Dr Eleanor Armstrong & Akvile Terminaite join us in this new episode as we discuss the ins and outs of sex in space! We also talk tech and design to facilitate off-planet pleasure and why our vision of future exploration should center around people in all their identities and abilities!
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Main image: “That’s no moon” – Credit: Charles Deluvio on Unsplash
Chris 00:00
Welcome to The Astroholic Explains, exploring the universe one question at a time with Dr. Alfredo and Chris Carpineti.
Alfredo 00:11
Welcome, welcome. So what do you have for me today?
Chris 00:14
Today’s question is one I’ve wondered about for a while, and we keep getting more people asking about it. So today, I want to know about sex in space.
Alfredo 00:25
All right, we start series three with a bang. We are joined today by two fantastic guests. So fantastic guests, please introduce yourself.
Akvile 00:38
Hello, my name’s Akvile . I’m a designer and researcher. I’m very interested in the way we collect and produce knowledge and meaning making. And I’m also very, very interested in the topic of relationships, sex and design in space.
Ellie 00:52
Hi, my name is Dr. Ellie Armstrong. I’m a researcher in the social studies of outer space. I’m very interested in the ways that we can make queer family, consent, pleasure intimacies in space futures, as well as the ways that space is enacted and understood here on Earth.
Alfredo 01:10
Thank you very much for joining us. It seems that you are the perfect people that we can discuss this topic with.
Chris 01:17
Yes. Fantastic to have you both on. So I guess my original question was a bit too general. So maybe we should start by defining what we mean by sex in space. And so why is it an important discussion?
Alfredo 01:34
I feel that a lot of the discussion is a little bit on the, sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge side – that it’s only seen as something lowbrow, something that is discussed in whispers and not something that actually should be talked in actual serious and professional settings.
Ellie 01:59
Yeah, I think we definitely see a lot of discussion around sex, as always being quite covert. And it’s very much the untalked about project. So I think to start thinking about sex is to start thinking about sexual health, and then thinking about sexual health as being part of healthcare – so things like gynaecology, and urology are really important parts of care, of medical care about the body. But also, if we kind of think more expansively about what sex might be, I think it’s super important for us to detach notions of sex, and the act of sex, from ideas about reproduction. So often, when we talk about sex in space, people are really fixated on the ideas of people then being pregnant in space and having a baby. And obviously, these things are really important – we definitely need to talk about how people can have babies in space, if we’re going to think about this as being a future thing. But also, lots of people here on Earth have sex for non-reproductive purposes. We have sex for pleasure, we have sex for intimacy, all kinds of reasons like this. And so when we think about sex in space, not only do I think it’s really important we think about the practicalities and stuff like this, but also all the other stuff that we have here on Earth that goes alongside with sex. So ideas of intimacy, consent, ideas of emotions, care. So when we think about sex, we need to move beyond thinking about sex, as for example, penises in vaginas, we should think about queer sex as being more inclusive. Also, it doesn’t necessarily have to be penetrative at all. In light of especially the recent call by the European Space Agency for para astronauts, we really want to be thinking about things like disability positiveness, and inclusive practices of sex around that as well. Akvile, do you have anything to add about what we mean when we talk about sex in space?
Akvile 03:54
I guess if you look at what’s happening with design and space, the discourse is mostly about – well, first of all, I think it’s led by architectural companies, and designing for spaces is mostly like designing habitat modules for two to four people. There’s some talk about space hotels and things like that, but it’s never really considered what goes inside and how do we create an environment to accommodate what we’re talking about today. Whereas here on Earth, design I think is very well equipped to produce us or give us tools to express our sexuality. There are things, you know, being created for intimacy. So yeah, whilst here on Earth we do… think that there is stuff that design can provide, it’s not something designers talk about, you know, “how do we have a wank on our rocket?”
