Slashdot Mirror
Woman Creates 3-D Erotic Book For the Blind
Lisa J. Murphy has written an erotic book with tactile images for that special visually impaired porn connoisseur in your life. Tactile Mind contains explicit softcore raised images, along with Braille text and photos. From the article: "A photographer with a certificate in Tactile Graphics from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Murphy learned to create touchable images of animals for books for visually impaired children. Then she realized that there was a lack of such books for adults only. 'There are no books of tactile pictures of nudes for adults, at least the last time I looked around,' says Murphy. 'We're breaking new ground. Playboy has [an edition with] Braille wording, but there are no pictures.' She says that while we live in a culture saturated with sexual images, the blind have been 'left out.'"
It really seems creepy if the blind perceive faces that way.
Or...that example might be simply a case of practical approach; recognizing that the msin reason faces are detailed in "normal" naked photos is...because leaving it that way is the easiest thing to do ;p (while here there's some sculping involved)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Maybe this will sell some 3-D printers.
I ask this question seriously, and from a psychological perspective. We learn as we grow up what the social norms of attractiveness are, do we not? Isn't that why they have meandered and oscillated many times over human history? So then how does a blind person figure out what attractive physical traits are? Uncle Bob can tell little Johnny that girls with big boobs are hot, but if Johnny can't see boobs, then how will he know what that even means*? So what would distinguish between a hot chick and an ugly chick, for a blind person? In particular, much of what makes women attractive (or not) would seem to be things that would be extremely difficult to portray in any tactile way, such as hair color and length, small features of the face/nose/mouth area, and the like. Perhaps I underestimate the sensitivity of a blind person's fingers.
Notice, I am not asking why a blind person would find these sexually arousing. I'm asking how the norms of what is and isn't hot would be established for someone with a limited sensory pool. It makes perfect sense to me that a blind man who's touched boobs before would get off on pretending he's touching boobs while stroking a curved... er... now I know why blind uncle Ted always strokes the arms of his chair like that...
* I assume, of course, that he doesn't go around feeling up everyone he meets in a brute-force attempt to uncover Uncle Bob's meaning
My in-laws are blind. Going to the Louvre and Versailles with them was a fascinating experience. The museum personnel, realizing that they were blind, would lead them (and me since I was leading them) past the ropes, and we would get to go and touch everything. Yes, they got to touch some of the (less famous) sculptures. My father-in-law distinctly groped the boobs on one of the them, which gave us (the guard, me, and my father-in-law) a good laugh. My mother-in-law of course figured out what he was doing and told him to stop it.
My father-in-law claims that he had touched art forms before and it didn't do anything for him. So, I'm skeptical about this. A pornographic braille book, on the other hand, seems more up their alley.
Yes, I have odd conversations with my in-laws. They are rather 'open'. Ugh. They say the only thing funnier (and louder) than blind people having sex is deaf people having sex.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.