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Body Swap: How Technology Can Simulate the Gender Experience

Ever wanted to experience what it's like to be the opposite sex? You can.
The menstruation machine. Image: Rai Royal

Ever wondered what it'd be like to swap sexes for a little while? Sure you have. Even in the most gender-equal society (which we're not), people have different experiences based on their sex and gender. To give a couple blunt examples: Periods. Penises.

Attempts to simulate aspects of gendered experience have a healthy history, and in recent years technology has helped to add a more realistic touch to stepping into opposite-sex shoes.

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Last year, European art collective BeAnotherLab created a virtual reality experience that allowed users to put on an Oculus Rift and see themselves as someone else—including a member of the opposite sex. They called their creation the Machine to Be Another.

"We were trying to understand a little bit better the relationship between empathy and identity," Marte Roel, an artist with BeAnotherLab, told me. "And trying to take this metaphor of being in the shoes of someone else as a real possibility."

Theirs is one of the most all-encompassing example of trying on another body for size. It works by having two people wearing Oculus Rift simultaneously look at and run their hands over their own bodies in precise synchronisation, with the video feeds swapped—so they see the other person's body, apparently responding to their own actions. This is supposed to fool the brain into accepting the new body as its own.

Roel said he thought the findings were interesting. "Me personally, I have found that I like to have painted nails," he said. Given the gendered nature of this fashion, he hadn't really considered it before.

He also said that swapping bodies with a partner is a particularly empathic experience. "Just having a body of your own which is different to yours, and which you care for so much—I cannot even explain it, but it's a very profound experience," he said.

Other projects have aimed to inspire empathy for other genders at particular points in life. Take the childbirth simulator.

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According to news reports at the end of last year, a system that emulates the pain of labour was introduced in a hospital in the Shandong province of China. Many of the volunteer participants were male partners of pregnant women; they had a device that gave electric shocks placed on their abdomen, which a nurse would slowly dial up in intensity to mimic contractions.

Reuters reported that many participants ended up writhing in agony and some asked for it to stop after a few minutes (the whole "taster" only lasted five minutes). One told the news agency, "It felt like my heart and lungs were being ripped apart."

Japan-based artist Sputniko! did something similar with her "Menstruation Machine", which is pretty much what it sounds like: an aluminium device the user straps to their body which simulates period pains using electrodes on the abdomen and also dispenses "blood" over five days.

While the video Sputniko! made shows a transvestite boy using the device to try to dress as a woman in a more biological manner, the work evokes a future when menstruation is elective; when technology has made what was once inevitable optional. "Who might choose to have it, and how might they have it?" the artist writes on her site.

As for male sex organs, there's no shortage of fake dicks out there; Sputniko! has also made one, the "Penis Cybernétique". Her motorised "prosthetic" is designed to be a "working penis"; it responds to her emotions by moving up and down according to her heart rate.

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But perhaps the most effective gender simulators out there are those that go beyond the physical. It could be as simple as choosing an avatar of a different sex when you play a videogame and noting the different ways other people treat you as a result; or doing a roleplay exercise where moving toward the finish line depends on picking up cards that reflect real-life biases.

Roel agreed that better understanding "otherness"—whether that's gender-based or otherwise—means taking on the story and struggle of another person, not just their body.

BeAnotherLab is now trying to work narratives into their body-swap system, using pre-recorded narratives that correlates to a choreographed VR experience. For example, part of the narrative could start when a user picks up an object such as a photograph relating to their new identity's story.

"When we have another aspect beside the body, which is the narrative of a specific person who has probably suffered—for gender inequality or something related—and you sort of embody that narrative of your own, I think then it's a little bit different," he said.

"More than just feeling their body, you understand their way of looking at life and struggling with life. And I think that this is really how you can create empathic bonds with this technology."

Perfect Worlds is a series on Motherboard about simulations, imitations, and models. Follow along here.