Chris 04:54
I mean, it’s a really interesting angle. It’s not something I’ve ever considered. Coming at it from a design angle, especially if modules are being built for many people to sleep in and cohabitate, but is there an aspect of privacy being designed as well? Because that’s, you know, obviously, people when they’re private or alone, or they have somewhere for one or two people – don’t know, maybe everyone up there fancies each other and they have a lot of fun. But if there is a time when people want privacy, and that’s not considered…?
Akvile 05:28
Yeah, I guess. I think from what I read from what I heard from astronauts saying, there’s always this – on the International Space Station, space is so so limited. And I think, “okay, well, fair enough, but has anyone thought about sound insulation?” You know, ’cause I think that is possible. So yeah, what’s happening?
Alfredo 05:52
I was once inside a model of the Soyuz capsule that is used by Russians to send people to space. And I can tell you that I’ve been in shower boxes much bigger. It is tiny. So yes, there is definitely a limited space when we consider the current space vehicles. But I think this is why it’s important to have this conversation because it’s something that we need to consider for the future, especially for longer term missions.
Chris 06:32
So what do we know about sex and sexual health related to space over the last 60 years or so of humans going into orbit? Has there even been this sort of discussion?
Ellie 06:45
Well, Alf…?
Alfredo 06:47
Yes, so, I’ve spoken to several astronauts, and it’s several. So if you try to stalk him…
Chris 06:59
Well, that’s narrowed it down.
Alfredo 07:01
It is several. So if you try to stalk them, you cannot tell who told me. But I’ve always been quite upfront about this question, because, everyone, as we mentioned in the introduction, they asked about how do you go to the toilet in space? And the next question is, obviously, another physiological question. It’s not even just… for most people that have asked me to ask or have asked in general, it doesn’t feel that is something that is some sort of raunchy. It’s not something that, “oh, I want to know, the dirty secrets.” I think there is genuine curiosity about something that is normal, something that happens. So I’ve been always quite upfront in asking people involved with the space program, whether on the ground or in space, about physiology.
Ellie 08:05
Yes, Alf do you mean, are they having a wank in space? Is this what you’re asking them?
Alfredo 08:10
One of the people that I asked was questioned more about – there’s not much sort of publicised stuff, but there’s been, like, private studies made by NASA. Like, has NASA asked the questions about, can you get an erection in space? Is everything functioning as it functions down on Earth, etc? And the sort of reply that I got is there’s never been any kind of specific questions in those terms, but I’ve been told that everything works very well. And actually, so when you are in space, your blood flow is altered because of being in microgravity. And apparently, that does make things even better.
Ellie 09:11
As it’s an audio format, I think we ought to note that everyone on the call’s eyebrows just raised about three inches on their faces, as you finished that story.
Alfredo 09:21
So this is what I can tell you from the anecdotal evidence of people involved with the space program.
Chris 09:32
This was people, this was more than one person. Have you spoken to someone who has implied that they have engaged in sexual activity with another person or was this just talking masturbation?
Alfredo 09:44
It’s…
Chris 09:46
Can you not reveal that?
Alfredo 09:47
I don’t think I can reveal that.
Chris 09:49
Okay, fair enough.
Alfredo 09:50
There are a lot of complexities in discussing this, because everyone wants to know, but we are pretty much speculating on something very private of people. So people might not feel super comfortable or like people speculating, discussing…
Chris 10:11
Yeah, people might not want to immediately talk about everything and their experiences.
Alfredo 10:15
Yeah. So I think that we need to – for as much as people are curious to understand and to know – we need to understand that it’s a complex conversation to have, we cannot just think, “oh, have there been couples in space, or were these people fancying each other, or they were dating?” We cannot just make that kind of assumption. It’s, I want to know, in a sunny, scientific way, and just to satisfy curiosity, but it feels a little bit like, I don’t know if we’re being looking into their private lives on the other hand.
Chris 10:46
Speaking about things like this, I think it’s really interesting about that NASA, there was an alleged report about an all female mission to Mars to avoid astronauts having sex in space. I think they’re forgetting about a certain little thing there.
