Sexual Objects

 

Okay... let's talk about sexbots.

Trigger Warning: Misogyny, Rape , Violence Against Women & Child Molestation - if any of these are triggers for you, take whatever precautions you deem necessary, as these topics are both heavily referenced as well as discussed in detail.

We've discussed Artificial Intelligence long enough, it's a burgeoning new technology. And, in the words of Dominic Noble "one of the first questions that mankind asks about any new piece of technology is 'can I fuck it'?", and the answer is Yes.
We've had sex dolls for a long time, in fact much longer than I ever thought. As early as the 1400s we have examples of advertising for life-sized sex dolls made out of cloth (I presume using lard or other lubricants for the "hole", but I didn't look into it). These dolls were called "dame du voyage" in French, or "dama de viaje" in Spanish, literally "woman of the journey" marketed towards sailors traveling overseas for months on end.
So, we've been fucking fake women for a long time, and I do mean women - not men. Sure, we've had dildos for a long time, but almost all sex dolls are female-presenting. Women seem less interested in sticking their fake penis onto a fake man... "fairer sex" indeed.
But, modern sex dolls are quite the upgrade from either the cloth or "inflatable" sex dolls from yesteryear - comprised of silicone, a steel skeleton frame, poseable limbs and "penetrable cavities", modern sex dolls are much more realistic than their ancestral sisters.

So, we have A.I. chatbots, we have sex dolls... put them together, and you have a functioning bimbo bot.
Well, I say "functioning", but even the most advanced real dolls don't have moving limbs. Servo motors that are powerful and dynamic enough to move arms around realistically, safe enough that they won't hurt customers (or the doll) and also cheap enough to be used for a commercially available sex doll... don't exist.
So, even the most advanced sexbots, like the RealDoll model "Melody", still don't have moving limbs, it's basically an upgraded head attached to a standard RealDoll body. But, for some people, this one addition was the beginning of the end.
Sorry, by people I mean "weird, horny men", and by the end, I mean "the end for women". Because there are some men who seem to genuinely believe that women are an endangered species now that fuckable robots exist.

And this is deeply disturbing. I wish I could say that this was just fearmongering, but there are a lot of incels and men's right's activists and MGTOWs who openly declare that no man needs a women anymore.
Seriously, I've done a lot of research into sexbots for this article, and inevitably the comments sections are flooded with sentiments like "this is what you get, feminists, we don't need you anymore" or "sex whenever you want, and no risk of nagging, periods or STDs, what more can you need?" and other despicable comments decrying women for being too frigid, opinionated or privileged, and blaming them for allowing them to be replaced by a superior sexual partner: the sexbot.
Let's set aside the fact that sexbots don't have a womb, so they can't have any children, because not all women have wombs either (or want children), and I really don't want these neckbeards procreating anyway...
More importantly, a sex robot is not a human being, it's not conscious, it's not alive, it's not a subject, it's just an object... an object that you can have sex with.
In case I somehow haven't spelled it out clearly enough, these people are literally equating women with sex objects. Or in some cases, they're even saying that sexbots are better because they are sex objects, literally saying that they prefer women that are sex objects.
Do these morons realize they're saying the quiet part out loud? Perhaps I gave misogynists too much credit, assuming that they'd have any degree of self-awareness.

Now, these are a minority. A loud minority that I wish were recieving psychiatric help for their mental health issues, but a minority nonetheless. Most people don't want to replace women with sexbots, because they see a sexbot as an expensive sex toy and I think that's fair. Most people also tend to think that sex dolls are only bought by sad, desperate or lonely people, and yeah I understand that as well. It's way too easy to dehumanize people for being weird and people see those that own sex dolls as sick and disgusting and as someone with automatonophobia, I find sex dolls horrifying - they look like dead bodies to me, with a fucken creepy dead-eyed stare and fingers that bend in unnatural ways.
I don't understand how anyone can find that attractive, let alone have them sitting silently in the corner of their room at night or lying in their bed expectantly, or god-forbid even waiting quietly in a dark closet next to your shoes. But that's just my opinion - I also think prawns taste disgusting, but that doesn't make people who love eating prawns degenerate tongueless freaks.
See, a sexbot is a sexual object, but I don't think that has to be a bad thing... a dildo is also a sexual object.

