Museum of Sex Furniture

I was browsing around the forums on SL Universe the other day when I came across a thread from Jago Constantine announcing the SL Museum of Sex Furniture. I mean, it's so obvious when you think of it. I can't imagine why it hasn't been done before.

It seems that people who come into SL for educational or commercial purposes are more or less hostile to the idea that anyone ever has sex in SL, and they forever associate it with the more or less professional companies that offer escorts and pornography in a joyless package. For those of us who are true residents, and proud of a rounded virtual life, sex in SL has always been a much more exciting, creative, and amusing affair...and hopefully the new museum will demonstrate that.

Back in 2004 when I first joined Second Life, it wasn't possible to upload custom animations. The residents of the virtual world being creative and resourceful, a number of people had begun to make sex furniture already, using existing default animations. The pose most used in these confections was the motorcycle animation, which had pretty flexible applications, while at the same time being fairly rigid, it being a pose rather than an animation.

In order to approximate sexual activity, people used a system called box on and box off, which was, I'll admit, mostly a mystery to me, but which involved a way of manipulating the avatar by the use of box attachments and the extremely limited default range of animations.


What you have to remember also, my dear, is that the world was a much MUCH smaller place then, with only just over a hundred sims and one island. Imagine that! Today when there are around 26,000 islands and mainland sims, it is probably possible to find any number of empty mature sims for poseball whoopee, including a good few specifically constructed for the purpose, but in those days there were only a couple of places, and very little privacy.

With fewer than 1000 people online at any time, one met the same 30 people over and over around SL, and so with my only land on a PG sim and nowhere legal to attach your genitals or adjust your nipples, people like me were attracted to the mature sims like Federal and to the bottom of the sea or the middle of the sky.

Life was simpler in those pre-poseball days, where furniture was furniture and held no hidden traps for the unwary. And then version 1.4 came along and custom animations were enabled and the sex beds and exquipment business exploded accordingly, despite the fact that many people had nowhere to lay their sex bed.

The world has accommodated the good, the bad and the truly dreadful when it comes to animations and furniture. Who can forget the notorious ejaculating fountain, surely the pinnacle of schoolboy doodling, crafted in prims of stone, to be seen in the museum? The museum is also home to a slave roasting spit, and a variety of innocuous sofas with hidden depths. Over the course of the last five years, sex sims, slave sims, and Gor sims have come and gone, the only remnant of their passing being the extensive notecards of rules and regulations, and the odd piece of furniture. Very odd, in some cases.

The museum is interesting, even for those of use who have actually watched the course of sex history progress in SL with the introduction of an increasing range of talking penises and intricate bondage arrangements. Jago has made an effort to incorporate good labelling to the donations made to the museum, in some cases, sadly, in the name of "anonymous". The museum also needs donations of lindens to help them afford the tier for the increasing size of the museum, which is a growing tribute to the creativity and maybe the lasciviousness of the SL population.

I'd like to hope that the future SL will remain free enough to allow people to experiment with their sexuality as with other parts of their identity. Who knows how large the museum will need to be in another five years?