{"id":6994,"date":"2017-07-18T15:39:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T21:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6994"},"modified":"2017-07-18T15:39:50","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T21:39:50","slug":"sex-robots-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/sex-robots-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Er, Lady-friend robots, again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHelen_O'Loy_(Astounding_Fiction%2C_1938).jpg;<\/p>\n

(The \u201cagain\u201d is because I had previously posted on a similar article<\/a>, and, yes, I\u2019m heistant to put \u201csex\u201d right up their in the blog title.)<\/p>\n

From Ann Althouse<\/a>, a link to a New York Times article<\/a> about sex robots. \u00a0It\u2019s the usual genre, of seeming to treat robots as sentient, and capable of being harmed (\u201cBut it is also illegal to have sex with an adult woman who does not consent, and consenting is not something these robots are capable of\u201d) and, in its final concluding paragraph, seeming to fail to understand the difference between what\u2019s imaginary and what\u2019s real:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a basic human right that everybody\u2019s entitled to a sexual life,\u201d Professor [Noel] Sharkey [co-author of the report, Our Sexual Future with Robots<\/a>] said. But is the basic human right to a sexual life the same as a universal entitlement to a young, attractive woman? Because that is what it is being subverted into here.<\/p>\n

There is a big difference between the right to dignity and privacy, the right to consensual sexual activity, and the idea that every man has some fundamental right to a woman\u2019s body. By replicating women as realistically as possible, this is what such robots attempt to provide \u2014 down to every detail except the pesky necessity for an actual woman\u2019s consent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In making this statement, Sharkey seems to be saying that men simply don\u2019t have a right to a sex robot, because the female sex in some way collectively has a copyright, almost, on the female shape and the experience, however artificially simulated, of having sex with a woman.<\/p>\n

Now, to be sure, prior to this sweeping statement, Sharkey and the Times<\/em>\u2018 author Laura Bates make a specific claim about the impact of sex robots: \u00a0in the same way as<\/p>\n

Research has shown that heterosexual men who are exposed to pornography and men\u2019s lifestyle magazines and reality TV programs that objectify women are more likely to be accepting of violence against women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

so, too, the ability to purchase and \u201crape\u201d a sex robot is, they believe, will cause\u00a0men to be more predisposed to act violently or abusively to actual woman.<\/p>\n

Is this a valid concern? \u00a0It\u2019s the same issue as with hand-wringing over whether first-person shooter video games will cause kids to become violent, about which everyone can cite a study that proves what they want to believe. \u00a0(As a mom, I draw the line for my own kids, at whether they\u2019re shooting at robots or clear humans, and whether the shooting causes blood and gore or just a Star Wars-style collapse to the ground. \u00a0It\u2019s arbitrary, I know.) \u00a0Yet at the same time, bondage is supposedly increasingly mainstream, or, at least, added to the category of \u201cnot that there\u2019s anything wrong with that,\u201d and I have not read any feminist writers complaining that consensual bondage will cause men (or women) to be more likely to be violent in other situations.<\/p>\n

A further concept that the authors present, reading the actual report itself, (if I\u2019m interpreting their point correctly) is simply that rape is so morally offensive that it is equally morally offensive to simulate rape:<\/p>\n

Patrick Lin told us in an email (February 15 2016),<\/p>\n

If robots don\u2019t have rights, then they don\u2019t require consent for us to treat them in a certain way, whether it\u2019s kicking them or having sex with them. But again, we could still be obligated to seek consent, even if they don\u2019t have rights. If it\u2019s important to society that we teach people that sex requires consent, then it\u2019s not absurd to build in those norms in human-robot interaction. We\u2019re socially conditioning people to act in better ways. So, consent here isn\u2019t about the robot per se, but it\u2019s about what our action says to society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the authors continue on by imagining somehow \u201cgaining consent\u201d from the robot, which is a bit odd. \u00a0But it\u2019s at least useful to see that they are evaluating the overall question of morality, rather than the question simply of what the government should or shouldn\u2019t permit. \u00a0Because there are certainly real issues of morality, in the same way as\u00a0there are\u00a0already real concerns with men retreating to porn \u2014 and not just because it impacts their would-be or actual girlfriends (which is a real issue, per Rod Dreher\u2019s \u201cThe Terrible Cost of Porn<\/a>,\u201d not for the squeamish), but because it prevents them from having a whole, meaningful life.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a whole Theology-of-the-Body issue, about whether human sexuality is meant purely for physical pleasure, removed from the mutuality and self-giving of a committed (let alone married) relationship, and whether those relationships should be oriented toward the giving of pleasure to another or simply a reciprocal exchange oriented towards getting a sufficient amount of pleasure ROI.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also a social isolation issue.<\/p>\n

A man who receives sexual gratification from a robot, and sensory enjoyment from a VR video game, would presumably\u00a0become more socially isolated, which is problematic for society as a whole. \u00a0There are likewise repeated reports of men finding greater satisfaction in video games than \u201creal life,\u201d and studies attributing the decline in working hours to this effect (though, to be sure, (a) video games are not necessarily socially isolating; my middle son\u2019s primary way to \u201cget together\u201d with his friends is virtual, chatting with them on his headset while he plays, and (b), I sometimes idly wonder whether the more crime-ridden parts of the country couldn\u2019t benefit from more video games, to get those kids stuck in basements, or apartment bedrooms as an alternative to shootouts in streets). \u00a0And it\u2019s not an issue of these men failing to \u201cdo their duty\u201d by boosting the GDP and becoming marriageable; it\u2019s an issue of their long-term well-being, even if they feel, at the moment, that their being<\/em> is perfectly well<\/em> playing video games to such a degree that it impairs their lives and their future.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, there\u2019s mix of cause and effect here: \u00a0as sex robot users would likely comprise, or at least, include individuals who can\u2019t find companionship in the usual manner, and feel\u00a0rejected by society for their general social awkwardness. \u00a0After all, for all of the lamenting that men are basement-dwelling losers, society is\u00a0increasingly demanding from men\u00a0top-notch skills in relationship-building and high earning potential, while we nurture women and girls and set men up as sexist villains.<\/p>\n

Of course, I doubt that those who object to sex robots on feminist grounds see any of this. \u00a0They seem trapped in the narrow issue of whether a man has a \u201cmoral right\u201d to own an artificial female body.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AHelen_O\u2019Loy_(Astounding_Fiction%2C_1938).jpg; By Ed Emshwiller [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(The \u201cagain\u201d is because I had previously posted on a similar article, and, yes, I\u2019m heistant to put \u201csex\u201d right up their in the blog title.) From Ann Althouse, a link to a New York Times article about sex robots. \u00a0It\u2019s the usual genre, of seeming to treat robots as sentient, and capable of being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[690,689,53,688],"class_list":["post-6994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-men","tag-porn","tag-relationships","tag-sex-robots"],"yoast_head":"\nEr, Lady-friend robots, again<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Will they take the place of actual relationships?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/sex-robots-again.html\" \/>\n<meta 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