Design and sexual technology:

a brief panorama based on Foucault and Preciado

Abstract

This essay outlines a brief conceptual panorama around the notion of “sexual technology” as thought by Paul B.
Preciado and Michel Foucault, to understand this technological dimension as a design practice. For this, I present Foucault’s perspective on sexuality, highlighting Preciado’s affiliation with this approach and how design can be understood in this light. Next, I clarify the notion of “technology” (dear to Foucault) and the sense of saying that sex is
technological, with special attention to the concept of “dildo” (dear to Preciado). Then I contextualize some of the historically recent sexual technologies along an abridged panorama of the invention of (hetero)sex, analogously to the
genealogy of the female orgasm traced by Preciado. Once pointed out that heterosexuality is perhaps the most successful design in history, I conclude by stating that, in the field of sexual technology, design operates in an ambivalent way: by maintaining and reinforcing heteronormativity, it paradoxically enables the subversion of the sexuality thus designed.
Finally, I also provide a “brief counter-sexual glossary” to clarify some key terms covered in this article.