Securing Sexuality is the podcast and conference promoting sex positive, science based, and secure interpersonal relationships. We give people tips for safer sex in a digital age. We help sextech innovators and toy designers produce safer products. And we educate mental health and medical professionals on these topics so they can better advise their clients. Securing Sexuality provides sex therapists with continuing education (CEs) for AASECT, SSTAR, and SASH around cyber sexuality and social media, and more.
Links from this week’s episode: Quote from this week's episode: "Even virtual partners deserve safety and pleasure. Learn your virtual flogging technique BEFORE you code the virtual experience." -- Stefani Goerlich The Unsexy Side of Virtual Reality: Disorientation and Non-Consent
In today's digital age, technology has become an integral part of our lives, including our intimate relationships. With the rise of dating apps, online platforms, and social media, the way we connect with others has drastically changed. While this has opened up new avenues for finding love and exploring our sexuality, it has also introduced new challenges when it comes to information security and safe sex.
The intersection of intimacy and information security in the digital age presents both opportunities and challenges. While technology has made it easier to connect with others, it has also increased the risks associated with privacy breaches and unsafe practices. By prioritizing information security, protecting privacy, practicing consent and communication, and being aware of red flags, individuals can navigate safe sex in the digital age. By striking a balance between embracing technology and safeguarding personal safety, we can ensure that intimate relationships in the digital era are both fulfilling and secure. Key Concepts:
Stefani Goerlich: Hello and welcome to securing sexuality. The podcast where we discuss the intersection of intimacy-
Wolf Goerlich: -and information security. I'm Wolf Goerlich. He's a hacker, and I'm Stefani Goerlich. She's a sex therapist. And together we're going to discuss what safe sex looks like in a digital age. And today we're talking about what I believe you called. And maybe I'm doing a sputter here. But the least sexy experience you have ever had. Stefani: Yeah. I mean, I've had a lot of unsexy experiences. I've had major surgery. I've spent time in the hospital. I I've delivered Children, um, as in having them not like catching them. And and it's ultimately the least sexy thing I have ever done in my life. Wolf: But it starts out with a sexy word, right? So I say information security. But a lot of people call that cybersecurity because cyber is a sexy word. So where did we go? Stefani: Uh, we went to a cyber brothel. Wolf: Du du du, which sounds like it should be exciting. Stefani: I mean, it is exciting in the constant nagging fear in the back of your mind as to whether or not you're about to be kidnapped by the Russian mafia exciting. Wolf: Well, I think like so many of these journeys, your travel to the cyber broth will sort of set the tone. Right. So, like you, you the foreplay sets the experience. Stefani: And in this case, the foreplay was something between mission impossible and hostile, Maybe. Wolf: Yeah. So you're in a taxi, you're being driven to the cyber brothel. Stefani: And it's, you know, we're in Europe. I'm not gonna get more specific than that. But, you know, picture stereotypical movie, European street. Especially like the back streets, the kinds that people get chased through in and taken, um, we pull up in front of this relatively nondescript building with this big wooden heavy door and a series of buttons, like buzzers, like you would have for an apartment, none of which are clearly labeled press here for cyber brothel. Wolf: And why is that? Like you would think the advertising and marketing would be a part of this experience. When you go to other cities, you go to other things. You're like, Oh, step here for this experience. Stefani: Yeah, this was not like Las Vegas, where there's three dozen people shoving like, uh, sex worker uh, discount cards into your hands as you walk down the strip. This was very covert. Very quiet. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like Mission Impossible. It felt like a dead drop somewhere. Like take the USB drive in a sealed manila envelope to the brick building with the dark red door press button five and await further instructions. That's not actually a description of the building. I'm not serious about that guys, basically the direction that we were given in order to find the cyber brothel. Wolf: And then they come on to the PA You got to read off a code. I could totally see this. Stefani: And they did. They did come on to the PA you press the buzzer and they're like, Hey, who are you and why are you here? And so you know, you're forced to say I, I am here on a quest for the cyber brothel. I seek the cyber and there's a pause, and they're like, OK, you're gonna go in the door. You're gonna go up these stairs, you're gonna look for this small, discrete little sign, and then you're gonna go into that room. Wolf: And so there's no people, like no one at all? Stefani: No. Which again in the dark at night, in a generic European city at, like twilight it very much feels like you're