CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!
We are in the age of exhibitionism! Sex is an exciting product. It has market value! Who needs prostitution when you have the Internet?
I found the cyber exhibit extremely entertaining. We are under the complete illusion that we can keep our sexual discourse somewhat private online. Even those amateur porn stars have this illusion because they cannot see who is watching them. People who were seeking pornography used to have to deal with the humiliation of physically entering one of the many sex shops that still proliferate the city. Now anyone can access porn from the comforts of their home! Has this access made it more widely proliferated? I should think so. And I believe it’s a good thing in the sense that anyone can satisfy their curiosity or gratify any “peculiar” need. The exhibit was eye opening because it made me realize how open all our “dirty laundry” is. No one can claim innocence with regard to sexuality. And yet I still sensed some uncomfortable feeling among the other wanderers of the museum (including myself) as Kwame discussed. I also became aware of how easily marketable sex and artistic expression of sex has become with the Internet. The animation installation mentions how “anything can become sex” including the Calvin and Hobbes comic. The public is becoming more aware of the fact that there are no lines with regard to sex.
BUT are we more estranged from each other with all of this being so in our face? I was asking a very attractive friend of mine why he liked pornography so much (because I just don’t get it) and his reply was “Because it’s easy and effortless. It doesn’t involve the coaxing of another human being to cater to your specific fantasies.” And with the photographs of sex machines at the museum had descriptions that followed the same line of logic. Sex can be passionate and cold at the same time. And this scares me. Perhaps I’m young and naïve (and certainly this museum trip was very enlightening) but I’m very wary of the interaction between sex and technology. Is our opening of sexual discourse via Internet bringing us closer together by encouraging expression or is it distancing us by allowing us to become isolated in our sexuality? It’s only a matter of time before the perfect “sex robot” is created (but we have a ways to go…those dolls didn’t have me convinced) and what will be the repercussions of that? The installations in this museum reminded me of a sci-fi manga series I read as a kid in middle school “Chobits”. 
In this futuristic world there are humanistic, beautiful, capable, robots that function as both highly efficient computers and can be your girlfriend! In this world people didn’t need each other. But the moral of that story eventually became that no robot could ever replace a human. Let’s hope.
Tags: Chobits, Museum of Sex
