This Japanese Company Is Taking Masturbation Tech to Extreme Levels, but Only for Men
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If internet porn leaves you cold, and you can’t manage the hassle of finding a real, live, woman to have sex with, a Japanese company has an attractive offer for you. Male sex toy manufacturer Tenga has introduced a virtual reality bodysuit that simulates sexual intercourse, and takes partners out of the equation, Mic reported.
The Illusion VR bodysuit comes equipped with a Tenga masturbation device that stimulates the penis, and with grope-able fake breasts. The suit sends "impulses all over the wearer’s body to make it feel like another human being is touching them," according to ir.net.
The device was created for use with Illusion's Oculus game "Sexy Beach," which lets players customize female avatars and have sex with them in virtual reality, while being stimulated to orgasm in actual reality. The suit costs $400 and is already sold out, according to Mic.
Ir.net observed that the technology might also be used "for intimate cyber meet-ups with those you may or may not know personally," and even threaten the livliehoods of sex workers down the line.
Whether this device will take business from the prostitution industry is yet to be seen, but there is no doubt that when this technology improves, sex workers everywhere should be alarmed. — IR.net
"I think in the future, the virtual real will become more real than actual real sex," Tenga CEO Tsuneki Sato told Motherboard.
As ATTN: has previously reported, this isn't the first time the sex toy industry has embraced 21st century technological advances.
The field of teledildonics — technology that transmits the sensation of sexual intercourse — has enticed tech developers to enter the sex toy market in droves. The company Kiiroo recently created a long-distance sex system to simulate intercourse, and was nominated for a Cannes Lion award for best product design for an oral sex simulator for women in 2014.
How gender shapes sex toy technology.
As the Cut suggested, the male masturbation suit can be interpreted as reinforcing an unsavory cultural message that stingy or picky women are to blame for men's complaints about their sex lives—so why include them at all?
Women also have different attitudes toward sexual technology than men. According to a survey conducted by Tufts University, two-thirds of women polled wouldn't have sex with a sex-robot, while two-thirds of men would get frisky with one, Broadly reported.
As to why, Shelly Ronen, a PhD candidate at New York University who studied sex, intimacy, and technology, told Broadly that several factors might contribute to the gap between women's and men's attitudes toward sex technology.
"Assuming this survey is really able to capture respondents' desires, then the first possibility is that women hold a more emotional notion of meaningful sex, one that values connection with another person more highly than men do," Ronen said.
It also might have to do with how society portrays and stigmatizes sex for men and women. "Men are not just free to engage in meaningless sex, they are also encouraged to do so in a way that is not the case for women; women are more likely to suffer reputation consequences for doing the same. So perhaps women are responding to that social pressure, knowing that sex with an object, which is a form of meaningless sex, would be more harshly perceived," Ronen told Broadly.
As ATTN: has previously reported, female stars like Amber Rose and Bree Olsen, who previously worked as a stripper and adult entertainment actress respectively, have stood up against slut shaming, and shared how damaging it feels to be belittled about your sex life.
You can watch a full video of how the Tenga apparatus works on Youtube. Needless to say, it is NSFW.