walking into the plot of Taken. Nothing about this felt safe, and it felt like an incredibly stupid thing to be doing. And the best part was they tried to buzz us in and it didn't work right. Like we had to then press button five again, and an entirely different voice came on like the first person was like a woman's voice. It's like, Who are you and what do you seek here? And you have to say, like, you know, it's like the the quest for the Holy Grail. I seek the cyber brothel, but then, if you have to press the button again, you get a very irritated man who's like, Why are you buzzing me? And so at first I'm like, Well, did we push the wrong button? But no, no irritated man goes with Holy Grail girl, and he's just annoyed that you had to ask twice, so eventually we get into the building and it opens up into this hallway that I'm gonna put pictures of the interior in the show notes not the exterior, but the interior. Because anybody that sees these pictures will look at them and go Stefani, why did you not immediately turn around and leave? Clearly, you're about to be murdered and or trafficked or both. It was one of the creepiest places I've ever been in very dimly lit, like huge cathedral ceilings. No lights on on the interior at all. The only light is what is coming through a handful of windows from the again fading light of a of European evening and like, the paint is peeling and it's echoey, and it feels like you're about to be murdered. Wolf: Now, this is a cyber brothel. So I've got to ask, Were these voices even real voices or were they like cyber AI voices So they weren't overtly digitized like they didn't have that whole voice masking sort of sound to them. But, I mean, voice stooping has gotten so good these days, it could be it for all I know, I was talking to recordings, so I don't know Maybe they're talking to the cyber themselves. We don't know. Wolf: We don't know. All right, so now you're in, You're in this hallway and one of the things I don't think we mentioned at the start of this was this was supposedly the woman's experience you signed up for. Stefani: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is important to note that this was specifically a discounted, unique experience just for women. And let me tell you, if anybody has a CNC fetish or a kidnapping fetish, I keep coming back to that because I really cannot stress how unsafe and haunted house, like, you know, that whole somebody's gonna jump out and put a black bag over my head at any moment. This entire experience felt, if that is a kink of yours, I highly recommend, at the very least, showing up to the cyber brothel. You don't even need to do anything. You'll get all of your fetishes scratched just by walking into the building. For the women's experience, you're standing in this cavernous, dark, decrepit like it almost feels like an old church. It's like really high and arched architecture. And then there's a dark corridor on one side and a dark corridor on the other, and they don't really give clear instructions. So you're gonna stand there for a minute, and you're going to be like, which path do I take? You know, one path leads to Goblin city and the other path leads to certain death. I don't know, and eventually figured out which way to go went up the stairs, and we stumbled past a dentist's office and to the cyber brother. Wolf: Was the really a dentist office? Stefani: Yes. I don't really don't want to give too much away of the location, but I'm sure there's more than one dentist in Europe. So I will say that the cyber brothel is one flight up from a dentist office. Wolf: All our OpSec people are busy trying to figure out where that is now. Stefani: I mean, narrow it down to every dentist in Europe, and then start from there. I'm giving you a very clear direction of that. Wolf: Dentist in a cybersex building. All right. So, um, did you choose Goblin City or did you choose certain death? Stefani: Well, I mean, that's TBD. I suppose but at the moment I'm still alive. So I'm gonna go with I ended up in Goblin City, and it's not a terribly inaccurate way of describing it, because one of the experiences that men can choose from is like a real doll experience. And so that is not a part of the woman's package. But there was a real doll in a swing, just like chilling in the middle of the room. And in that kind of, you know, eighties Jim Henson way, it looks really realistic and yet somehow isn't quite human sort of vibe. I'm gonna go with. Yeah, I ended up in Goblin City. I mean, the Goblin had, like, pastel purple Bob cut and caters on and some really chin lingerie. But I, I did find my way to Goblin City. Wolf: Well, there you go. So you're you're in a city. What else is in this room? Stefani: So it's like this big white studio space, and first you walk in and there's like, this corridor that's lit with neon, and it's just it kind of feels a little cyberpunk, a little cyber dystopian. I appreciated that they had both a tip box and had printed off like reviews. Adam used me. I don't know why, as covert as they are like they have online reviews. But they did, and in case you wanted to visit the cyber brothel without first vetting it. When you get there, you can pause and read some of the reviews. Lovely. If that is your decision-making process, I question it. But you know, it's an