rooms experience a loss of inhibition due to the anonymity of the computer medium. This anonymity is a direct result of the narrow-bandwidth effect, as described in a previous chapter. This loss of inhibition allows users to more freely experiment with their online selves. In the anonymous environment of online chat rooms, users are able experiment with their (multiplicity of) selves. This loss of inhibition online, and the ability to access other selves there, can just as easily lead to positive experiences as it can negative ones. Some users, like Alison, use cybersex to access their sexual self and their loving self. As Alison's online self learns and has experiences in cyberspace, it shares discoveries with Alison's whole self. Other u sers, like Rob, use the anonymity (and in the case of his victims, false anonymity) of online chat rooms to experiment with abusive selves. Rob abuses men and women online, and they also incorporate these experiences into their whole self.

cyber rape

Turkle describes a cyber rape that occurred in a MUD. One player took control of another player in the MUD and forced the victim's character to carry out sexual acts on his character. The victim had no control over what her player was doing as the other player had taken complete control. One aftermath of this `rape' was that the members of the online community where it occurred had a lengthy discussion to debate whether this truly was a rape of the type we normally associate with physical rape. The participants in this discussion spoke of the online self as being part of the whole self. Rape is not only a crime against the body they concluded, it is a crime against the mind and the self.

Rob's online self has lost the inhibitions and fears

Rob, just out of university and married, is a graphic designer at a California office equipment and computer manufacturer. Like anyone else probably would, I liked Rob when I first met him. He was very friendly and eager to speak with me when we first met. He approached me to volunteer as an interviewee, and I later found that he only volunteered because he thought I am a woman. After finding out my gender, he continued to speak with me and I have noticed no difference in the way he speaks with me now that he knows that I am male. But as he disclosed his abusive activities to me, I began to feel a strong urge to betray the guarantee of anonymity I have made with him so that I could warn my online friends about him. Rob's online self has lost the inhibitions and fears which keep him from hurting people off-line

Rebecca has had numerous cybersex partners

Rebecca has had numerous cybersex partners in the time that she has been online. She feels that although cybersex is pleasing for her, "physical sex is beyond a doubt 100 percent better, more pleasing and more sa tisfying." Rebecca's disappointments with cybersex are not being able to physically touch her partner and not being able to share visual things with him.

Rebecca, who prefers physical sex to cybersex, prefers cybersex over solitary masturbation. Engaging in cybersex of the interactive masturbation type defined in an earlier chapter, she achieves orgasm faster during cybersex than during solitary mastur bation. This is due to the reciprocal nature of this form of cybersex. Rebecca admits that having cybersex makes her feel "silly" and she often wonders if having cybersex is morally correct. She does not have such feelings or doubts when she engages in solitary ma sturbation.

"no sex is safer than cybersex." (Sagan, 1996)

Rebecca has not been having real life sex since she started having cybersex and phone sex. Because of her personal moral beliefs, Rebecca does not feel that casual sex in the real world is appropriate. She is also afraid of becoming infected with the HIV virus from having casual sex. Cybersex seems a safe sexual option for her. "Outside of masturbation," writes Dorion Sagan, "no sex is safer than cybersex." (Sagan, 1996)

AOL is for cybersex

America Online has a lot to offer diverse types of users, and this is part of the reason that AOL is the largest and fastest growing online service. Another reason that so many people use AOL is for cybersex.

Feminist View

We must also note that this program is created by
(most likely) men who have already received the
cultural message that good women tailor themselves
to meet the desires of men, and that men can
select (and indirectly tailor) women to meet their
desires. The program clealy runs on a view of
women as sexual commodities manipulated by men,
and the technology itself facilitates this
manipulation in a virtual sense. This is a
dangerous message, and the interactive nature of
the game may instill this message more powerfully,
but the message itself did not originate with the
programmers, the game, or the technology.

IF the point about role playing teaching men is
true, and the interactive format is more powerful
than other media, then there is a real opportunity
to write programs that teach men something
valuable about women's sexualities. Perhaps issues
could be worked in to the program around consent
and communication, women's sexual physiology,
safer sex, or the wide variation of experiences
different women find pleasurable at different
times. Randomizing the program could teach men
that not all women are alike in our appearance,
experience of pleasure, or sexual response.

cybersex can take on different forms

cybersex can take on different forms. For example, cybersex in online chat rooms often refers to computer-mediated, interactive sexual story telling (in real time). There is also virtual-reality cybersex, where people enter a virtual environment to interact with others by wearing special goggles and movement-sensitive sensors. Similarly, multiple user domains (MUDs) are used as virtual places where characters, objects, rooms, and actions are all created in text. MUD users often have cybersex in much the same way as Internet Relay Chat and chat room users do. They tell each other sexual stories.

Finally, there is an emerging area called cyberdildonics, which relates to interactive gear and toys that can enhance the online cybersex experience with actual physical sensations. Vivid Entertainment, the world's biggest producer of adult films, for example, has been experimenting with cyberdildonics. Proud of its reputation as a company that's been on the frontline of technology, it has a functioning $200 Cyber Sex Suit — a neoprene bodysuit with 36 electronic sensors in the chest, inner thighs, and other erogenous zones that transmit heat, cold, and vibrations. A person can send a signal to a DVD player via a remote, which then goes over the Internet, into the wearer's computer, and to the suit via a connector. Vivid Entertainment's lawyers, however, fear that someone might have a heart attack while wearing the suit, so the company has put it on the shelf for the near future.

But what really makes cybersex so appealing? Experts cite safety, anonymity, convenience, affordability, and escape as the five top reasons. Pornography used to require risks: a trip to the seedy movie theater or the scrutiny of a video-store clerk. Physical encounters require more serious risks, including disease. Virtual sex poses none of these problems.