Ellie 11:03
Well, I think this is, this comes back to the point that I made at the start, when we talked about what does it mean to have sex in space where so often, these discussions are focused on reproduction? And so yes, obviously, if you have an all female crew, or, you know, let’s be queer about this, like this is, everyone on there has wombs and uteruses, rather than other genitalia then yes you probably are not going to have any babies being made. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t have sex because sex isn’t just having this kind of penetrative experiences. It’s, to me it’s really interesting that Alf, you talk a lot about astronauts at NASA. Because, obviously, well, not obviously, the NASA Space Program grew out of a very interesting – especially the space medicine program – has come out of a very interesting direction. So a lot of the scientists from Nazi Germany, were familiar with the ideas that people like Wernher von Braun came from Nazi Germany to be part of the American space program. But what we’re less familiar with is the fact that a lot of the early space medicine scientists also came from the Nazi space program? Also came from the Nazi air flight program. And particularly, you can look at the work of Jordan Bimm. He’s done a lot of work on thinking about the ways that early NASA scientists really influenced space medicine. And with this, we must remember that the Nazi medical programs had very deeply eugenicist roots. And you can really see carried through into the NASA space program the ideas about who is a perfect human being and the ideal specimen to send into space. Why do we think we have you know, Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” and we can map kind of backwards onto the ways that those ideas have come, really come through. But obviously, NASA is not the only space program in the world. So we, at the same time as the early space program, that’s obviously the Soviet space programs. But also increasingly now we have space programs from many other countries, European Space Agency astronauts, but also astronauts from China, from India, from other places in the Global South. And so I think it would be really interesting to think about, is this idea of asking people about sex, and asking about, you know, either reproductive sex or sex for pleasure in space – are these discussions as uncomfortable as maybe we find them asking NASA astronauts, if we talk to people in other space programs. And there is, from what I’ve seen some evidence to suggest that, particularly in the Soviet space program, people are a little bit more free, and easy at discussing this stuff. And that some people have discussed about the fact that they were sent, for example, porn with them into space. So you can find people writing about this online. But I think it’s so important when we ask, can we ask these questions for science? Also, can we ask these questions culturally? What kind of cultural conditions do we need here on Earth? Do you think that these are really important pieces of research? In terms of I guess, thinking about possibilities of sex in space, Akvile you came across this really interesting suit that somebody had designed. Do you want to talk about that? Because we were thinking about what has happened in space?
Akvile 14:17
Yeah, yeah, sure. And despite that two piece, there was something else that I wanted to mention. So yes, two piece. So it’s essentially a big bag with Velcro on it. I cannot remember the person who designed it, but I know that she works across many disciplines. I think she’s also an author and interested in space and lots of other things. So she was raising this question of how do we have intimacy, how do we have sex in space, and came up with this – a fairly ugly design that can hold two bodies in a space together and I believe they tested it out on one of the planes where you can experience a bit of zero G. And while the two bodies could come together, she did mention about how uncomfortable it was, and also how space should be very choreographed, sort of exercise, rather than a spontaneous event where you can just burst into, you know, a nice big embrace. But yeah, so I was looking also at one of the research groups at MIT Media Lab. And they, lots of different people develop different things for space, like working with robots and things like that. And there was this thing called seamless, pneumatic surface, which morphs on and embraces the body in zero G. And that also got tested on one of these planes. There’s not much mentioned about where it could be used, but it’s essentially this tentacley looking thing made from silicon type of material. And it sort of can embrace you. And I thought, well, you know, that would be a very interesting application to holding people together, or solving loneliness.
Chris 16:16
That, that sounds terrifying.
Akvile 16:18
Actually, actually, it looked quite, no, it looked quite nice. No, it wasn’t necessarily cuddly or lovely. But there was definitely lots of like, flexibility. And you, I don’t know, if you ever touch silicon, I think silicon is quite nice. It resembles skin. So maybe that’s something to be considered.
