New technologies are changing sex, intimacy and health

This special edition brings together new sociological work exploring the nexus between technology, human sexuality and health. In recent decades, rapid advances in biomedical, biomechanical and biodigital technologies have inspired scholarship that seeks to understand the ways in which practices of sex and intimacy are being transformed by such technologies and the implications this has for health. For example, scholars have tracked the biomedicalisation of sexuality, charting the rising prominence of pharmaceuticals such as Viagra and Flibanserin (‘female Viagra’) that have redefined cultural perceptions of ‘normal’ sexual desire and function (Flore, 2018). Meanwhile, new biomechanical products for sex have filtered into public imagination via sensationalised media reports of lifelike sex robots (Sparrow, 2017), sex via virtual reality, or haptic technologies to communicate using simulated touch (Elsey, van Andel, Kater, Reints, & Spiering, 2019). These technologies produce unprecedented possibilities for imagining the augmentation of human sexual bodies. This is occurring in the context of advances in biodigitally-enabled apps and global communication networks that facilitate intimate human connection over vast distances (Attwood, Hakim, & Winch, 2017; Renold & Ringrose, 2017). The papers in this collection explore themes of sex, health, bodies and risk in relation to new technologies. They reveal the complex ways in which these themes are intertwined, focusing on how new technologies and human action collaboratively produce or transform sexual and intimate cultures and sexual subjectivities.

Albury and colleagues (2020) interrogate the production of media discourses that uncritically position dating apps as a social problem through analysis of the relationship between media reporting and research. Albury et al. (2020) identify a strand of media reporting that educates people about enjoyable and safe use of dating apps in a way that does not entrench risk narratives. Petrychyn et al. (2020) similarly focus their discussion away from hook up apps as a social problem to explore their role in developing ‘intimate publics’. This paper draws attention to unexpected outcomes of dating app technology, focusing on intimacy that is created through common use of these apps in everyday life, not just between people who meet potential sexual partners via the apps. A sense of intimacy and sociability develops between women who use the apps based on shared experiences, familiarity and conversations about their app use.

Hollingshead et al. (2020) also look beyond the prescribed function of hook-up and social networking apps to make sense of how they are transforming sexual cultures among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Philippines. The authors argue that networking apps have agentic capacity to transform sexual networks and subjectivities among MSM, and that this has implications for how we may approach HIV prevention. Flore and Pienaar (2020) similarly explore the agentic capacity of technologies in their study of marketing discourse and the function of wireless enabled sex toys (teledildonics). Flore and Piennar utilise the concept of ‘sexuotechnical-assemblages’ to encourage us to think about wireless sex toys not as objects that reflect cultural or gendered norms, but as objects that have potential to bring into being new sexual cultures and subjectivities. This is produced through an assemblage of human sexual desire, gendered cultural scripts, and teledildonic products.

Three papers engage with the relationship between new technologies and women's bodies. James et al. (2020) explore young women's perceptions of genital modification using old and new technologies for hair removal (razors, wax), adornment (tattooing, vajazzling), or cosmetic surgery (labiaplasty). The authors argue that the high public profile of new surgical technologies reduces the extent to which young women perceive ‘old’ technologies and everyday practices, such as pubic hair-removal, to be product of gendered beauty standards. Brian et al. (2020) present a critical reading of reproductive health policy in relation to Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC). Discourses of freedom, choice and empowerment for women have long been associated with the contraceptive pill. However, Brian, Grzanka and Mann argue that these discourses of health and empowerment obscure the ways reproductive health policy relating to LARC limits reproductive choice for women who are culturally positioned as irresponsible or ‘risky’, something often determined along lines of race and class. Debergh's (2020) paper examines clinical encounters in which the bodies of women seeking access to The Pill, or men seeking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP), are assessed as ‘safe’ or ‘risky’. Bodies that are unable to tolerate medical contraception or PrEP, usually due to medical conditions such as high blood pressure, are deemed ‘risky’ sexual bodies, expanding the reach of biomedicine in shaping human sexuality.

The call for papers for this special edition was made many months before the world had heard of Covid-19. By the time we received papers, many cities had imposed social lockdowns in an effort to stall the global pandemic, imposing widescale social isolation. Social lockdown brought digital technology into the mainstream of human communication and intimate connection. As such, this special issue provides a timely backdrop to exploring how technology facilitates new practices of human intimacy and sexual connection.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.