option that you have. So you go down the neonish corridor and you walk into this like big studio space. And in the studio space, there was a mirrored wall with a giant projector above it and then projecting onto the opposite wall like 15 ft by 15 ft. Like the full wall was effectively like a porn hub starter menu, right? Like the little thumbnails that you can choose from. Uh, I already mentioned our sex doll in her kitty ear. She's like chilling on the swing in the middle of the room, but that was not included in my experience. Uh, there was a platform bed with a variety of electronic accoutre. You have the standard hit you have. They had a fucking machine, which looked terrifying. Um, and this is not to kink shame anybody. You guys all know me, You know, I'm very kink, positive and kink-affirming. If this is your thing, I celebrate your enjoyment of this thing. This entire episode is just my firsthand reaction to this experience. And if it ever comes across as minimizing or dismissive of something that you love or enjoy, reach out. I'll apologize in person. But this is not a broad statement. And all of these various toys and tools and fetishes and experiences this is only my sort of my personal experience. So this very unusual situation, right? Wolf: Like you like to say, Don't yuck people's yum. And in a way, here, we're talking about like, don't yum your yuck! Stefani: No, I'm OK with people. Yuming my yuck, I just want I'm asking our listeners to give me Grace to have a yuk in this particular episode. This is gonna be an episode where Stefani encounters a lot of yucks. And if that's gonna make anybody feel judged or upset, that's OK. And I encourage you to you know, you don't You can skip this episode or you can reach out to me and we can process together. But not every experience is a great experience for every person. And this was unpleasant for me. Wolf: So you're in this room, Um, you have followed the voices. You've followed the neon. You have perhaps paused to read the great online reviews that were printed out. Uh, and again, I love that it's completely anonymous. But Joe, 57 says So you're now do you ever hear from the voices again? I mean, how do they know you're there or what you're doing? Stefani: So that's the best part. I, uh we're like, standing in this room. We're trying to kind of just acclimate to this incredibly strange new environment. And then, like a voice from God, irritated man, voice from downstairs resounds through the room, and he gives some very specific instructions in a very thick accent that I really couldn't understand. Um, I know that everything there was for our convenience of enjoyment, I know that I only had two hours. That was stress foreshadowing. I would not need two hours. Um, my personal favorite was our attention was directed to the hanging dish of condoms and, the highlight of this experience, The bottle on a little table, much like Alice in Wonderland labeled beautifully, “lube for the holes.” Wolf: Oh, no, This sounds very, very feminine. I can see why this was the woman's experience. Stefani: So once we have been oriented to the two-hour maximum, uh, the lube for the holes. Oh, and next to the fucking machine with the assorted attachments, there was, um, an Oculus headset, a VR headset. This will become important because that, my friends, is the cornerstone of the woman's experience package at the cyber brothel. Wolf: We have audio. Stefani: Are you gonna play audio? Wolf: Whenever you're ready. We've got, like, two audio clips here. Stefani: All right, let's hear audio of me experiencing virtual reality cyber sex for the first time. Recorded (Stefani): “OK, so I put on a VR headset, and, uh, there's like the lower half of a woman's torso. And there's this guy who looks very slimy sitting across from the torso, reading a magazine. But then I hit a button and it went out and I don't know what happened, and all of a sudden I was alone in a spaceship with, like, a power point projector. And the most fun was I could turn the power point projector from blue to white and back again. But I was completely alone, and I couldn't make anything happen. And so you fiddled around with stuff and everything went black, and the bedoink VR logo came up, which is super sexy. And now I'm back in the room with the slimy guy. But I'm sitting parallel to what is supposed to be my own torso. So I have clearly suffered a terrible back injury. No way my spinal column has not suffered. And he just took his shirt off. So I think he has a thing for women at the hospital because I don't know where we are. Don't know what's happening, but it looks like I'm being molested in a waiting room. No, I'm not. OK, wait. I can move it around. I can Oh, no. What is that? Whoa, That was weird. Um, I can make him, like, jump up on me or not. If I try to, like, rotate back and forth, he like, it's like a zoom in, but because it's VR, it's like zoom Oh, he went backwards. I don't know what is happening right now, but this isn't sexy.” Stefani: Yeah, “I don't know what's happening right now, but it isn't sexy,” might be the theme for this entire experience. Wolf: So it doesn't sound like the controls were very good. Stefani: The controls were like a thumb grip joystick that I suspect… I don't know. It was really difficult to control. I think that the booming European