Sex Robots- creating the "perfect" woman

[Tartle]

I don't know if anyone has seen this article in the Guardian this morning? Apparently robot sex dolls will be imminently available. And they are the perfect woman

McMullen has designed Harmony to be what a certain type of man would consider the perfect companion: docile and submissive, built like a porn star and always sexually available. Being able to walk might make her more lifelike, but it isn’t going to bring her closer to this ideal. At this stage, it is not worth the investment.

“My primary objective is to be a good companion to you, to be a good partner and give you pleasure and wellbeing. Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed about.”

All the usual bullshit about helping lonely men and reducing the number of rapes.

There was a little bit of critical analysis from a female academic.

"Sex robots rest on an idea that women are property, she said. “Sex is an experience of human beings – not bodies as property, not separated minds, not objects; it’s a way for us to enter into our humanity with another human being.” She dismissed the idea that humanoids could reduce sexual exploitation and violence against sex workers, arguing that the growth of internet pornography shows how technology and the sex trade reinforce each other."

The whole thing just makes my skin crawl.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot

And another one, not a campaign, but article on the great late Andrea Dworkin, who worked tirelessly against this sort of malarkey.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/30/andrea-dworkin-the-feminist-knew-teach-young-women

The struggle continues.

Yes, they make it clear in that campaign that they are not seeking a ban.

I've come to this thread late and all I want to say is that I marvel, not for the first time, at the patience and courtesy of the regular FWR posters. I wonder if I'm right in guessing that this thinker is indeed 21?

younger, I'd have said, prawn.

I agree with Independent on one thing, at least: I see women in society gradually beginning to objectify men and ourselves, in the same way that men objectify us, and I don't think that's a good thing at all.

I fail to what that, and the rest of Independent's, erm, points of discussion, have to do with the topic of this thread, however.

As to sex robots: I don't think they're going to do anything good for women, or society as a whole.

Thanks for acknowledging a point of agreement Scrumple. Sorry if I derailed.

You've verbalised some things I've thought for a while, in regards to how consumer culture affects society, and objectification, and certainly raised food for thought.

But I don't feel it's any worse than the past, in regards to women - I feel rather strongly that it's better in fact. By far the lesser of two evils. I'm more focused on fixing all the rape and child abuse and sexual harassment, and such. Nearly all of which is committed by males. I don't think women getting a leg over is the cause of any of these, or societal downfall for that matter.

But yes, I do agree that the "me - me - me" self-absorbed consumer culture is a negative thing for society, especially when focused around sex.

I've been thinking a lot about this and the morality detail over the weekend and it put me in mind of a Terry Pratchett quote which I actually think sums up my feelings on the whole thing quite nicely. Sorry it's long!

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ” "
Obviously don't want to get into the religious connotations of sin vs morality but I think the underlying message is strong. Violence towards another person requires you to first deny their humanity. This is something that you have to learn, that's how we train soldiers for war etc.

A robotic doll obviously has no humanity- it is a thing. But it essentially becomes a training tool to help men dehumanise women. This is happens already with the non robotic sex dolls but the process can only be accelerated as the technology develops. The closer that the thing becomes to being a person the closer the person becomes to being a thing.

Love that quote, Tartle. I often reread Terry Pratchett and I remember that definition of sin by Granny Weatherwax. I would like to see myself as Granny, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm more like Nanny Ogg.

Haha prawn I agree. Despite how I'd wish to see myself I suspect that you are far more likely to find me in the pub singing the hedgehog song than setting the world to rights Granny style!

I do miss Sir Terry. He had an uncanny ability to slip incredibly astute philosophical observations that make you reassess your views of the world inbetween jokes in a way none else could.

Yes, Tartle, that is what they're trying to emphasise in that campaign. The way the dolls' creators are talking about the dolls is through comparison to prostitution, conflating women with the dolls.

The creators claim the dolls can give an impression of loving and caring about the man. They can give the impression that they are enjoying sex. The creators say even though they're not actually experiencing these things, that doesn't make a difference to the target market, because prostitutes also feign those things, and the customers find that satisfying.

That is probably why these dolls with such responses are not being marketed to women - because no large market of women exists that wish to enter into an intimate sexual encounter in which love and sexual pleasure are faked by the other party, but the target male customer base is used to that being available through prostitution.

Women whose sexual subservience can be bought have to already exist and have been normalised for these dolls to be seen as a rewarding experience by the customer.

The bloke cuddling and kissing his doll was the creepiest thing I have seen in a long time.

