Abstract
Women are living in a time of heightened anxieties within a crisis of capitalist patriarchy and its neoliberal dehumanising systems (Hawthorne in The Crisis of Patriarchy Vortex, Spinifex Press, North Geelong, 2020). Environmental degradation, drought, famine, poverty, homelessness, war and other forms of violence are ever present threats for large populations. I argue that ‘sex’ robots pose a new threat to women’s safety. Women already carry the burden of violence perpetrated against them, often by those they love.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Descartes (1664) reasoned that the body functions as a “machine solely from the disposition of the organs, no more nor less than those of a clock or other automaton from its counterweights and wheels.”
- 4.
A former UK intelligence officer has predicted that by 2025 the US military will have more combat robots than human soldiers (Bassett cited in Lockett 2017).
- 5.
Garvey’s criticisms, though valid, show a naïve understanding of scientific practice, and need to be tempered by an understanding of the socially constructed, political nature of scientific knowledge claims that become ‘facts’ (e.g., Collins 1983).
References
ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists). 2022. Adult manifestations of childhood sexual abuse. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2011/08/adult-manifestations-of-childhood-sexual-abuse.
American Psychological Association. 2022. Fetish. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/fetish.
Anders, Charlie Jane 2016. Can Westworld do for science fiction what Game of Thrones did for fantasy? Wired, October 3. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/westworld-sci-fi-game-of-thrones/.
Atanasoski, Neda, and Kalindi Vora. 2019. Surrogate Humanity. Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures. Durham & London: Due University Press.
Aylesworth, Gary, 2015. Postmodernism. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/postmodernism/.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, Translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. NY: Semiotext.
Beauvoir, Simone. 2011. The Second Sex. London: Vintage.
Beck, Julie. 2013. Married to a doll_why one man advocates synthetic love. The Atlantic, September 6. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/married-to-a-doll-why-one-man-advocates-synthetic-love/279361/.
Bringsjord, Selmer and Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu. 2020. Artificial intelligence. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2020), ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/artificial-intelligence/.
Brookes-Gordon, Belinda, Max Morris, and Teela Sanders. 2021. ‘Harm reduction and decriminalization of sex work: Introduction to the specialsection’. Sex Res Social Policy 18 (40): 809–181. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8519734/.
Bryson, Joanna J. 2021. Never love a robot: Romantic companions and the principle of transparency. In The Love Makers. A Novel and Contributor Essays on the Social impact of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, ed. Aifric Campbell. London: Goldsmiths Press.
Cambridge Dictionary. 2021. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english.
Campbell, Rebecca, Courtney Ahrens, Tracy Sefl, and Marcia L. Clark. 2003. The relationship between adult sexual assault and prostitution: An exploratory analysis. Violence and Victims 18 (3): 299–317.
CAPR (Campaign Against Porn Robots). 2021. Why we’re changing our name at the Campaign Against Sex Robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkgbTYHVdrA.
Capra, Fritjof, and Pier Luigi Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life a Unifying Vision. Cambridge University Press.
CARE. 2021. Pro-prostitution judgment struck down by Lord Chief Justice. October 25. https://care.org.uk/news/2021/10/pro-prostitution-judgment-struck-down-by-lord-chief-justice.
CATWA (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia). n.d. Common prostitution myths. FAQs. https://www.catwa.org.au/faqs/.
Celebrity sex dolls and porn star sex dolls. n.d. JoyLoveDolls. https://www.joylovedolls.com/collections/celebrity-sex-dolls.
Choi, Charles Q. 2008. Humans marrying robots? A Q&A with David Levy. Scientific American, February 19. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-marrying-robots/.
Cobb, Mathew. 2020. Why your brain is not a computer. The Guardian, February 27. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-a-computer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness.
Collective Shout. 2021. Strong action against sex dolls by e-commerce giant Alibaba. https://www.collectiveshout.org/mediarelease_alibaba_geoblock.