The "body suit" is another new device

The "body suit" is another new device. It would stimulate many different erogenous zones simultaneously, thereby intensifying physical experience. They would use sensors to stimulate touch and will likely be custom-fitted to accommodate a wide range of body types and proportions.

Different sensor pads might be located throughout the body suit, each designed to stimulate a specific region of the body in variable and programmable ways. Other sex machines have employed the use of suction cups and vibrating parts. Primitive body suits have reportedly been developed, but met with opposition from federal agencies due to medical concerns.

On another front, television has gradually migrated to increased suggestiveness. This trend toward sexualizing music is epitomized for our youth through stations such as MTV. Imagine celebrities of the future may very well take their suggestiveness a step further. For the price of a concert ticket, imagine wearing a body suit and having cyber-sex with a suggestive MTV pop singer. Imagine that you feel every thrust of the superstars' gyrations, with sensors strategically placed to throb and pulse until you reach orgasm.

Then imagine having sex with your life partner later that evening. After feeling the superstar afterglow, where will your thoughts go as you make love to your partner? Will your thoughts go to the superstar? How will sex with the partner compare to cyber-sex with the superstar?

Let's take you a step further into the psychological complications that might arise from such technical wonders. If you solve your marital problem by having your partner join you for the evening's cyber-sexual activities, where will your partner's thoughts go during lovemaking with you? Will you have the skills to keep connected to each other? Or will you silently join the ranks of the increasing population of "at-risk" individuals who engage in cyber-sexual compulsivity?

As the Internet evolves to providing increasingly life-like erotica, users of pornography are proportionately at risk for committing infidelity. For these people, it will become ever more important that discussions of relationship agreements be clarified to include all forms of technology. Unfortunately, it is more likely that for these groups, such discussions with their offline partners will be avoided.

Cybersex Bot

Jenny18 - A Cybersex Bot Implemented in Eliza

'eliza' is a program that talks to you, pretending to be a psychologist. its script of possible responses is super tiny, so it doesn't fool anyone. or so i thought.

IRC is a network full of chat rooms (or "channels") where a lot of scary internet people (or "perverts") hang out. my friend reduz found a version of 'eliza' that could go on IRC. he put it on IRC. a lot of people from other countries thought it was a real woman, so naturally they tried to have sex with it. they got frustrated quickly. reduz is a bad man.

reduz asked me to make the eliza bot better. i'm not smart enough to make like neural networks and natural language parsing and contextual branching decision matrices, but i sure as hell know how to talk like a guy pretending to be a dumb girl. it is sort of like

jenny18: heeeeeyyyy how r u? =) wanna sex? lol

so i replaced eliza's tiny, boring script with a massive dumb blonde script that has like 3,800 responses on all sorts of topics, but mostly sex. jenny18 is very horny and she loves talking to horny guys. and everyone knows the best place to talk to horny guys is on dalnet irc sex channels.

so i took jenny18 there.

eventually an actual real artificial intelligence professor from Ireland noticed this little page. he came up with the idea long before i did, but i obsessed for hundreds of hours over it, so he was pretty impressed. this goes to show that lots of challenge in AI is in speaking naturally, and on the internet most people speak like idiots, so you can sort of cheat around a lot of things. i wrote a little editorial on that phenomenon a while back, too.

e-mail me at virt@vgmix.com if you think this is cool. to answer some questions: no, not a single line of jenny18 dialogue is typed in, it's all coming from the bot's script. also no, i'm not releasing the script just yet, i am working on a second, even cooler version! and finally, making sex bots is just a disturbing side hobby, my real job is writing music for video games!

"Over a three-month period, he sent about 8,000 emails," he said. "On any one day, he was sending about 300, mainly to his girlfriend. He was texting

"Over a three-month period, he sent about 8,000 emails," he said. "On any one day, he was sending about 300, mainly to his girlfriend. He was texting every day, and probably spending £20 to £30 a week on texts."

The problem came to light when one of the emails intended for his girlfriend was accidentally sent to work colleagues. He was put in touch with the trust by the union, but at a later stage resigned from his job rather than face disciplinary procedures, Mr Irvine said. The relationship ended, and much of the text and emailing problem ended with it.

"It was related to the relationship difficulties he was experiencing," said Mr Irvine, who is seeing the teenager once a week. "In terms of an addiction, that isn't unusual - there are often underlying problems, problems at work, relationship problems, stress or not coping, or mental health difficulties. For him, it was all about gaining reassurance from his girlfriend, knowing where she was, and knowing what she was doing."

Mr Irvine added: "He has been very successful in cutting down the texts and the emails. He is spending no more than £10 a week on texts, which is the goal we set, and he has cut down on the emails altogether."

The computer is my friend, it's my life, my social life

Anthony Chan betrays the tell-tale signs of his addiction: his skin is pallid and covered in spots, he sits nervously hunched, peering to correct his blighted vision and he has trouble communicating with friends and family.

At just 16 he is emotionally fragile, physically ill and his future has been compromised by the addiction which has him in its grip. But when the lights are switched off he gets online, he could not care less about the problems it brings. His drug is the Internet and, when connected, it makes the lonely Hong Kong schoolboy feel on top of the world.

"The computer is my friend, it's my life, my social life," says Chan, shifting in his chair and squinting in the glare of the brightly-lit office where we talk. It is one of the few times this week he has left the confines of his bedroom where he spends hours and hours every day logged onto the Internet and he is missing it already, he says.

Timeless limbo of Cyberspace

lives are were shattered by an overwhelming compulsion to surf the Net, play MUD games, or chat with distant and invisible neighbors in the timeless limbo of Cyberspace