voice of God that oriented us when we came in it would have been helpful to have gotten like, um maybe a VR tutorial before just jumping into it. But it was It was not immersive in a way that felt realistic if, like as you heard in the recording, at some point, I did something that changed the perspective of the headset that completely detached it from the orientation of what was supposed to be like my virtual body. So I was looking to my right, like as if I were facing the right. But my virtual legs were still facing forward, and it it was just really disorienting and uncomfortable. And because VR is not AI, it's not like responsive. It can't actually change what it's doing based on you're doing. It's only gonna do what it's programmed to do. So the slimy guy in the waiting room just kept trying to molest me as I was, and I am saying Molest jokingly. I apologise if that's triggering language for anybody. But I there was no sort of storyline or through-line to explain what was leading to your encounter with the guy in the waiting room. It was just kind of you're sitting there staring at each other and then out of nowhere, he takes off his shirt and climbs into your lap. And so I very much interpreted this as not sexy, as this feels much less consensual than I would want it to be. So moles is the best term I can use to describe for it, because there wasn't really any sort of there. There were no like cut scenes or anything like you would have in a video game to kind of create a story around this experience. And without that, and especially because I was still trying to figure out how to work the controllers and everything, it was just like, Oh, now all of a sudden there's a guy on top of me. I am not liking this. This is confusing and definitely not sexy. Wolf: Was there medical kink stuff in the room or was that part of- Stefani: in the virtual room or in the cyber brothel room? Wolf: The cyber brothel room? Stefani: No, the cyber brothel room was very much just like a waiting room, and it might not even have been a waiting room. It could have been. It was just a space with a row of chairs in front of your virtual self and a dude sitting in one of those virtual chairs. Now I will say, in the actual cyber brothel, you know, the real bricks and mortar cyber brothel. There was, in fact, a very vintage, um, gynecological chair in one corner that was advertised as being available for her comfort, which for anybody again, this is the woman's experience package that we paid for. I don't know if anybody has ever had a comfortable experience in a gynecologist's office, but if I were, you know, orchestrating, choreographing a woman's sensual experience. If the word comfort was what I was going for, I don't know that stirrups, especially forties or 50’s style stirrups would be where I would go with that. Maybe a chaise lounge, maybe, Um, you know, a hammock. But yeah, there There actually was medical equipment in the physical space that I was inhabiting, but it was not part of the virtual experience at all. Wolf: So should we take you back to the waiting room and play some more of this audio? Stefani: Sure. Wolf: Because I love listening to this. Recorded (Stefani): “OK, wait. Just went back in time. He just went from licking my parallel leg to now standing fully up right together. Now he's back to licking my parallel leg. And I really need to convey to you that the only way I see any of this is to turn to my left and I can't figure out a little perspective. So it's very much like I've been like a magician's assistant who's been cut in half, and part of me is being molested in a hospital waiting room, and the other part of me is looking over my shoulder and watching it happen because I'm clearly a segmented person right now, and he's like super into that. But he just keeps licking her legs, and I don't think people realize that's not sexy. I don't know what it is. Please don't be so close to my face. So I need to OK, you're making me go cross side this. Oh, no, I zoomed in. No, that made me more cross-eyed. Oh, no, If I Oh, what is happening? Oh, if I try to zoom out, he just, like, goes like fish eye lines on me. So his face is really close and blurry and it makes me go cross-eyed. I'm getting motion sick. He's way too close, so I can't make him back up. Also, For the record, the badoink VR logo is hovering over his face. But I can't move it. I can't make him. This is the least sexy experience I've ever had.” Stefani: It's really important to say for those that might not be able to differentiate the sound. I am laughing so hard in those clips. I am not crying. I am not distressed. It might be hard to tell, but no, I was laughing my ass off because really, truly, it was so bizarrely anti-sexual and disorientingly unsexy. So that is uproarious laughter what you're hearing from me. Wolf: So you're in this headset. All you can do is control this button. Did you ever get your legs back on straight? Or was that an ongoing theme? Stefani: No, Actually, I gave up and eventually went back to the spaceship with the main menu and started experimenting with other clips that were not intended for women. There was only the one. So if you were not into magician's assistant, split in half style POV porn, you're gonna have a bad time as a woman at the cyber brothel. So, I went back out and