Sex and Tech
Annual sexuality conference raises questions about technologies role in sexualit
David Evans

The theme of the 31st Annual Guelph Sexuality Conference held from June 15 – 17 at the University of Guelph focused on the positive approaches to sexuality and sexual health. One approach that was discussed several times at the conference was the use of technology to provide a means of communicating with youth as they start their sexual growth. The use of technology has given health providers a channel to keep teenagers and young adults informed about sexual health.

During one of the concurrent sessions, Dr. Pierre-Paul Tellier, associate professor of Family Medicine and director of Student Health Services at McGill University, demonstrated an Adobe Flash website that provides a more interactive and accessible way to teach youth about STIs, building upon the interactive media CD-ROM dealing with "Sex and Contraception" he had already created with his team." This was only one component of Dr. Tellier's attempt to reach people regarding sexual information. He presented posts from his "ask Dr. T" webpage, which provides tailored answers to questions people have asked regarding various health topics.

"They [youth] want that anonymous and individual kind of feedback about their behaviour and what their doing," said Dr. Tellier. In addition to changes in the kind of information younger audiences want, they also want it faster.

 "They don't want their answers tomorrow or next week," Dr. Tellier said. According to Dr. Tellier this is youths desiring knowledge instantly to solve their sexual problems is similar to other questions in an Information Age.

But there are limitations to this technology. Dr. Tellier explained that not all youth, especially street youth, have access to the Internet. Furthermore, compacting the data to make it more atheistically pleasing for interactive media potentially results in something important being missed.

 At another session, Shawn Fowler, teen-programming coordinator at Planned Parenthood Toronto, went into detail regarding the variety of technology that is available for sexual health communication. In particular, Planned Parenthood's MSN Messenger based message service shows a cost effective way of connecting with teens in real-time to provide solutions to their sexual queries without losing that sense of anonymity due to the subject matter. With the ever-growing use of Smartphones and portable electronics by youth, experts say there needs to be consistent efforts by health educators to use these tools to reach their target audience.

"It's no surprise that especially in the U.S. mobile devices are more accessible to people of colour. Often it's Pay As You Go. [It's] more accessible than having a computer at home with Internet," Fowler said.

The closing presentation for Tuesday's round of discussions was given by Cory Silverberg, founding member of the co-operatively run, education based sex store, Come As You Are. Silverberg is also a sexuality media consultant and educator. His presentation entitled 'Sex Tech: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology" provided a positive spin on how technology has encouraged people to develop and grow sexually instead of focusing on the fear of technology.

"All we hear is the negative stuff: cyber stalking, cyber bullying, pedophilia online, and that's all real and that's all a problem. But it's not everything that's happening," said Silverberg. The positives that Silverberg talked about included topics such as Human Computer Sexual Interactions. This includes the occasions when you use a piece of technology to be sexual. The issue of Emergent Sex, when sexual acts are performed in video games was also covered. Second Life, an online community that allows people to behave sexually online with different types of avatars and virtual characters they create, is another example of the positives of sex and technology. In these situations people can safely play out their desired sexual fetishes

And there was also a discussion on the use of teledildonics to make pornography more lifelike by providing that sense of touch in pornography. With teldildonics, a device moves in sync with the video being watched.

"Technology raises the possibility that porn can be better," said Silverberg, but that's a huge but."

It was, however, the overall theme of the discussions that saw technology as making sexuality more accessible and enjoyable.

 

 

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