Help me figure out why sex with Robot 'females' is WORSE than paying for prostituted women

[LaurieFairyCake]

I'm massively on the fence and it's giving me splinters but my gut is telling me it's even slightly worse to have sex with robots which sounds completely ridiculous to my feminist brain

In case anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about it's this horrible article in the Mail here

What I've got so far is that it will increase dehumanisation of 'real' women as if they are lifelike and you can do anything to the robot including being violent then it will go some to way blur and confuse the lines between fantasy and reality.

I'm really interested in others opinions.

Some time ago I worked for a while for a company that was developing the technology for a robotic doll. It didn't do much, just made a few movements and sounds, but it was realistic enough that it made me uncomfortable. I think the issue was that it started to trigger the emotional response we make to a baby, but it was still a gadget--it was a conflict. Whereas with an ordinary doll, we know it has some aspects of a child, but we also know it isn't alive.

I've got some similar response to this sex robot. It goes beyond just an aid to masturbation. In fact that's the point, you can use a gadget to masturbate with, but the claim is that a man can have sex with this machine. And we think of sex as an emotional experience as well as just a physical one, and even prostitution is still a transaction between humans. Make it a link between a person and a machine and it starts to sound like Frankenstein's monster, additionally horrific just because it pretends to be human.

You can be entirely logical and say that this is just the latest example of a machine saving humans from degrading and dangerous work (and that's what prostitution is). But somehow, there's work and there's human experience. Can we say we won't accept this because we insist on responding to it as humans?

Men have felt threatened by womens vibrators and sex toys for a long while.
Of course there will be female and male versions. And yes it is safer than real sex. No its not infidelity... Unless using a rampant rabbit could be classed as having an affair..?

IMHO sex with human looking robots is masturbation with a machine. I have no problem with it whatsoever. Feminism is about rights and equality for women, not policing what men do with their dicks.

Yes. Imagine... It might close down all human brothels,

And anytime someone fancies a bit of naughty nookie they can..... go jump on a robot!

I find it interesting that 'expressions of women's discomfort about incidents of the female body being dehumanised by by men', keeps getting forcibly misrepresented as 'assertions about policing male sexual behaviours'.

It is really flipping the OPs question from: why do I feel like this? to being: am I allowed to feel like this?

By the stealthy move of: women 'sharing feelings' about men = women 'policing' men.

I think this is really common in patriarchal/misogynist culture, where questions about male 'rights' to sexual behaviours trump females 'rights' to have or express their own feelings...

Its hypocritical silencing:

Patriarchy policing women's feelings - right on a mn feminism/women's rights thread!

I think we are saying that we don't have a problem with using things for sex as long as a) they don't have a brain or b) (better) they don't look like they have a brain. Seeing as that's exactly how some women see sexual women I am struggling to see the difference [devil's advocate emoticon!]

I posted that I wouldn't have a problem if the robots didn't look like women. I still like that women's erotica story about the red velvet sex chair (although, god help me, I did wonder how you would clean it ) But making sexbots as 'women' suggests real women aren't good enough - or legally abusable enough. It's the Stepford proposition: women would be ideal, if only the pesky things didn't insist on being human.

There is a difference between controlling an appliance and controlling a person. I think humanoid robots blur that difference. Well, they don't yet, but will as soon as a true android is developed. It's a dead cert that the first successful ones will be developed by the arms and the sex industries: in both cases, apparent humans which are capable of taking more abuse than a living being. I'm not that keen on either but, where the sexbot is concerned, there are no arguments in its favour. It will developed specifically for men's pleasurable abuse and, as such, will be expected to be more human-like than the humanoid weapon.
... trying to cram a dissertation into a post here, and failing!

I disagree that the idea is more repugnant than using human prostitutes - it's safer.

I wouldn't feel justified in condemning a man who bought one as a replacement for human women. I wouldn't like what it says about him, but hey.

I am deeply uncomfortable with the assumption that a robot prostitute should be a simulated woman.