started trying to experiment with some of the other clips that were available for male visitors to the cyber brothel because they had options. They had, like, probably eight or nine different options. So women just had overly touchy dude in the waiting room. And I should say again that I'm wearing a VR headset this entire time. So at no point does the thought that I'm not going to get kidnapped by the Russian Mafia, ever leave my head because it feels really creepy to be relatively alone in this, like dark, decrepit building alone in this unusual space, I was never fully convinced that the voices that the angry man or Holy Grail woman weren't listening to us the entire time because they clearly had a way to, you know, project their voices into the room. So I had no way of knowing whether or not there were cameras in the space, which made things very uncomfortable. But it is incredibly vulnerable to be in a city you don't live in, in a space you're unfamiliar with, alone in that space separately with some literal mask on your face. And that is supposed to somehow let you relax and have this, like, sensual woman's experience in the waiting room. And maybe it's just me. Maybe the people that are really into VR porn don't need this, but I really feel like I needed some sort of narrative arc. I needed an introductory scene where the guy in the waiting room is like, Hi, my name is George, and I'm here to seduce you like there was nothing. And so, just like the abruptness of the actual VR scene, combined with the vulnerability of the space and the fact that you're completely blind when you're wearing this thing. It was an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable experience. Wolf: But it sounds like towards the end, you got to have a good time. Stefani: So the key to this for me was to give up on the idea of this being sexy. Wolf: Should we jump to that part of the audio or do you want to tell a little bit more about you? Stefani: And I didn't know that there was audio for that. So yeah, let's hear the moment when I give up on the idea of sexiness. Recorded (Stefani): “Uh, OK, um, he's now addressing the things here in the hospital waiting room and I don't remember having an enthusiastic consent conversation here. Why is he licking her knee? This is Oh, the nice thing is, I was segmented from my body, So if I just turn to the right, I can't see any Oh, I got chairman instructions. Click on the onstick click on the stick to, uh, and turn my glasses on. I don't know what it's telling me to do. Oh, wait, no, OK, I'm back to the laser pointer and I'm in like the Grand Canyon. On the bright side of no longer being sexually assaulted by a slimy guy at A hospital in your room, Ok? Oh, I think this is like the menu screen. OK, so the Grand Canyon is on my right, and if I look behind me, there's, like a library and some very comfortable chairs. I could just hang out here, actually. OK, I'm laughing so hard I had to take off the mask for a minute. All right, So, uh, Grand Canyon and I have a power point clicker in my hand again and some very comfy, like midcentury modern-looking chairs and some library books. But the spines are all backward. Oh, wait, no, I wonder, Can I click on a book? I cannot Fun fact, badoink VR cannot be used as a kindle. Uh, there's, like a weird cubic fireplace. OK, so this is like an office. If you look behind you, there's, like, cubicles in offices, and I don't know why that would be. They created a very weird menu page, and there's only one female POV thing, and that was really disturbing. So what are my other choices? Um I could do heat wave. I could do helping a neighbour out. I'm assuming the helper or the neighbour is male. Uh, the jet setting sex coach. Good God, the female one is 29 minutes long. No, I would get so motion sick, I would throw up. No, no, no, no. Um, there's one called lubricious. That's not a word. Um oh, cum slut stories to tell in the dark. I wanna know if that's a horror theme one, but that's like 47 minutes long. All right, I'm not doing this for 47 minutes, but I wonder if it's a horror movie. OK, I'm gonna, um, Power point click The cum- the Oh, OK, it's on. What? What's up? This is kink VR. OK, but it's not the kink.com logo, so I don't think it's kink dot com VR Oh, OK, so now all of a sudden I am face to face with a girl on a spanking bench and there's a guy spanking her, and there's a girl on what looks like a four-point cushion thingy kneeling behind her. But my glasses aren't on, so all of this is a little blurry. Um, unlike the women's POV, they actually talk in this one, which is fascinating. There's people always say that women need conversation for arousal, but I guess badoink VR doesn't think so. Because it was literally just a slimy guy in a waiting room, like licking your knees. And here they're, like having full blown conversations.” Wolf: What? Do you remember what the conversations were about? Oh, by the way, I love that you're fascinated by. Oh, look, it's so nice. They're talking to each other. Stefani: I mean, therapist is gonna a therapist, right? You gotta have dialogue. Um, I do not remember saying that. I. I did not offer enthusiastic consent to waiting room guy, but I'm glad to know that in the moment of blind in a VR headset in a creepy cyber brothel abandoned space, I was still consent