Ellie 16:38
We’ve been talking a little bit. So Akvile and I have been discussing this for a while. And we were also talking a bit about, you know, in light of this idea of sex, could you have, like vibrators or sex toys in space? What would this look like? I mean, the reason that you need these Velcro suits and this idea of holding people together is if there was no gravity holding you, to the sheets, or to whatever surface you are, with your partner, or partners, or unpartnered against, the Newton’s laws are really not in your favour. Unless you are somehow attached to each other or attached to a surface. And so we’re thinking about, what kind of implications does this have for maybe needing to be attached to the space craft? Or at least one person needs to be attached somewhere in order that the whole thing doesn’t drift off? Chris, you were talking about maybe needing some privacy, but maybe you drift out of that private space, as there’s no force holding you in there. I mean, I think, what’s interesting about this whole topic is it sounds really funny. And we will get a good laugh out of talking about this. But we also look at the narratives of new space the way people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos talk about interplanetary living. And, we definitely shouldn’t forget that in order for that to be, not that it necessarily has to be, a reality, but in order for it to be something that they could even, you know, suggest is going to be the case, at some point, we’re going to need to think about this stuff, unless everyone is taking vows of abstinence for the rest of their lives on Mars, this is going to happen. And if we don’t talk about it now, and we don’t think about how to design for it, and how to prepare for it, and how to think about social structues around these cases, then people just arrive in, you know, on the moon on Mars in interplanetary living and suddenly have to navigate these things. And wouldn’t we then all be way happier if we had talked about this now, the way you see your fellow astronauts like drifting out into the communal space? Like “oh shit we should have thought about this!”
Alfredo 18:43
You see? I don’t know if it’s just my mind. But everything that you described, my solution was just bondage.
Ellie 18:54
Right. So. Maybe we need to think about kink positivity in space. Like being, there are lots of things that happen in sex on Earth already, especially in queer possibilities of sex that might be really helpful. And yeah, we were in a sex tech hack then was run out of wrecked. And one of the things that we saw was on the space station, they have these nets for holding in all the cargo. And we were like, “Ooh, you could like tie yourself to the net.” So Akvile has a lovely little drawing, maybe we’ll see if we can share it with you after but where it’s like you could use that as a way of kind of BDSM tying yourself, you know, very reminiscent of being.
Alfredo 19:37
Or you could be in the net.
Ellie 19:39
Yeah.
Alfredo 19:40
So that will solve the problem of floating into the common areas.
Akvile 19:46
I guess what another thing that could offer a lot for so if we imagine someone ends up in space, and no one has really talked about it on Earth how you’re going to go about intimacy and things. I think maker and hacker culture has a lot to offer, especially if currently there’s a lot of talk about 3-D printing technology to be used in space. So we get 3-D printers up there and we can print anything we want, from houses to possibly any type of sex toy that you would like. So, personalization comes in. And we don’t necessarily know, how we’d react, how we’d react in space, having sex and things like that. So why not just have the astronauts, you know, during testing and trial with lots of different 3-D printers and figuring it out then helping us rather than we predicting what it will be like, think of what both ways.
Chris 20:40
Do we think that if that ever happened, that it would be publicized? Do you think? Or do you think it would be like the topic in general, it would be sort of hushed up and not really talked about.
Ellie 20:50
Chris? Are you? Are you suggesting that you know, this is already happening?
Alfredo 20:56
Who told you, who told you?
Ellie 20:57
For listeners at home, Chris looks shady.
Chris 21:03
Not really allowed to talk about it.
