Radical Feminists Demand Curbs On VR Porn

And so it begins. Probably several years before VR porn even approaches mainstream, a group of radical feminist academics at a British university in Newcastle have published a paper warning of the dangers of the new erotic frontier. Predictably, the headline grabbing thesis of the paper – that vr porn will raise new issues of consent and consequently require new government regulation – went viral across mainstream media, with the clickbait focus resting mainly on the claim that 3D (VR) sex avatars could become the new form of ‘revenge porn’. However, the main thrust of the paper appears to be an expression of the author’s fears that virtual reality porn might render sex with real women inferior.

“We found that for most people the potential of a VR porn experience opened the doors to an apparently ‘perfect’ sexual experience – a scenario which in the real world no-one could live up to,” Wood says.

“For others it meant pushing the boundaries, often with highly explicit and violent imagery, and we know from current research into pornography that exposure to this content has the potential to become addictive and more extreme over time.”

The team also warned that the rise of 3D porn could damage relationships, and increase sexism and the exploitation of women. It says a greater sense of realism provided by VR may also heighten body image issues in women.

“One of our findings suggested VR pornography could be something more like cheating on a partner because of the increasing ‘reality’ of the VR experience,” Wood says.

Dr Madeline Balaam, co-author of the research, said: “As a society we are always looking for new and novel experiences but the porn industry brings with it an added risk because of its sexist stance and exploitation of women.

Those inclined can request the full text of the article here (presently, only 20 people have).

Most troublesome is the call from the authors for a variety of new laws to be passed in order to control vr porn, in particular the use of 3D avatars of real people. The authors, who despite being presented as ‘experts’ in the media are simply minor feminist academics, note that there are already laws against ‘revenge porn’, yet claim they are insufficient to deal with the potential of virtual reality. This seems to imply that they are suggesting that it should be illegal to use the image of a person in an adult vr setting without their consent even if the ‘virtual sex’ is for private use and not shared with others. This opens up a whole new plethora of thought crime laws, including the potential that most vr porn might become illegal unless each individual viewing of a vr porn video has the particular consent of any actresses involved (even if just the 3D image of the actress).

I covered some of these points recently in my article on moral panics. I have also discussed 3D avatar sex before.

I’m not sure what it is with British feminists, but the main instigator of the campaign to ban sexbots is also a feminist UK academic – Dr Kathleen Richardson.

The vr porn industry ought to prepare itself for an onslaught of such ‘research’ and calls for repressive government legislation. The industry needs to promote the positive aspects of virtual reality adult entertainment, stressing that VR sex will be beneficial and popular with women as much as men, improve the sex lives of couples, and remove the sexual frustrations of otherwise dangerous young men.

About xhumanist

Xhumanist has been writing on porn/sex tech for nearly two decades, and has been predicting the rise of VR and AR porn, as well as AI porn, and their coming together to produce fully 'immersive porn', which would be indistinguishable from the real thing, and create a society of 'sexual abundance'. He identifies as a digisexual, and has been quoted in Wired Magazine.

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