Thursday, April 17, 2008

Future Sex

I'm studying Botany right now. Plants have strange sex lives. Imagine there is an extra step in the reproductive process. That instead of the sperm and egg simply being one-celled precursors to the embryo, they each grew up into a full-fledged life form. Then the being that started out as an egg gets fertilized by the "walking sperm man". Only the baby inside her would be a human as we know them, with a full set of chromosomes from both parents. That's like plants. Or at least that's how I visualize them to get my mind around the concept of "alternation of generations."

Realizing how different plants are from us in terms of their sexual processes makes me re-think my assumptions about sex. Could human sexuality evolve into something different in the future? I often wonder about this, and find it makes for an intriguing thought experiment.

Fantasy being so much a part of my erotic life, I believe the ability to totally immerse in a realistic virtual setting where one can take on whatever form one fancies will be a reality. This crossed my mind the other day while I was topping a pet who dons a particularly elaborate disguise during playtime. In the flurry and excitement of the scene, I realized that I didn't really consider my submissive to be the same person who walks through the door, their appearance was so strikingly different from one to the other. I marvelled at how one day, we will all be able to morph ourselves - at least virtually - to suit our aesthetic and sexual whims.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to have a real cock. But without losing my breasts, or the curves or soft skin that I love about being a woman. To be a sexy hermaphrodite with a fully functional, lovely cock. In the future, someone has got think of a way to hook up a strap-on so that all the points of the phallus match up with nerves in the clitoris. After all, the clit is really just a tiny cock, being the analogous structure in women. Pair this device with virtual reality, and I can see for myself what it feels to penetrate, from the inside.

A few years back, I played with a post-op male-to-female transsexual who did a lot of kink play in Second Life, an online 3D virtual world, including before her surgery. She said there were many playspaces and shops for those into BDSM, and mentioned virtual collars that that could be programmed to move the submissive into different positions at the command of the dominant. She said that there was so much D/s play in Second Life, she couldn't imagine it was used for anything else!

I remember around the same time talking to an undergrad on campus during a technology conference who said he always entered Second Life as a girl. He said he did it because it was easier to socialize. People were more friendly, approachable and helpful. I wonder how many of the femme avatars are in fact virtual cross-dressers. I bet a lot!

Sometimes I rue the way that biology (including sex) gets in the way of creative and intellectual endeavors. It seems that women are burdened with this distraction more than men, being the more obvious objects of attraction and the vessels of reproduction. What if we stepped into a Brave New World freedom, where we totally separated the physical act of sex from perpetuation of the species, the latter being completed outside the woman's body. Would that change the balance between the sexes? Would it cause women to lose their standing as Mothers, the great creators?

What if eventually people decided actual physical differentiation of the sexes was unwelcome, either because it's too disruptive to mental achievement or just aesthetically unappealing (with the recent coining of the term "metrosexual" to describe men who wax and primp as much as women, perhaps we are already moving in this direction). Would we then compartmentalize our sexuality as recreational roleplay in virtual reality, taking on whatever appearance - male, female, something in between - that suited us at the moment? My feeling is that for all the pain it causes us, we will want to keep sexuality an integral part of our actual physical reality. But you never know...

It's fascinating to ponder the possible evolution of sex. Perhaps at the end of the day, it will remain largely the same as it has, and such conjecture is nothing more than interesting premises for futuristic stories. Only time will tell.