Ellie 21:06
I think this is really interesting. Like this idea of why is it inappropriate for us to be talking about this? You know. Why is this something that’s difficult? I’ve been, it’s these ideas about social structures, social intimacies in space has been something that I’ve been really interested in this year, and I’ve actually been talking to another friend, we were talking about city design, or, you know, infrastructure, you know, in a less individual, but more on an urban planning level, we’re talking about how in space, things like homelessness can’t exist. You can’t you can’t have homeless people on Mars, because to be homeless on Mars means you don’t have access to things like air. And so we have to radically rethink the way that we set up society, you know, if you imagine, worst case scenario, you go to Mars with a partner of yours, and or you are harassed by somebody on your team, maybe there is some kind of sexual violence, if you are tied to staying in that place, because it’s impossible for you to leave and escape to go somewhere else, or even live outside, you know, as an escape mechanism to be homeless, which we see especially in the UK, is disproportionately queer, young people. And we think about this, extrapolated into the discussions that we’ve just had, you know, we need to be thinking about these things. It’s not acceptable for us to send people on interplanetary missions without having thought through the implications of a lot, you know, and it’s fun to talk about the good things, but it’s important for us to address the bad things as well, like, how does consent work, how do we deal with harassment on a different planet where people are tied to the habitats in which they live? Yeah, I just think it’s really interesting when we talk about sexual health, it’s sometimes on the level of the individual, but this is part of a broader conversation about how we set up societies on other planets. And I guess maybe that speaks to broader cultural questions about what is acceptable, and what we understand to be normal, or within the realms of discussion. So yeah, we might have the rockets to get there but sorry, that was quite serious.
Alfredo 23:25
I think you raise absolutely fantastic points. And even to take it a step back from those Team bacille about consent, to answer how to try to answer Chris’s question on if there’s been an investigation or if there’s going to be investigation, is also how you navigate consent in trying to carry out the studies. Because it’s not just like, if you decide if you are signed up to go to the ISS to do a study on masturbation in space. Can you just step out of it? Once you’re up there? How do you navigate? It’s not like saying, “oh, we’re not gonna show up to the clinic, or here.” It’s, you are 500 kilometres from the ground. So I think there’s a lot of complexity that needs to be ethical complexity, that needs to be talked through very, very well, before we address this. But I think it needs to be thought through, it needs to be discussed, it needs to be investigated a lot. And I feel at the moment, it’s us having this kind of conversation, and you don’t hear it from the space agency that they are actually planning some stuff like this.
Ellie 24:52
Yeah. So I think one of the things that Akvile maybe can talk to us a little bit better is the use of design as a way of maybe getting into some of these thoughts. So design as a prompt for thinking about these things, kind of creating physical objects, and I’ve forgotten what this process is called. Save me Akvile. What’s it called spec, spec?
Akvile 25:14
You’re talking about speculative design or… ?
Ellie 25:16
Yes I am, yes I am.
Akvile 25:19
Yeah, I guess there’s a example of how design could help is as Ellie mentioned, looking about speculative design and creating some sort of prompts or objects or experiences to provoke or resist upon certain ideas. And I think Design Museum’s Moving to Mars exhibition tried to do that a little bit. So if you have been or if you have not been, one of the rooms was dedicated to more the home side or living side, on Mars, and I remember, someone created a candle, which was supposed to help commemorate the dead. So how does that happen? On Mars? How do we commemorate the death and there was a little candle. So I think it probably got quite a few ideas about the topic more broadly. And then I believe there was a kitchen, a proper sort of space kitchen, that you could walk around and sit on a couple of chairs. And think about that. So I think museums could play or exhibition design, set design could play in provoking these ideas for how it would be like, because I guess, if we’re just talking, there’s this, you know, it’s one type of experience, but to actually go and interact with an environment that could maybe look like something in space, could help us to have a better understanding or testing ground for, how do we design when it actually comes to having these issues on space.
