Porn For The Blind Lacks Vision

You’d have to feel it to believe it.

A new book designed as pornography for the blind has hit the shelves. Tactile Minds in on sale for over $200 and features three dimensional naked men and women.

Sounds great, but book looks about as sexy as a paper-mâché Hallowe’en mask made in art class.

If only this were a case of the blind leading the blind.

“We’re breaking new ground,” said Lisa Murphy, the artist behind the book.

“There are no books of tactile pictures of nudes for adults. [The] blind have been left out in a culture saturated with sexual images.”

But the seventeen images in the book seem to be more art than pornography. Most of the images lack heads, masks taking the place of the human face. Many of the images are of non-traditionally pornographic scenes such as a birth or a woman whose torso is separated by a belt of bullets. Most of the images are of nudes, but none are having sex.

The reason that blind people have been left out of a culture of sexual images is that they cannot see,  and that is also reason why no one has attempted a pornographic book for blind people before. The medium itself is the problem.

The only available sense here is touch and this tactile book looks like it would feel just like raised paper. How does that imitate the sturdy ropes of muscles behind the soft smoothness of skin? Can it replicate the heat of flesh or a quickening heartbeat?

There is much better material available out there for the blind. Many sex toys do a great job of imitating the feel of human flesh, which is the closest to what the book is going for. Porn for the Blind has sound recordings of various sexual situations.

The problem here is that this is a seeing woman’s solution to a blind man’s problem (or vice versa). Sex is not all about the visual, so why mimic pictures?

With five glorious senses to play with, there’s no end to the possibilities.