It is not policing women's feelings. It is exploring them and offering an opinion (having been invited to by the OP).

A robot is a machine, just like a car or a sewing machine. The manufacture of sex robots is simply technological progression of the blow up dolls which have existed for many decades.

We have the right to feel what we feel about the sexual behaviour of others, but we do not have the right to extrapolate what we feel about it into what the user of the robot thinks and feels about us. Homophobes find gay sex abhorrent, they can feel that way if they like, they are entitled to their opinion. It is wrong for them to try to extrapolate that homosexuality is damaging to them as heterosexuals, or society as a whole.

On a different note, I do not believe that the availability of sex robots will end prostitution. There will always be those who want sex with a human woman and no matter how realistic a robot is, it is certainly not human.

Very few people are going to want the sex robot (whether it is create male or female) rather than the real thing.

No one is policing women's feelings. I have no problems with the robot, but am perfectly happy for women or men for that matter to say they do and try to work out why they do.

DioneTheDiabolist We have the right to feel what we feel about the sexual behaviour of others, but we do not have the right to extrapolate what we feel about it into what the user of the robot thinks and feels about us. Please qualify how these rights are defined, or where you acquired the knowledge about the lack of right to 'extrapolate what we feel'? If you are defining who has the right to feel or extrapolate from those feelings, surely you are policing no?

Basically you have nudged the discussion from how this makes me feel, to who has the right to do what. That comes across as quite authoritarian to me

No, no policing from me.

I think that my example regarding homosexuality and homophobes explains the difference between "feeling" and "extrapolating".

It may come across as authoritarian to you, that was not how it was intended. However, that is your subjective response to my post and you have the right to feel how you wish about it. To extrapolate from your feeling that I wish to police this thread is wrong.

I understand the difference between feelings and extrapolations (or inferences) from them - I was talking about changing the language from:

how this makes me feel/what impact could this development have? to:

person (a) has the right to do such and such, person (b) doesn't have the right to do such and such

also, you aren't the only one on the thread doing it, so I don't want you to feel this is a personal attack or I think you are an authoritarian kind of person who loves policing people. Just that the effect of telling people who has the right to do what implies a privileged access to absolute information (authority).

The gay example required a lot of unqualified assumptions though so I don't think it really justifies your position.

It is wrong for them to try to extrapolate [from finding gay sex abhorrent] that homosexuality is damaging to them as heterosexuals, or society as a whole.

1. You haven't defined what you mean by 'wrong' - do you mean incorrect or morally wrong?
2. Do you mean that extrapolating from a feeling that there might be a wider pattern is always wrong (incorrect or morally) What's your justification for that?
3. Is it 'wrong' to even try to extrapolate any feelings to find a wider pattern (or do you mean 'wrong' in fact to extrapolate and act on that basis to persecute a minority group)?

Because without clarifying this it could seem that 'flashers make me feel uncomfortable - perhaps this means they present a danger' is an extrapolation too far - when in fact we know that rapists often start off with flashing, for example, and in this case I do not believe it is either morally wrong or incorrect to extrapolate from the feeling.

Ah FoodUnit, it appears we have a communication difficulty so I will put this as clearly as I know how:
I came onto this thread to discuss sex with robots, not semantics.
I will not be changing my language.
I will not be providing definitions for every word I use.

I find your inability to understand my posts unfortunate, but hey ho, that's life.

DioneTheDiabolist I'm not telling you to do anything, I was not being specific about you. Just pointing that by asserting who has the 'right' to feel something, or that it is 'wrong' to extrapolate wider patterns from those feelings, is effectively taking the moral high ground, and in so doing - policing people.

hey ho indeed

Xenia, pm me if you want to.

"amillionyears Sat 21-Apr-12 19:58:17
Xenia, pm me if you want to."
Was there something you wanted to say?

Can I ask a stupid question. I always assumed those blow up "sex dolls" were just for practical jokes. Do men really use them?