Ellie 26:54
I think also the one of the really useful things about speculative design is that it’s not necessarily meant to be a solution. So they’re not meant to be like actual objects that would be used in space. Then, as Akvile mentioned, with the candle, they’re meant to be prompts to think about what could the possibilities be? Because if you see something and you’re like, Oh, well, this is a great idea, but actually, I wouldn’t do it this way. It’s you know, much like maybe an image prompt, or, you know, getting some data will help you think about what’s the possibility, speculative design can really help people tangibly see, yeah, see a solution and then be like, actually, this solution is fairly imperfect. There are better ways of doing this. This is what I would look for. I was like, when we had this exhibition at the Moving to Mars one, the speculative design of the habitat, my main thought was, “where’s all the cleaning equipment?” I was obviously in the process of a big tidy up in my house in my life. But I was like, where’s the cleaning equipment? Like, what happens if there’s Martian dust? In this place? Where are you keeping the broom? Where’s the Hoover? Where’s the mess of the pots and the pans?, My, not like I live in a messy place. I’m a reasonably tidy human. And perhaps that’s why I was thinking about it. I was like, but things don’t just get tidy by magic. You know, how, where are we keeping this stuff in this habitat? Where is the process, you know, the intimate processes of life that we all have to go through, cleaning the place that we live in, tidying up, you know, where’s the mess from, children in this space? The toy box? Or adaptations from the table for people who maybe don’t walk around and sit down at a table? Where’s the space for example, people with wheelchairs, where does that go in this place? And it’s helpful to look at these objects and be like, this is what we’re missing. Or these are things that we haven’t engaged with.
Akvile 28:51
And there’s, well, I think there’s a design is at fault here as well. Because when we design anything to do with space, or future, there’s already a very strong language that’s been established of what space looks like. And as Ellie mentioned, where is the dirt, where’s the human element? Everything is designed so white and curvy, and Perspex. So it’s sort of like, I know that there are designers who would say, we’re using all this white and plastic materials just to sort of say, here’s a silhouette, but we’re not trying to project of what it will look like. But certainly, that has already become the aesthetic of space. And I guess when you are producing these images, or sets or objects that represent space and show it to the public, if there’s no human element, how are they supposed to immediately start thinking about, well, how would I clean or how would I have sex in space?
Ellie 29:52
Who’s making the lube?
Akvile 29:55
Who’s making the lube?
Ellie 29:57
Who’s making the condoms? Where are they coming from?
Akvile 30:00
Exactly. And, you know, are we challenging the aesthetic of space? Is that what we really actually want? Do we want these sleek, curves, clean spaces with no mats, no germs, no natural materials? I don’t know, do we?
Chris 30:20
I think this leads me on perfectly to my next question, which is, you know how all of these sort of designs and everything is so sleek and clinical and white and curvy and aesthetically, I think it’s amazing. I think stuff like that looks fantastic. Because it’s, it looks so futuristic. And one of the main reasons we have that idea of the future looking so clean and white and spick and span is because of how we’ve been influenced by pop culture and sci-fi, from films and TV series, probably even to a degree in books as well, and how things have been described as looking. So in that vein, what are some good and bad examples of that how we’ve been influenced, and especially in terms of sex?
Alfredo 31:08
I think it’s a very good point. And I feel that as the resident nerd, it’s most of the stuff in a lot of sci-fi, especially TV and films, is objectification of women. That’s the only hint at sex that there is. It’s Princess Leia. Carrie Fisher wasn’t allowed to wear a bra in “A New Hope.” And then the golden bikini. It was so much in Star Trek, even recent “Star Trek Into Darkness.” I also had that example. The love conquest, they were just seen with the eye of the Starfleet captain. And it’s this… they’re not given, even when they are given agents, they’re still looked at with a male gaze.
Ellie 32:12
And even if they are, even if there is this idea of relationships, or any kind of partner activity, it’s often very heteronormative. In terms of it’s, you know, people who are men, with people who are women. I read a really interesting paper about that’s alive. I heard a really interesting presentation about the idea of this kind of revival within science fiction of queer relationships, but in alternative universes. So often, if you think particularly of things, like I think of Star Trek, with the person who gets trapped in the matrix – I don’t watch this, but this was the example that was given as like somebody gets stuck at a computer. Alf do you know what I’m talking about?