minded. I do not remember what they were talking about, but it was fascinating to me that that was where they put dialogue. And maybe it's just a difference in the production companies, right? But the male POV scenes had more people in terms of options for interaction had more dialogue had, I would say better foreplay. I know that's relative, and everybody will have their own preferences. But I mean, if I'm given a choice between what feels sexy sucking your thumb or licking your kneecap, I'm probably gonna go sucking your thumb and you got to know them first, right? There's clearly some conversation. Wolf: What I like about that is because I know you so well. And I like that you're almost surely switching into your like With Sprinkles on Top. You know, writer's, uh, mind going Oh, well, that was a lovely conversation. I think they might have wanted to share their expectations a little bit more, but at least they established upfront what was gonna happen in the scene. I could almost imagine the wheels turning as you're as you're switching into this one. Stefani: I mean, you know, I don't usually we don't usually talk about our lives or our identities on the show, but I'm pretty open about the fact that I am a rather demisexual person for doing the work that I do. I need that conversation piece. I need that emotional connection piece, and it's not that hot, steamy scenes are not hot or steamy. I just need the narrative context for them. That's What makes romance novels and stories so great relative to this experience, for example, and one of the things that I thought was interesting was that the, you know, the kink VR scene that was available to the guys offered a little bit of that and that wasn't there for the only scene with women. And it was interesting to me. So I don't know if it's a therapist thing or a dummy thing, but yeah, I definitely appreciated the fact that there was just a little bit of conversation, a little bit of warming each other up before you jump right into that super sexy kneecap licking. I think we would all agree, even if you take the idea of sex completely out of something. If you're waiting for your flu shot and somebody starts licking your knee, that's gonna be a confusing moment. Wolf: Absolutely. Should we play how this ended? Stefani: Sure. Recorded (Stefani): “Oh, OK, so the girl on the spanking bench is now sucking my virtual thumb. I'm no longer parallel to my body, so that's good for just pure orientation purposes. Um, he's flogging her now, and he has very poor technique. I would expect more from Kink VR.” Wolf: I did just wanna put that part in before we go and listen to the rest of it because we didn't get to that He's flogging her, but he has very poor technique. So you cannot shut off what you do. Just for the record, even when you're concerned, you're gonna get kidnapped in the Random city in a random building with effectively a digital blindfold on in the middle of a room, you're like, you know what? That technique is not very good. Stefani: OK, here's the thing. I am committed to intimate justice and pleasure equity. And that means that everybody deserves to have a safe encounter that feels good for them. And if somebody does not have good flogging technique, even if the person they're flogging exists only in the virtual world, that person is not having a safe or pleasurable encounter. And they deserve that. And you and I have had so many conversations with so many people recently about the future of AI and AI personhood and all of this that I wanna go on record as being the first person that says even virtual partners who deserve safety and pleasure. So learn your virtual flogging technique before you code the virtual reality experience. That's all I'm saying. Wolf: Mic drop moment. All right, Back to the recording. Recorded (Stefani): “Um, is there anything behind me? No. If I turn around, I get click und the onslitz again. But there's no like office cubicles behind me, either. So that's an improvement. Yeah, So this seems to be like a standard sort of home dungeon scene. Yeah, that's OK. The girl in the four-point cushion seems very confused by what's happening with the other girl that's sucking my virtual finger. What happens if I push buttons? Oh, that's weird. I push a button and all of a sudden it looks like I'm looking through a box or something like the The viewpoint changed, but the box moves with me. So it's like a tunnel vision POV like, if I only want to focus on the dude with the flogger and not see any of the girls in the room, I can do that. So kink VR is like cool it like, um, OK, if I zoom out to Oh, it went back in time again. So fun fact for some reason on these controllers, both the zoom in zoom out and the rewind fast forward button is exactly the same. So sometimes you're gonna zoom out, and sometimes you're gonna fast forward. And that creates a very disorienting experience. This is just weird. For the record, nothing about this is sexy. But I suppose that if somebody like hadn't interacted with, um many, I'm going to say, um, tangible body partners that it might be intriguing for them. Yeah, this is making me motion sick, So I'm gonna exit out again. Oh, this one. You can pause it. So props to kink VR for having a little bit more of a friendly user interface. I'm gonna go out of this one, which I actually