Photo: Kai Wiechmann/Getty Images

As virtual-reality headsets make their way into the mainstream, a new wave of VR pornography allows viewers to embody porn stars while they have sex with one another. But making this porn presents new challenges starting with the fact that few male performers can maintain erections through stupendously difficult VR-porn shoots.

For this weeks Sex Lives podcast, I watched VR porn for the first time and was, well, horrified. But Vocativ staff writer Tracy Clark-Flory has a more optimistic view. Shes been hanging out on VR-porn sets, and testing VR porn, webcams, and interactive experiences for years. As she tells it, one of the biggest surprise of VR porn is that viewers dont actually want the horrifying stuff they want to be cuddled. Listen to Tracy explain the paradoxes of virtual boners, or read a few tales from the wild world of virtual porn, below.

This is a partial transcript of New York Magazines Sex Lives, edited for clarity and length. To respond with a voice message, call 646-494-3590.

Youve written that the demands of performing with this technology are having some crazy effects on whos able to perform, and the way they perform?

A major issue for people who have ventured into this new territory is theyre finding that tried-and-true male performers who have been in the industry for decades who can literally perform under the craziest circumstances, like, standing in a pool of cold water, perched on a rock in the middle of a baking desert, no problem! but you put a VR camera rig in front of their face, and you tell them that they cant make eye contact with their co-star, and that they cant kiss their co-star, and that they cant touch their co-star with their hands, and they cant maintain an erection. Understandably, because youre totally taken out of the experience and you sort of become this sexual object that someone [else] is performing on. So directors are finding that guys who had been reliable in other situations are no longer reliable. Theres only a handful of guys who are actually able to reliably do this kind of shoot.

Its the ultimate objectification, except the point of the objectification is that they arent an object, right? They become an invisible body, for anyone to project onto.

Its a weird turning of the tables for men in the industry, because theyre used to being the actor. And the women in porn not always, but often are used to being a little bit more passive.

What is it doing, do you think, to the story lines or the type of fantasies that we get from porn?

Everything that Ive heard from directors who are doing VR is that male viewers, in particular, really want more of a girlfriend experience with VR. So they want it to be very intimate. They want eye contact. They want close faces whispering sweet nothings. They want, even, cuddling. I was on a set recently where at the end of the shoot, the director had the woman cuddle up on the guy just lay her head on his chest for a minute and just cuddle.

And gaze up into his eyes? Or the cameras eyes, I guess?

Yeah, exactly, gaze into the cameras eyes. Ive heard porn performers, especially porn performers who are doing like webcamming, and that suddenly their fans are going, Wow, youre a real person. It changes their perspective entirely.

As youve been watching this industry take shape over the years, how has it changed? Have there have been interesting trials and errors or surprises?

In terms of VR, its so new that youre still seeing a lot of trial and error right now. Like, one example, on a shoot I was on, a female performer, without prompting by the director, decided that she was going to experiment with trying to French kiss the camera. So she went up really close to the camera and French kissed the air. And it looked like very bizarre and required a lot of commitment on her part, to really do it. And afterwards she asked the director, Was that weird? Did that work? And the director is like, I think maybe? But so much of it is waiting to see how viewers actually react.

I watched VR porn from a female perspective recently, and there was a blow-job scene. So like, the female performer was performing a blow job, but its so incredibly disorienting for the viewer, because all youre really seeing is the male torso thrusting. And that didnt work.

I dont even enjoy that in reality-reality, when its a male torso coming at you? Why would I want to replicate that in virtual reality? Although I guess one womans nightmare is another womans turn-on, if I have learned anything from doing this job.

[Laughs] Right.

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Virtual-Reality Porn Is Killing Boners - New York Magazine