Alfredo 32:56
I think you’re talking about the mycelium network, mobile computer.
Ellie 33:01
Yes, yes, if so, yes, that and other things that are similar to this in Doctor Who and in Torchwood, and in other TV shows, but people get trapped in a different dimension or a different reality. And that in those places, it’s possible to have queer relationships, but they’re often seen as kind of sequiter tangents to the main story, or they are things that happen in an individual episode. But then the person gets out of that place, and goes back to having heteronormative relationships. Or in some very, tragic cases, we see the replication of this burial quiz. Trope, which I don’t know if you’ve discussed on the podcast before, if your listeners are familiar with, but this is the idea that once queer relationships are possible between characters in TV shows or in storylines, those characters then get killed off almost immediately, or at least one of the people in the partnership gets, or relationship, gets killed off. And thus the idea that these queer possibilities happen for a moment, but they are not, we shouldn’t be sharing them on TV for a long time. We’ll just have it once, and then we’ll kill somebody off, which is really dark and really sad. But of course, there are some really wonderful possibilities about alternative ideas of what’s possible in space, and in queer futures. And so I want to draw attention to two things that I particularly love. One is “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin, which has a really wonderful exploration of possible plural genders beyond what we see in kind of binary gender norms. And the other is Janelle Monae’s “Dirty computer” e-motion picture, which has some really wonderful subversive and radical ideas about like what futures might be like to resist heteronormativity and in science fiction futures. But more generally, there’s a very interesting book that I read for my research. It’s called Queer Universes, Sexualities and Science Fiction. And they talk a lot in this book, Pearson, Hollinger and Gordon, about the ways that we can think or imagine alternative futures within the science fiction, so that’s well worth an exploration. But one of the things they say is that, we can imagine these amazing techno scientific spaces where people are able to travel light years, in the span of a single human lifetime. But, when we look at the way those social relationships are still happening, they still tend to be very binary, and they still tend to be very heteronormative. And so what is it about imagining the future that means that we are happy to reimagine the scientific possibilities, but not the cultural possibilities of our social relationships? And as we maybe can think about, science fiction is always kind of about the present, it’s never really about the future, it’s always about the now. And so perhaps this tells us a little bit about maybe the context in which those science fictions were written before, and the emergence of these kind of new plural futures maybe tells us a little bit about our contemporary moment and possibilities around gender and sexualities now, rather than queer possibilities of the future, itself.
Alfredo 36:21
That is a very good point. Before we ask the last question, I’m going to make a little plug. Because on the podcast, we do some sci-fi, we had a few special episodes last season, we have always a Christmas special. And you might have noticed if you listen to the episodes already, but if you haven’t, everyone is queer until proven otherwise. Literally, we had people having to state that they were straight in the last episode, because that is our sci-fi universe. And that’s how we are going to deal with it.
Chris 37:09
So thinking of sci-fi, and everything being current, and everything dealing with the here and now, switching it ahead, what would be the desires for the future of sex and sexual health as an integral part of human exploration in space?
