Desire Digest 002

Notes on an AI Friend, $5500 sexual wellness retreats and the political coding of fun.

Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.

I have just returned from a brief trip to Cancun where I stayed at an all-inclusive for an assignment — not my usual type of travel, which was the point. I’ll spare the details for the story itself, but one point I’d like to share here is that I was delightfully off my phone for most of the trip. I left it in the room. I’ve written before about how our phones are making us miserable despite the excuses we might make for them, and last week

Catherine Shannon

published a brilliant essay about how our phones are making us feel less sexy specifically.

“Eros—carnal desire—is an embodied experience, and our phones do a terrific job of getting us out of our bodies and into our heads,” she wrote. “In the digital age, we often neglect our bodies entirely, and use them merely as a way to transport our heads to meetings… No one feels connected, present, alive, embodied, or sexy when they’re on their phone all day.”

Perhaps an all-inclusive doesn’t match everyone’s idea of sexy, but three days of drifting between beach and bar and patio and pool with no real plans, intentions, or a phone in my hand was the closest to an embodied experience I’ve had in some time now. Especially in a bikini in the 90 degree sun and humidity!

me on vacation in one of the brief moments on my phone :)

Other Developments in Sexuality and Travel

“Wellness” related travel is nothing new — retreats geared toward relaxation, fitness, weight loss and even sleep have all been accessible to those with means for decades. But now, sex is getting that same treatment. This overarching trend, too, is not entirely new: brands like Maude have made vibrators in spa-like earthen tones for the last several years, purchasable even at Sephora. The idea is that sex isn’t necessarily something fun and pleasurable, though perhaps it can be, but healthy and luxurious much in the way of a boutique pilates class. Resorts with this type of optimizing client in mind, then, have begun to offer stays of this same ideology and aesthetic. In early October, luxury property Six Senses Ibiza is hosting a Power and Pleasure retreat for women that features healing sanctuaries to liberate attendees from shame and guilt and workshops on “feminine cycles wisdom” and the “mysteries of anatomy and pleasure points.” Three nights solo in a Sea View Junior Suite goes for EUR 5,150, meals (but not alcohol) included. Several other spas and hotels worldwide have similar selections.

It goes without saying that it is probably a gorgeous occasion and if you had the money to spare, why wouldn’t you? Yet it speaks to the ways we’ve become disconnected to the most basic, primal parts of ourselves and the lengths we’ll go to repair that rift. I sincerely hope that the women spending thousands of dollars on these excursions find what they’re looking for.

Hawk Tuah Continues

To my surprise, the attention surrounding Hailey “Hawk Tuah” Welch has yet to die down entirely. I actually do find her a bit charming! A young lady plucked from obscurity into fame by sheer charisma and sexual joie de vivre while thus far maintaining her down-to-earth, country sweetness — she may not be this generation’s Dolly Parton as Rolling Stone said, but perhaps some sort of Anna Nicole Smith comparison could be made with a hopefully far less tragic ending.

Earlier this month, I went on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute alongside Slate writer Luke Winkie to discuss her appeal. We discussed how she embodies this current trend wherein sex has become right-wing coded, alongside activities like drinking beer, using Zyns or enjoying sports. In other words, “having fun.” Hawk Tuah girl has made few political statements, and yet the assumption is broadly that she is a Republican.

I find this to be such an interesting microcosm of our sexual-political culture, particularly as the discourse surrounding Project 2025 and its alleged measures against contraceptives, etc. goes mainstream. On the one hand, there are parts of the right who are indeed hoping to further isolate sex as a strictly procreative activity between married couples. On the other, an apparently sexually liberated but not outwardly political or “sex positive” young woman reads as right-wing.

I have a lot of theories as to how this has come to be and the larger implications that I am hoping to flesh out in a later piece. The point here, broadly, is that there is little clarity in what political messages are being sent regarding sexuality. There is no cohesion. That itself is the defining feature of our current sexual culture: complete confusion.

Another AI “Friend”

Today, Wired published a story on a new AI wearable called Friend, coinciding with the release of an ad for the product. The device is a disk worn like a necklace, featuring an always-on microphone that allows it to listen to you and your surroundings and communicate with you via your phone. In the article, referring to the product’s creator Avi Schiffmann, Wired said “Schiffmann knows that criticism is coming. He also knows detractors will ding his device, with its always-on microphone, as an invasion of privacy.”

A better criticism would be that it looks fucking boring and tedious. In the ad, it shows a young woman on a hiking trail receiving a message from her Friend about how “at least they’re outside,” and a guy playing video games with an actual human as his Friend texts him that he’s getting destroyed by the game. Basically, Friend will be there to interrupt your time in nature and interfere with your in-person interactions with the most milquetoast notifications that amount to nothing. This isn’t to say we should brush it off entirely — the tech is probably frighteningly good. Friend markets itself as a companion, but like so many other AI friends before it, it is one that puts a bandaid over a gaping wound of loneliness. Worse, it is one that even more actively keeps us clung to our phones, further mediating our daily lives with the technology that has increasingly isolated us. Hurray!