could do intentionally this time. Um, yeah. I think this concludes my VR experience. That was the thing I've done now. Wolf: Haha, “that was the thing I've done now.” Stefani: Uh, yeah, I really don't- I think that is the penultimate way to describe it. Penultimate's not even the right word there. I think that's the ultimate way to describe it. You know that. That's the thing I can say I've done now. Um, I do appreciate myself for in the moment, being inclusive and speaking of tangible-bodied partners, Um, yeah, that That's the thing I've done now, what? What questions do you have for me about this experience Wolf: From, uh, from the perspective of our listeners, Right. We're always trying to help people have safer digital sex. What was your takeaway from all this? Obviously, don't mix up fast forward with zoom or zoom out. Good controls matter. Stefani: I would say my takeaways for this to be if you are traveling, if you're an adventuresome person and you want to have an experience like this, don't go alone. Um, we were fine. As evidenced by the last several episodes. We were not ultimately kidnapped by the Russian Mafia, but I don't know that that would have been the case if I had been there by myself. You know, take a buddy and I wouldn't have known to do this before this experience. But if you're curious about this, this thing first of all, you can access both of those content producers without paying for the privilege at another venue, right? Like badoink VR is a company kink VR is a company. If you have an Oculus, you can access their videos without necessarily needing to pay to go and borrow somebody else's Oculus in a creepy building somewhere. Um, but maybe the creep factor, Maybe that element of risk is the turn-on for you. Um, if that is the case, you know, take the time to ask them to orient. You take the time to get familiar with the device that you are provided with instead of just jumping into it. Otherwise, you know, you do end up a cut in half magician's assistant with zoom in, zoom out capability. And that will, unless you are a roller coaster fan, probably diminish your enjoyment of this experience. I'm funny, but I'm not a silly person. I think it's a good way to describe me, and this felt very silly to me. So if you are somebody that doesn't have a good capacity for suspension of seriousness and for just, you know, like wholehearted, embracing of the absurd as a path to joy, this might not be an experience that is worth your time or money. But if you are somebody that you know is super into VR. If that's something that's a world and an environment you're already comfortable with, this is probably cool for you. And if you're somebody that enjoys a good story and wants to be able to say, you did a thing that might feel a little ridiculous afterwards I don't know, maybe give it a shot. It's worth trying. I can't tell you it will be pleasurable or even, um, enjoyable. But you'll walk away with a good story and you will, um, have apparently, Well, your husband will have audio clips to blackmail you with for the rest of time. Wolf: I'm not gonna blackmail you, but I will say we've got another couple of minutes of audio which will not make this. Maybe there'll be a bonus episode, which is just you clicking on things going. Oh, this is like Power point. Oh, I could run my slides in this. Wow, it zooms in. Wait, I'm back in the old bookshelves. Where did my- there's my slides! It sounded like you had a good time at the end. So thanks for telling the story to our listeners. Stefani: I think once I let go of the pressure for it to be sexy and just let it be funny, it was a lot more fun. Wolf: Oh, there's a sex therapy takeaway. Once you let go of the pressure of it being sexy, just enjoy the experience. It's much more enjoyable. Stefani: Oh, for sure, I that is guidance in one form or another that I've given to many of my clients. This idea that, you know sex should be playful. Sex should be silly. Sex doesn't need to be this, like serious, powerful, intense, erotic moment. And for some people, the way to get past performance anxiety or erectile issues or sometimes some trauma activation, is just to embrace the silly to just let it be stupid. Ridiculous, goofy fun. Sex can be funny, and this experience was certainly an example of that for me. Wolf: I love that. Well, thank you so much and thank you for tuning in to securing sexuality. Your source for the information you need to protect yourself, your relationships, and your cybering. Stefani: Securing Sexuality is brought to you by the Bound Together Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit together with our conference partner, My Pleasure Plus. From the bedroom to the cloud. We're here to help you navigate safe sex in a digital age. Wolf: Be sure to check out our website, securingsexuality.com for, uh, links to more information about the topics we discussed here today, as well as our live conference in Detroit. Stefani: And if you want to join us in Detroit, you can use discount code pod15 to save 15% off of your conference registration. And then once you have signed up to join us in Detroit, join us again here for more fascinating conversations about the intersection of sexuality and technology. Have a great week. Comments are closed.
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