Introduction

Power, Jennifer and Waling, Andrea (2024) Introduction. In: Tech, Sex and Health :. Routledge, London, pp. 1-4. ISBN 9781032716855

Abstract

This updated 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.