Cameron Townsley – 02/10/2019
The question of how sex robots will be integrated into our society and the impact they will have has become increasingly prominent over the past few years. Most of the effort put into the development of robotic sex partners has been for the creation of lifelike female automata for male consumption. I chose to conduct my investigation into this area of technology to understand the implications that a male dominant industry will have on women. My approach consists of drawing parallels between the current relationship between man and sex doll, to the future relationship between man and sex robot. I make this comparison as sex robots are the technological next step from sex dolls in replicating sexual human interaction. I propose that such interactions will be toxic to male behaviour, normalizing the mistreatment of women. I will support this claim with research on how behaviour can be formed from interaction. The aim of this essay is not to show that we are capable of harming sex robots themselves; it is to question why we accept the facilitation of inhumane behaviour, and to argue that this will cause future harm to women. Thus, I argue that if we are going to continue with the development of sex robotics, we will need regulate how consent is programmed.
Having objects that allow men to replicate sexual interaction isn’t a new phenomenon. From mannequins made by those away at sea (Beck, 2018), to blow up dolls and fleshlights, as our understanding of technology improves so do the technological advances of the sex toy industry. Websites like lovedoll.co.uk, Siliconesexworld.com and Bondara.com offer a range of different silicone-based dolls that can take predesigned forms or be customisable. At realdoll.com, buyers can customise their sex dolls however they want; this includes facial features, body shape and skin colour. They have an internal structure that allows the doll to be repositioned, and even have their skin or head removed to be washed and/or be replaced when the owner gets bored. Sex dolls were made to simulate a human being and I propose that it is reasonable to assume that as technology advances in other areas of life, it will be used to make sex dolls even more lifelike.
Although both male and female sex dolls exist, the market for female sex dolls is by far the largest, with only 20% of Realdoll’s business allocated to male models (The Sex Robots Are Coming, 2018). Furthermore, the development of sex robots has primarily been on female versions, such as Realbotix’s ‘Harmony’, TrueCompanion’s ‘Roxxxy’ and other international companies like the Chinese DS Doll Robotics. ‘Roxxxy’ is able to turn her head, crack a smile and say certain phrases depending on where on the body ‘she’ is touched (My Sex Robot, 2010). Although an improvement compared to a sex doll, TrueCompanion’s Sex Robot lacks full body movement, and the ability to converse freely with the user. Realbotix on the other hand, have begun to create an artificially intelligent sex robot that appears to be more humanlike. Although currently only a moving head, ‘Harmony’ can interact with the user by holding conversations, remembering specific faces and even making claims about the specific day (The Sex Robots Are Coming). Development to create a fully moving body is underway, but so far only consists of additions that will improve sex, such as a heated vagina, and self-lubrication (Realbotix.com).
The initial arguments against the development of sex dolls and sex robots are that in the creation of the perfect man or woman, replica designers use stereotypes that exclude realistic traits. The realdoll.com website offers only nine body types, none of which have a waist bigger than 24 inches. Other customisations are included such as nipple size and specific vagina shape that is removable and interchangeable. Kathleen Richardson expresses that sex robots are “reinforcing the idea that women are nothing but vaginas and breasts that can be removed and modified and exploited” (Richardson, 2016). I agree that sex robots’ image can have a damaging effect on women’s – and men’s – self-image, especially considering the ‘perfect’ body types in which they are available. However, I think that the impact sex robots will have on men’s behaviour will be more detrimental than this and lead to the physical harm of real women.
The purpose of buying a sex doll is so that you can have sex with it when you want. You don’t have to engage with a real person, the doll will always be there and will always receive your sexual advances. Dolls have the inability to express anything because they cannot move their body, make facial expressions or even give basic sounds. In the documentary My Sex Robot, a doll owner is quoted explaining, “you have the one classic thing [in a sex doll] that most people who like fembots have, and that’s the blank stare”, illuminating the passivity that is desired in these female replicas. To have sex with an object that is supposed to imitate a person, but lacks active participation in intercourse, could emulate a situation where the receiver has passed out or is not alive. Furthermore, we see that in the advancement from sex doll to sex robot the inability to say no has been retained. Sex robots like‘Roxxxy’ are specifically advertised as “she cannot say no to you, she’s always willing to please you” (My Sex Robot). However, as seen in the previous paragraphs Realbotix have made advances with their most recent sexbot ‘Harmony’ such that it has its own artificial intelligence. It is this new level of interaction that specifically allows users to feel like they are engaging with something that is closer to a human being, yet they still have full control.
