to not see a problem with men using robots for sex

[ReallyTired]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34118482

Yes, its a bit sad and perverted, but I can't see how a glorified sex doll hurts anyone. I would be horrified if a sex doll looked like a child. However if a really sad sexually frustrated man masturbates with a sex doll that looks like a grown adult, no one is getting hurt.

I don't think it that robots will be sophisicated enough to replace a real spouse in my life time.

YY to Yonic's point about 'personality'. Either this is a totally inainimate object which is totally nothing to do with men's attitudes to women, or it has a 'personality'. Which just happens to revolve around misogynist and even racist stereotypes about women. So it does reflect on how men think about and treat women.

Not to mention it's a bit bloody rich to describe women as 'policing' men's sexuality, when an overwhelming majority of criminal sex cases dealt with by the actual police concern men's violence towards women. Not to mention the fact that said police do not have an exactly sterling record in dealing sympathetically and effectively with sexual assaults. The idea that women are 'policing' men's sexuality is staggering.

Why cross out from the FWR boards, voyage? What's your point with that?

This thread has been enlightening and made me very sad. I'm going to hide it now.

Yonic

It reads as if you're equating fantasies about such genuinely questionable actions with the actions themselves. The gap created by the absence of the oppression of an actual human being is too great for me to perceive an approximate moral equivalence. I guess that's my moral perspective on the question you've posed.

AnyFucker

You see nothing. You're only reading.

I say fuck policing of sexuality, this tramples over women's very humanity.

All the yup.

Is there a gap between fantasies of women being controlled and sexually exploited by men and the society we live in? I must have overlooked that gap. Whereabout is it?

This is an interesting thread. I think it's a version of the 'toy gun' debate or the 'grand theft auto' debate that crop up from time to time. I personally don't think they have any real cross over in to real life. Of course there will be some weirdos or criminals.
I don't believe watching punch and judy makes you more aggressive to crocodiles.

But if enough people want them differently shaped then I'm all for it.
Anyway, I can't see a market for them

But women and girls are treated in exactly this way by men all over the world. the mechanisms differ but the result is the same - women and girls as appliances to do whatever the man wants. (And often be punished horribly if they don't).

The live-action of this is being played out all over the world. It seems that having women and girls who literally have to do what you say or else is a quite popular idea. In the West we have come along from those days and so now that men can't have a woman to control and own here they (some? lots? how many would secretly like to?) pay for prostitutes, get mail order brides where the selling points are that they will do all the housework and never complain and always say yes to sex, and want to fuck passive docile robots who look like whatever their fantasy is and will do whatever they like.

I find it surprising that so many men are apparently completely unable to understand why some women have quite a visceral reaction against this.

Other things to catch up

Sex is not a human need it is a human desire. Humans do not need sex, they need food, water, air, and then into shelter, freedom from torture etc. Sex with another human being should never be on that list.

If this is nothing more than living out a fantasy, then it goes into the category of other things that involve no real people eg written content, drawings etc. As such there should be no limits on what goes - so people would need to set any discomfort aside around what form these robots might take.

If anyone does have discomfort around the idea of certain forms being used to make sex bots, then I think they need to examine whether they really see them as distant from real life as they claim.

Bottom line is, if it's just a fantasy, then any and all forms should be available (supply and demand) and any and all fantasies catered to (fantasies of extreme control, sexual violence, torture and so forth are not unusual).

Final point is that the description includes "Frigid Farrah needs a lot of coaxing", of course in real life when a woman or girl "needs a lot of coaxing" it's invariably because she doesn't actually want to, this trope is really quite disturbing to me and is heading in the direction of where presumably there would be reasonably large market (I don't think I need to spell it out). I mean the idea of a personality mode labelled "frigid" and making that known (how? saying no I don't want to etc?) and then gets "persuaded" is just revolting really. I suppose that last one is grim, again because lots of women and girls and children have been there, saying no and trying to be "coaxed" and then either giving in, continuing with no and being met with force, or he gives up and calls her frigid.... And this is being marketed as one of the acceptable fantasies IYSWIM.

I don't know the whole thing is grim really isn't it.

Yonic - artificial intelligence is highly relevant to this debate because the original BBC article says:

'... sex dolls already on the market are becoming more sophisticated and some are now hoping to build artificial intelligence into their products.'

In Bladerunner the male protagonist subject Rachel (the most advanced sexbot') to a sophisticated Turing Test to detect if she is an android or real woman.

This question has been explored in cinema and books fairly regularly.

For what its worth my view is an inanimate unintelligent object poses little risk but the real risk will occur when artificial intelligence plus increasingly realistic physical attributes are combined.

"fuck passive docile robots who look like whatever their fantasy is and will do whatever they like."

Or in fact robots who put up a fight but eventually give in

Or ones who put up a fight and keep fighting

Whatever it might be. But whatever it is, they do whatever the man wants, so in that sense they are passive and docile.

If I had a mannequin made of a child and beat it every day and gave it to my husband to have violent sex with, is that OK? Or not? The arguments here say that would be fine. But would people genuinely be comfortable with that, I think most people would have quite a visceral reaction that that was not right. Or is the argument that anything goes and it's not real and fantasy is separate from reality and it's the privacy of your own home?

I'd be interested to hear people say yes well that's not my taste but I don't think there's anything wrong with it....?

The interesting thing of course is that generally, people don't like robots that are too realistic (of people), it freaks them out. We can't make them so that you can't tell, at the moment. Maybe it will be different when we can. But for now, people feel that something is wrong, it's off, they consider them to be creepy, they don't like them. People react much better to robots that don't try too hard to look human.

Except in this case.

I'm not sure what that says, if anything it's interesting though.

I haven't read the whole link but here is wiki on this phenomenon where people don't like robots that look "too human".

Basic human needs - look under physiological, it includes SEX. Sorry to burst your prudish bubble Whirlpool

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Prudish bubble? Come off it.

Think it though. If sex with another human being is a human need, like air, food, water, then sex with another human being needs to be written into the human rights act as something to aim to be available to all citizens. You are responding to my post where I said it should not be placed in that category, you have decided to argue with that and call me a prude (!). So you want sex with another human being recognised as a human right.

Have you thought through what that might mean.

Some people have sexual desires that society criminalises. You say that their needs must be met. How do you plan to do that?

Give the old brain a bit of work mate.

The very idea that sex with another human being should be a human right is utterly repulsive, nothing prudish about that.

Maslow is full of shit

Feminists don't like sex blah blah

Anyone who says that sex is a human need, with air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and the less "essential" things that are included like freedom from torture, is a bit hard of thinking. Or maybe they just think that human rights apply to men only (and we're back to square one with treatment of women and girls historically and right now around the world there aren't we).

whirlpool - you are only talking about basic physiological and safety needs to sustain physical wellbeing but higher order psychological needs to maintain mental wellbeing including love, esteem and self actualisation are real 'needs' as anyone who has spent years is solitary confinement will attest.

So you agree with that poster then.

That's fine.

I am not looking at it in terms of human rights and sexual perversions, I am looking at it as it has been studied. As BetaTest says.

You can twist the truth to suit your political proclivities or you can face it and realize that not everything fits neatly into the box you've made for things.

Your take is entirely colored by problems you see within the realm of sexuality. But its not a political thing human need, its just a set of facts.