In fact, if we see a sexbot as little more than sex toy, surely that sets a lot of these concerns aside, doesn't it? In fact, as discussed at length in "Robots, Rape & Representation" by Rob Sparrow, (published in the international Journal of Social Robotics), a sexbot cannot be "raped", because lacking sentience it cannot provide, or withold, consent.  Even if we consider the idea that they can be programmed to "act" like they give consent, or even act as though they do not, if someone has sex with a robot that does not perform that act of consent, it too is not rape...
If you allow me to provide an example: A vibrating dildo is designed to vibrate when used for sex and you know it's working when it buzzes, but nobody would call you a rapist for masturbating with a vibrating dildo without putting the batteries in it just because it wasn't "acting like it was ready for sex".
The paper even discusses how even if you program a robot to act as though it witholds consent (for the sake of indulging in rape fantasy) this is still not rape, as there's no person being violated. It does accept that such an act would "simulate" rape, but simulating rape, or enjoying the simulation of rape, is not a crime anymore than enjoying the simulation of murder in videogames, or enjoying the simulation of torture in horror movies. The paper goes on to discuss the philosophy and morality of simulated rape, and how virtue ethics provides a model for determining why it's immoral... it's a fascinating read, and I recommend it, but I have a simpler, gut-reaction that explains the problem here.

Consider this thought experiment... let's accept for a moment that having sex with a sexbot that does not actively consent does not count as rape, and it is not a crime because there is no victim and no violation, and a sexbot is little more than an oddly-shaped sex toy.
If that were the case... then would there be a problem with designing sexbots that looked like children?

I, and I assume most people, find that idea abhorrent. But, there's no children getting hurt here and we agree that it's not rape - it's just an object, it's not a real child, it's not a real person, it's not even alive...
But that's not the point, is it? The point is that it speaks to the desires of the one using the sexbot for something like that. It's not the doll itself that might cause the person to act in that way - it's the fact the person's desire to act like that in the first place is disturbing, and there is a complicity in not only permitting this act, but condoning it by letting someone commit these acts, uncontested.

But we wouldn't do that, we know it's wrong - in Australia, it's illegal to make, own, or import sex dolls that are made to look underaged minors. I learned that when doing research and stumbling across a book called "Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating" by Caitlin Roper. In the book (and in interviews discussing the book, as I have not actually read the book myself) Roper discusses how not only do these types of dolls exist overseas, they're sometimes advertised to look like they're scared or crying. Yep... that's a fact that's gonna haunt me for the rest of my life.
But more relevant to the topic of sexbots in particular, Roper also talks about how the argument that nobody is being hurt, and that raping robots doesn't cause people to become rapists is true, but a smokescreen. Of course media doesn't generate immorality but that's also not the point - nobody thinks that simulated rape causes rape anymore than simulated murder causes murder. But, it can perpetuate certain attitudes and beliefs.

It's the same as saying that a single muffin will not make you fat - of course it won't, it's a single muffin, you need a little fat in your diet - but if it's a larger part of a diet of unhealthy food, it will affect your health and metabolism. Just like how a media diet saturated with unrealistic portrayals of women, that objectifies, dehumanizes and commodifies their sexuality, beauty and companionship whilst devaluing their emotions, opinions, social worth or equality will also lead to unfair treatment of women - yes, even to the point of ignoring or condoning violence against women, and rape.
This is rape culture, or complicit culture (although my preferred term never caught on... c'est la vie); this is people blaming rape victims "dressing too provocatively", this is people excusing college boys from rape because "boys will be boys" and they "made a mistake". And, yes, it's saying that we should replace women with sexbots because women "reject men" and "have periods".

So, sure, a sexbot is just an expensive sex toy, and it's not the end of the world, it's not even the end of women. Life will find a way, that's what it does. But, we also need to recognize that it is social and psychological junk food - and that sex with sexbots does have issues regarding consent and unhealthy concepts towards how we treat and value women in our society. Just as pornography and online content and all manner of tropes in media can perpetuate these concepts.
And if you genuinely think that a sexbot is the same as or better than a woman, as the kid's say, you need to go outside and touch grass.

In conclusion, do you know what these people remind me of? In 1965, PSU researchers were doing a follow-up test to an earlier experiment trying to identify triggers for "social bonding", and they discussed their findings in the paper "Stimuli eliciting sexual behavior" (by Schein, M.W., & E.B. Hale). It describes how they propped up a taxidermied female turkey in a pen and put it before a horny turkey (i.e. one deprived of sex for a few days during mating season). They found that male turkeys still initiated a mating dance with these models, and would try to mate with it. In fact, it wasn't bothered if they removed the legs, or wings, or even the body - even if it was just a head on a stick, the male turkeys were equally as likely to want to mate with it.
Now, this has to do with how birds identify one another, but you can't tell me that the current models of sexbots that put a chatbot into an upgraded head aren't literally this... it's a head on a stick, that people want to have sex with.
Until next time, I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and we may think humans are the dominant species on this planet, but shit like this just proves that we're all a bunch of turkeys.