Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, partook in an interview with Big Think describing an alternative experience of sex. I consider how this concept of a universally pleasing unit could materialize, in a form that allows the pre-existing variety of sexual organs to be represented and introduced to a partner through this supposedly pressureless sexual experience.
Glazed stoneware.
A portion of Žižek s interview transcript:
“The Guardian, the British newspaper, asked me, ‘Is romance still alive today?’ And my idea, my answer to them was let’s imagine an ideal sexual situation today. Let’s say I meet a lady; we are attracted to each other; we say okay, you are — all the usual stuff — your place, my place, whatever we meet there. Then, what happens then? I come with, she comes with her plastic penis, electric dildo. I come with some horrible thing. I saw it. It’s called something like stimulating training unit, whatever. It’s basically a plastic vagina, a hole. But you can — it’s wonderful technologically. You can regulate everything. How much it squeezes you. How strongly it shakes and so on. So my idea of a perfect date is the following one. We meet. Then I put, she puts her plastic penis dildo into my stimulating training unit is the name of this product. Into my plastic vagina. We plug them in and the machines are doing it for us. They’re buzzing in the background and I’m free to do whatever I want and she. We have a nice talk; we have tea; we talk about movies. What can be — we paid our superego full tribute. Machines are doing — now where would have been here a true romance. Let’s say I talk with a lady with the lady because we really like each other. And, you know, when I’m pouring her tea or she to me quite by chance our hands touch. We go on touching. Maybe we even end up in bed. But it’s not the usual oppressive sex where you worry about performance. No, all that is taken care of by the stupid machines. That would be ideal sex for me today.”
https://bigthink.com/videos/online-dating-and-synthetic-sex/