The Hidden Language of Vibrators: A Politico-Ontological Reading

Dianya Mia Hua, Rhys Jones, Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

6 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationDIS 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Subtitle of host publicationDigital Wellbeing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages400-414
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781450393584
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 13 2022
Event2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference: Digital Wellbeing, DIS 2022 - Virtual, Online, Australia
Duration: Jun 13 2022Jun 17 2022

Publication series

NameDIS 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference: Digital Wellbeing

Conference

Conference2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference: Digital Wellbeing, DIS 2022
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityVirtual, Online
Period6/13/226/17/22

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Software

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