The interest customers have in this inability to be rejected begins to tell us about what behaviour is promoted in these interactions. Current owners of sex dolls describe their relationship as being more than just having sex: it is about love and companionship. In the documentary The Sex Robots are Coming a sex doll owner states that to dress, clean and spend time with the doll shows that “more pleasure in the long run is simply in the caring for them”. Furthermore, he shows that he has a strong relationship with his sex dolls because he says that if he had to choose between the sex dolls and his wife, he wouldn’t know whom to choose. Equally, manufacturers have chosen to give sex robots the ability to respond to their owners so that they can have more than sex together, they can hold conversations as if it were a real human to human interaction. However, these accounts only present the companionship side of the interaction. What is unique to the sex robot is that they are made to be sexually engaged with and this is the specific part that needs to be analysed to show us what behaviour we will learn and appropriate from them.
A way in which users account for their sexual desire to have something that cannot say no is by explaining their relationship to be of a dominant and submissive nature. As expounded by Dr David Greenfield, an aspect of male sexuality is to have an interest in being in charge of a submissive female and we can see that this is satisfied in the existence of female sex robots (My Sex Robot). A key aspect of a dominant/submissive relationship is that even though one person can take control of the other, both human participants have an equally weighted choice to participate. The dominant likes to take charge, and the submissive likes to be taken charge of. In a study that questioned those who engage in such a dynamic, the benefits for both sides were the “pleasure from pleasuring others” (Hébert and Weaver, 2015). The dominant is aware that the reason they have control is because they were given so by the submissive. Alternatively, when a man makes sexual advances to a sex robot he doesn’t have to ask for consent, or to negotiate what both of them want. There lacks the need to “compromise in disagreements and respect others’ differences” (Gutiu, 2016). Instead the user is free to do what he wants when he wants without moderation, because sex robots have been programmed into submit to the user. Sex robots are supposed to simulate real female humans, except by design they always have to give consent.
Alternatively, there are situations in which sex robots can be programmed specifically to say no to the user. The Frigid Farah setting on ‘Roxxxy’, makes her verbally state she does not want to participate in sexual interaction, yet the user will continue his sexual advances. This will allow “any man to live out fantasies that would be difficult, impossible, or even illegal for them to actualize with women” (Gutiu, 2016) and not be persecuted for it. Sex robot users are not just assuming that consent is given in sexual interactions, they are turning rape into a fetish. ‘Deleuzian’, a sexbot enthusiast explains the interest in sex robots as; “‘it’s the whole idea of man taking charge, it’s almost as close to human slavery as you can get – and I’m not saying that’s a good thing – but I’m saying there is a slight attraction” (My Sex Robot, 2010). You can see that the desire for female sexual slaves has beenmanifested into the sex robot. Furthermore, describing Farah as ‘frigid’ implies that by not wanting to participate in sexual acts with someone she possesses a flaw: it isn’t the user’s fault that she does not want to have sex with him, it is ‘her’ fault, and as a result the user can do what he wants with ‘her’. In this way, not only can sex robots teach men not to ask for consent, it can also teach them that if a woman says no she can be ignored and they can continue their advancements, because her attitude is incorrect. Yet again, such interactions give rise to a heightened sense of male entitlement over women.
At a tech fair in Austria, a sex robot named Samantha was available for people to interact with, but by the end of the day so many people had treated it roughly that it was close to breaking (Brown, 2017). The public were “asked by Santos [the company] (with a dose of inhuman ‘humour’) to applaud Samantha’s overcoming of her ordeal” (Brooks, 2018) because she was unaware of what happened to her. The sex robot received treatment that wouldn’t be deemed acceptable for a human to receive, and instead of questioning who or why people were committing such acts, we are instead told that it is a good thing for the doll to be unaware. The issue here is not that the sex robot was harmed, but that these situations normalise sexual abuse. In addition, this type of acceptance posits the idea that women are weak and need to learn to overcome molestation, showing that sex robots not only promote the idea that men have sexual dominance over women, but also that women need to better themselves at accepting it.
