Kissing is almost the only context where someone can be physically ‘all up in your face’, as the saying goes, without being frightening or threatening. The whole point is the proximity. But perhaps this product is not aimed at people who long for human presence, so much as those who recoil from it. Reportedly, the device is selling at a rate of around 100 a week, suggesting at least some people find it appealing. And since the pandemic, this group is on the rise. 

Liberal anthropology has long contained as a core premise the assumption that it is good and right to treat separateness, not connection, as the default social condition. For many, the profound fear engendered by the virus normalised this — indeed, forced it on us, as in the full-body condoms some made out of shower curtains so they could hug their loved ones. 

For some, this has irreparably tainted interpersonal contact with the kind of ‘yuck’ response normally experienced in close contact with something noxious. And, in the process, it has crystallised already emerging ‘digisexual’ identities and practices: that is, using technology as part of sexual intimacy — for example via sexting — and even using technology as a replacement for intimacy with another human. 

At least some are already embracing virtual-first modes of sexuality, whether by desire or necessity, as attested by the wails of distress that erupted recently when the Replika app removed the sex chat feature from its AI ‘companion’. And perhaps this is inexorable: one implication of Virilio’s observation is that separating sex from interpersonal contact altogether really is just the logical endpoint of the condom. 

And it’s bleakly ironic in this context that Chinese researchers are producing “telesexuality” devices even as the Chinese government introduces ever more desperate policy interventions to lure couples into having more children. It’s possible that none of us has thought through the contradictions and long-term implications of the devices that promised to free us.

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Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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