Ellie 37:28
What do I want to see in sex in space in the future and like inclusion of sexual health? Well, I guess I want to see more discussion of this, I say more, what I really mean is any discussion of this. It would be exciting to see people thinking about this discussing it in public. I know that I talk about this with various peoples, or researchers with members of the public at events, and everyone’s kind of like, wow, I never really thought of that. But now you mentioned it. And I’m like, “Yeah, I think maybe we should be talking about this a little bit more.” So that’s my number one priority is like any, literally any discussion of this in the public domain. But also, I think I want to see, actually, that idea that you have in your sci-fi shows, which is not the presumed straightness of, space. So it’s always kind of a point of, I guess, a point of interest that maybe the astronauts we send to space, are queer. And, you know, there have only been two people who’ve gone to space who are queer in the international space program from America. And I think that there’s always this discussion that that is somehow deviant or different and worthy of attention. But actually let’s start thinking loads of people are queer. And increasingly, especially with upcoming new generations, we see resistance to the gender binary. Let’s start thinking about making that a priority. How do we stop designing for binary gender cases? I have here behind me, for the listeners of the podcast, on the shelf behind me I have some little Lego astronauts. And when I bought them from the European Space Agency, I was going to buy one. And then they asked me would you want a girl astronaut or a boy astronaut, I was like, well, now I obviously have to buy two. I can’t have one of these two. I need them as a pair. But also why is it a girl astronaut and a boy astronaut? Well one of them’s wearing makeup. Firstly, let’s get some makeup in space. Sounds like a great idea. Secondly, why does that make that person a girl? It’s a Lego figure. That’s a gender. Lego figures can’t declare a gender. Let’s start thinking you know more expansively about the ways that we can we can have people and ideas and relationships in space. You know, that’s the kind of thing I want to start to see. I have bigger dreams further down the line. But those things would be great. That would be a great starting point. Akvile what about you?
Akvile 40:15
I would like to see more designers involving people in the same process, especially communities that have been left outside. I also want people to start challenging the design, the space aesthetic. I think a good example, or at least a example that sort of challenged that was Galina Balashova. And she is a Soviet architect who designed I believe, the Mir space station or definitely contributed towards it. But if you look at her original drawings, she always had attached, she always attached the human element onto a space station. She added paintings of lovely landscapes and things like that. And she used colour. And I think she really thought about, you know, if I lived here, what would I like? I’d like to see more design provocations and some community thinking, thinking about this and spitting out all this creativity onto people to contribute towards the conversation.
Ellie 41:14
Yeah. And I would like I mean, there are also things I’d like to see less of maybe that’s also important, Alf I think, was it – no, it wasn’t you. Sorry, not Alf. Don’t throw Alf under the bus for this. Somebody else that I know sent me a video that was an advert for Fleshlight, which is like our male sex toy, which is really laudable, we should definitely be designing more of sex toys for men. Very pro that. But that video is about docking a spacecraft into the space station. And if you – Akvile and I have a shared Instagram account, and we’ve got a little video of that one that’s called “in space, no one can hear you moan” is our Instagram account if you want to have a look. But this idea that what the space station is this, has this feminine coded voice. The male astronaut is docking the ship inside the space station, less of that please. That’s not what we want to see going forwards.
Akvile 42:10
Yeah, sex toys being less gendered.
Ellie 42:13
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And being less mapped directly on to this idea of space and futurity and therefore futurity being heteronormative. Let’s decouple these things. Let’s try and change that.
Alfredo 42:29
I think all of this could be a topic of a future episode or future episodes, because I would love to discuss more design for space, in terms of with the human element thought in, I don’t know, recently, there’s been discussion that a new space hotel will open in a few years, like there is every year this discussion. And it was literally the design of the space station in “2001, A Space Odyssey.” And it was just like, has no one actually thought of anything else that?
Ellie 43:11
Yes they have- they have, but nobody wants to listen to alternative ideas. Let’s just make it like “2001 Space Odyssey” because that’s fine.
Chris 43:19
Again, it’s the impact of sci-fi and pop culture.
Ellie 43:22
Yeah.
Alfredo 43:22
So I guess we will hear from you on this, on this channel soon enough.
Ellie 43:29
Yeah, let’s hope so. I mean, I have, I’ve just seen some really exciting stuff about non-human animals as well, in space as a teaser for your audience as well. How can we think about beyond the human intimacies? Yes. This one was about manatees in space, which I just adored.
Chris 43:51
Do you have any closing thoughts?
Alfredo 43:52
No, I think we have covered a lot. And there is a lot more to discuss in the future. So thank you very much to both of you for joining us for this episode.
Chris 44:04
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much.
Akvile 44:06
Thank you.
Ellie 44:06
Thanks for having us on. Yeah, it’s been great. Really great to discuss this with you.