However, whether the behaviour men enact onto sex dolls and sex robots will become normalised to inter-human relationships is at question. I argue that, because technology is aiming to make interactions with sex robots so realistic, we will confuse interactions with them with interactions with humans. Our behaviour changes depending on who we are with, and if we interact with sex robots then our behaviour will shape to fit these interactions. David Levy argues that the users of sex robots will understand “that sex robots genuinely don’t love them” (Levy, 2016) and that their interactions are not like those with humans. As a result, they will not confuse their interactions with sex robots with that of humans. I think this is a naive expectation of the way people will interact with sex robots. In The Sex Robots Are Coming it showed that people can become attached to their sex dolls, even treating them as real people. Sex dolls are unresponsive, yet some people still consider themselves to have loving relationships with them. This can be seen as analogous to the way pilots use plane simulations to learn how to fly a plane: a person could use this simulation of human intimacy to learn harmful behaviour.
I argue that by looking at how our interactions with people shape our behaviour, we can claim that interacting with sex robots will do the same. Studies carried out by Argyle tracked the importance of being able to see someone else’s face and eyes during interaction. Participants were asked to have multiple conversations with each other, sometimes wearing glasses, sometimes a mask and sometimes with no face coverings. It was found that obstructing person A from seeing persons B’s responses during a conversation made person A uneasy because with a lack of response they didn’t know how to behave next (Argyle, Lalljee and Cook, 1968). This demonstrates that behaviour can be dependent on response. Furthermore, we can see the impact of social interaction on behaviour when we look to how people change their personal space (Bechtel, 1997). This observational study found that the comfortable standing distance for white Americans was less than for Arabs. This shows that there is a strong cultural component to behaviour, but it is something that people are not generally aware of because it is ‘normal behaviour’ for them. The first example shows the importance of being able to interact with people to learn how to respond to them, and the second shows that you can learn behaviour from those you surround yourself with. From these we can extract the idea that our social behaviour is being continually updated as a result of feedback and interaction with other people.
Similarly, we can see the impact that technology has had on our behaviour from using smart phones and social media such as Twitter, or Facebook. Social media is supposed to be a way of staying connected with your friends however it can often lead to isolation, “elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and addiction” (Brooks and Longstreet, 2015). Since interacting online allows users to have a sense of disassociation from talking to real people and the ability to have anonymity, cyber bullying is a common feature of online interaction. The behaviour that you wouldn’t normally express towards someone in person, has been altered in accordance with the use of something as simple as an online chat server. Similarly, the use of mobile phones and ‘text slang’ has altered how people behave verbally. Abbreviations like ‘lol’ ‘yolo’ ‘cba’ that originated from communicating across technologyhave become integrated into everyday conversations.
Thus, behaviour can be altered through feedback from people, and from the technology that we use. Sex robots fuse these two influencers into one entity and the more that they are designed to appear human, the greater the risk that men will update their behaviour in accordance and reflect this towards real females. Men will assume their interactions with women to be more like their interactions with synthetic versions that cannot resist or complain. Each time a man makes a sexual advance on a sex robot without having to ask for consent, the feedback he receives teaches him that he doesn’t need to ask for sexual consent from a female human. This is not to say that men will confuse the two on purpose, but that sex robots will blur the line between real and robot women, causing toxic male behaviour to occur. We have seen that such behaviour will include assuming consent is always given, ignoring when consent is denied and a general male entitlement that states women are there for men’s pleasure. This will cause men to rape other women, without understanding that their actions are inhuman and wrong.
Without exceeding the scope of this essay, I propose that if we are to continue with the development of sex robots there needs to be more discussion about the harmful behaviour it will promote and how this can be prevented. I strongly think there should be rules against buying sex robots that are there to deny the user and fetishize rape and equally any that contains qualities such as being ‘frigid’. Other possible reformations could be considering programming the need for the user to ask for consent first, or even for the sex robot to sometimes respond that she doesn’t want to have sex right now, perhaps later. This could teach users that sex isn’t something they can fully control.
To conclude, in this essay I used the current relationships men have with sex dolls to understand the relationships that they will have with sex robots. I found that interaction with an entity that is programmed to not reject the user, unless specifically desired, created behaviour that ignores the importance of consent. I stated that men will not confine such behaviour to sex robots, and will instead reflect this toxic behaviour towards female humans which will result in an increased rate of rape. I supported this claim by presenting ways in which interaction with others and technology have changed human behaviour before, expounding that because sex robots are a culmination of the two they will be able to alter male behaviour. If it wasn’t for the limitations of the essay I would like to research the implications child sex robots would also have on behaviour, in addition to the regulations we could put in place to prevent male behaviour becoming toxic.
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