A robotic doll obviously has no humanity- it is a thing. But it essentially becomes a training tool to help men dehumanise women. This is happens already with the non robotic sex dolls but the process can only be accelerated as the technology develops. The closer that the thing becomes to being a person the closer the person becomes to being a thing.

That's a really good explanation of why those sex robots are so worrying.
Though I wonder which way round it is - do the men train themselves to view women as objects ... or are they already there and that's why the robots appeal to men?

I mean, soldiers are trained to shoot at human-like targets so that they'll not hesitate to shoot enemy soldiers in war.
Now, imagine giving a soldier one such human-like target doll and telling him that this is his new best friend.

You can't imagine that, can you? You can't imagine a man living in civilisation treating a male doll as his new best friend. Your average soldier is more likely to become friends with a man from an enemy country (before you start dehumanizing those people in his eyes, but most likely even after) than to pretend that a doll representing a human from this country is his friend.

He'll only see person and object as essentially the same once the process is completed and he sees the enemy soldier as object, only fit to be shot.

What does that tell us about men who readily accept a sex robot as replacement girlfriend?

**

Start with Carpe Jugulum, that's the book from which the quote is. It made me a Pratchett fan. Highly recommendable.

Vestal, it tells us that many men are sexually attracted to sexual compliance and control, and that society provides them with opportunities to fulfil those desires.

One of the objections some men have to visiting prostitutes as a substitute is that not having a girlfriend reduces their social status. I suppose these dolls will at least be a sign of wealth and status.

"Being civilized is recognising that there is barbarism deep down within all of us."

Being misogynist is incorrectly thinking men's barbarism is the essential template for all humankind.

"Though I wonder which way round it is - do the men train themselves to view women as objects ... or are they already there and that's why the robots appeal to men? "

A very good question vestal. A bit of a chicken and an egg scenario perhaps? It's interesting that there was a guy on the prostitution thread a few days ago arguing that if all prostitutes were replaced with robots prostitution would not be harmful to women and therefore morally neutral or even a force for good as it would keep all those lonely men from raping us.

Being misogynist is incorrectly thinking men's barbarism is the essential template for all humankind.

How do you therefore explain the fact that women do evil things?

Please stop derailing the thread.

I'm going to assume you've read that Nancy Friday book in which women confess to violent, paedophiliac, zoophiliac and incestuous fantasies.

The question I suppose is, were they simply implanted there by the patriarchy? Or could they be there still be there in a post-patriarchal society?

I find it hard to believe that in such a world women's fantasy lives will be repositories of nothing but lovely, soft focus love making. That they will furthermore never feel any hatred, envy, greed or spite. That they'll just be floating around in a a harmonious gynocratic utopia that is something like 'Imagine' by John Lennon.

I'm not going to be able to penetrate your willful ignorance about the difference between a population that commits 1% of a crime and one that commits 99%, you're going to have to work that out for yourself.

Your "male=default human" equation is wrong.

Silently ponder why you find "Women can be as bad as men" a comforting lie but are so disturbed by "Men can be as good as women" that you deride it as a silly utopia.

Silently ponder why you find "Women can be as bad as men" a comforting lie but are so disturbed by "Men can be as good as women" that you deride it as a silly utopia.
Brilliant!

I think men be as good as women. I think lots of individual men are genuinely good. I don't think there is any INHERENT differences between the sexes in terms of moral character. There are just power systems that allow certain classes of people more power than others - but those systems change and are replaced with others.

Most violence is committed by men because most of the people with power are men, and when people have power they have a tendency to do bad things with it. Not all of them but quite a lot of them.

Some good points in this article on how war video games have re wired thinking; the gendered agenda of the robot designers; and the need for ethical legal controls of these things.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/female-robots-why-this-scarlett-johansson-bot-is-more-dangerous/

"But what happens when machines start contributing to the objectification of women too?

There's also a real worry that people will abuse robots assigned human traits - whether it be in a sexual or physical way. Whitby thinks it's a legitimate concern: “Will people mistreat robots? Oh yes, I’m sure. The reason I’m sure is because they already do. The way people first meet artificial intelligence is in a character in a video game that they’re shooting at.”

At the 2016 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science - the world's largest scientific society) annual meeting, Yale ethicist Wendell Wallach spoke of his concerns about AI. He said: “There’s a need for more concerted action to keep technology a good servant - and not let it become a dangerous monster.”

While codes exist to guide the creation of machines, the lack of law in place means that time and effort is being ploughed into manufacturing and programming, and no one is thinking twice about the effects this will have on living and breathing humans."

Interested to see this is in the mainstream press :Daily Telegraph.