Sex & Tech

Surprising, cyber sensual and more pleasurable than you could imagine – the second sexual revolution is coming. And, this time, it’s driven by women, says Stephanie Theobald

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It’s 7am and your alarm wakes you up on another rainy morning. Only the year is now 2020, so this wake-up call is pretty exciting. Think of your body being gently teased into life by a sex toy that looks like a mini octopus. Or your doona getting frisky, vibrating feathery waves all over your body until you can’t help but turn to the person lying next to you who, as luck would have it, has three penises.

This female erotic future might seem far-fetched, but it’s not so far away, according to sex-robot expert (yes, it is a job) and computer scientist Dr Kate Devlin. “I’m so bored with robots that look like female sex dolls,” says the senior lecturer in computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. “I don’t want a robot that looks human. Why not make one with three penises, 20 arms and tentacles for hands?”

This kind of imaginative sexual speculation is classic “second sexual revolution” talk. It’s a phrase I kept hearing as I drove across the US researching the female orgasm for my book, Sex Drive. I learnt that the much-trumpeted “sexual revolution” of the ’60s and ’70s was tailored to men. It sounded progressive on paper: the contraceptive pill was invented, mini-skirts and gay liberation arrived, John and Yoko had their 1969 bed-in, and endless surveys showed that premarital sex was on the rise. And yet nobody was asking what kind of orgasms women were having. Or, indeed, whether they were having them at all.