Embodied Embroidery: Somaesthetic Interaction Design for Women's Masturbation

Though a taboo topic, women's masturbation is the most effective technique in producing orgasms among all sexual behaviors [37]. This project explores how somaesthetic interaction design can contribute to designing for women's sexual pleasure, challenging androcentric discourses on women's sexuality, and also the desexualization of women with dis/abilities. In the study, the first author, who identifies as a woman with an invisible disability, experiments with other women's masturbatory techniques using her own body as a design resource. She then articulated that intersubjective engagement using her own body as an artistic medium in the form of Embodied Embroidery, a practice inspired by women's artmaking, and which seeks to foreground the aesthetic dimensions of experiential knowledge to support theory-making in design. Guided by three key features of somaesthetic interaction—first-person perspective, intersubjectivity, and articulation—this pictorial contributes to pleasure activism in the domain of HCI and interaction design.