The Hidden Language of Vibrators: A Politico-Ontological Reading

Abstract

As digital artifacts for women's pleasurable experience, vibrators are sophistically designed, embedded with cutting-edge technology, and popular among women. Yet they are still facing social, cultural, and legal obstacles; they are disappointingly understudied by academia as a topic of research. In this pictorial, we use vibrators as our vehicles to speculate future aesthetic, social, and political ways of being related to female sexuality. Our speculation is based on a critical politico-ontological reading of the contemporary design of vibrators by situating it in the historical, cultural, and visual contexts through an art historical analysis. We find that the contemporary design of vibrators carries gender norms and sexual normativity into the futures that they construct. We call on Interaction Design and HCI to tackle prejudice against vibrators to explore the potential of vibrators to improve sexual autonomy, sexual self-determination, and sexual independence of women, especially women with dis/abilities and the elderly.