Himalaya, they do. They tend to graduate from the cheap sort with printed hair and bad seams, to bigger & better ones with wigs. Expensive inflatables have moulded features and are less likely to deflate during - er use. Moving on from inflatables, you get silicon dolls which also vary in size, versatility and price. Top-of-the-range silicon dolls are life size, extremely lifelike in appearance (much artistry has gone into those!), feel like skin and have moveable joints which can be posed ... They all have oddly wide-set legs, though, to accommodate the -er, necessary parts which, in an expensive doll, are made the same as a Fleshlight. The poshest silicons are so heavy they have to be secured to a ceiling joist if the owner wants them to stand up. This is achieved with a heavy chain, which attaches to a bolt in the back of the doll's neck.

More than you ever wanted to know about sex dolls!

Here's one (picture inoffensive, except in so far as it's a fake girlfriend).

Garlic -

Thanks for that. MN is educational .

I doubt most men (or women if they are gay) would prefer them to the real thing.

DioneTheDiabolist - YES! intelligent clear thinking that keeps the heart of the issue at the heart of the solution
FoodUnit -Your comments feel like a cat chasing its tail.

tomwm I hardly think making arbitrary and unqualified assertions about 'who has the right' and what is 'wrong' on a matter, and illustrating such sweeping judgements with an example that is in the rough ballpark of the matter, yet not connected well enough to actually justify it (and shoutily refusing to explain your reasoning) is clear thinking,

And yes it does feel like you are going round in circles when discussing with someone like that - a bit like trying to challenge Nigel Tufnel on his assertion that an amp that "goes up to 11" is better.

Its clear thinking because the thinking is entirely connected to the original question at hand. I dont think the assertions were unqualified, they made a great deal of logical, simple sense. Things like that dont need qualification.

Example:
If i point at an apple and say its an apple, im right because it is. Of course you could ask me to qualify that and explain why or how i had reached that conclusion...and i would talk about its form, its taste its provenance etc. But still you could say 'but what qualifies those statements"...and so i would talk about the broader context of agriculture or the human digestive system. But still you could ask for qualification...ad infinitum.

You seem to spend much of the time 'critiquing' others arguments rather than setting forth your own. To assert that someone elses assertions are unqualified without qualifying your own assertions seems to me to be a never ending and pointless line (cirlce) of argument.

You say the argument is not 'connected enough to justify it'. I disagree, it makes perfect sense to me. On what basis do you believe it doesn't justify it???you need to qualify that assertion. And so we found ourselves biting at our tails again.

im done

If i point at an apple and say its an apple, im right because it is. Of course you could ask me to qualify that and explain why or how i had reached that conclusion...and i would talk about its form, its taste its provenance etc. But still you could say 'but what qualifies those statements"...and so i would talk about the broader context of agriculture or the human digestive system. But still you could ask for qualification...ad infinitum.

No in this case you would have wasted your time. If you point at an apple and say its an apple- your justification could be "because apple is the word to describe the fruits bearing these particular qualities in the English language. - in other words 'because apple is its 'name' - there's nothing inherent in that apple itself - the name is a human category.

You seem to spend much of the time 'critiquing' others arguments rather than setting forth your own.
Not always, in this particular case I was alarmed at all the people with crass knee-jerk responses that effectively seem to be assuming the moral high-ground - and policing the thread.

To assert that someone elses assertions are unqualified without qualifying your own assertions seems to me to be a never ending and pointless line (cirlce) of argument.
There is nothing I've said I haven't justified, and to you what is 'pointless' to a feminist is an essential defence of a space in which women can discuss feelings about things they find unsettling and to try to work them out (and voice concerns that they may portend greater female oppression in the future)- without being told that they are 'wrong' or 'don't have the right' to.

I dont think the assertions were unqualified, they made a great deal of logical, simple sense.
Perhaps this is because your analysis shares an equal lack of depth and rigour? And additionally because you benefit from it?