Collins, H.M. 1983. The sociology of scientific knowledge: Studies of contemporary science. Annual Review of Sociology 9: 265–285.
Conroy, Gemma. 2022. Scientists wrap robotic finger with ‘living human skin’ that can heal itself. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-06-10/robotic-finger-wrapped-with-living-human-skin-by-scientists/101129954#:~:text=A%20team%20of%20researchers%20in,help%20of%20a%20collagen%20bandage.
Coveney, Lal, Margaret Jackson, Sheila Jeffreys, LeslieKay, and Pat Mahony. 1984. Introduction. In The sexuality papers. Male sexuality and the social control of women. London: Hutchinson in association with the Explorations in Feminism Collective.
Craw, Victoria. 2016. French woman wants to marry a robot as expert predicts sex robots to become preferable to humans. December 23. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/french-woman-wants-to-marry-a-robot-as-expert-predicts-sex-robots-to-become-preferable-to-humans/news-story/fa40fc51a55564627589e80d3a527059.
Crown Prosecution Service UK. 2019. CPS takes action to tackle childlike sex dolls. March 28. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-takes-action-tackle-childlike-sex-dolls.
Danaher, John. 2017. Should we be thinking about robot sex? In Robot sex: Social and ethical implications, ed. John Danaher and Neil McArthur, 3–14. Cambridge: MIT Press.
David Hanson. 2021. Hanson robotics. https://www.hansonrobotics.com/david-hanson/.
Descartes, Rene. 1664. Treatise on man. Selection translated from De l'homme et de la formation du foetus, ed. Claude Clerselier, Paris, trans. P. R. Sloan. http://www.coretexts.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/DescartesTreatiseMnfin.pdf.
Devlin, Kate. 2018. Turned On Science Sex and Robots. London: Bloomsbury.
Diamonds, Ally Marie, and Wahine Toa Rising. 2021. Submission to South Australian Upper House Select Committee into decriminalisation of prostitution (Committee). https://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/api/sitecore/search/GetCommitteeFileDownload?id=378&fileId=1bc67c19-80d8-426f-bf1f-090a9bb7a109.
Di Nucci, Ezio. 2011. Sexual rights and disability. Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (3, March): 158–161.
Di Nucci, Ezio. 2017. Sexual rights, disability and sex robots. In Sex Robots, ed. John Danaher and Neil McArthur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dworkin, Andrea. 1974. Woman Hating. NY: Plume.
Dworkin, Andrea. 1994. Prostitution and male supremacy. Speech at a symposium ‘Prostitution: From Academia to Activism’ held in 1992. Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1 (1). https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol1/iss1/1/?utm_source=repository.law.umich.edu%2Fmjgl%2Fvol1%2Fiss1%2F1&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.
Ekman, Kaijsa Ekis. 2013. Being and being bought, trans. Suzanne Martin Cheadle. North Melbourne: Spinifex.
European Parliament. 2017. Report with Recommendations to the commission on civil law rules on robotics. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2017-0005_EN.html.
Floridi, Luciano. 2021. The European legislation on AI: A brief analysis of its philosophical approach. Philosophy & Technology 34: 215–222.
Fosch-Villaronga, Euard, and Adam Pooulsen. 2021. Sex robots in care. Setting the Stage for a Discussion on the Potential Use of Sex Robots for Persons with Disabilities,’ HRI ‘21 Companion: Companion of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, March 2021, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3434074.3446907.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983a. Oppression. In The politics of reality, 56–157. Crossing Press.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983b. To be and be seen. In The politics of reality, 56–157. Crossing Press.
Fung, Pascale. 2019. This is why AI has a gender problem. Sustainable Development Impact Summit, World Economic Forum, June 30. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/this-is-why-ai-has-a-gender-problem/?fbclid=IwAR0rSI4_5fzYd4KOXAKbfvThgJBpw8fkOdEFLVtLaw8QByof7pY_i5tQTqI.
Garvey, Shunryu Colin. 2021. Unsavory medicine for technological civilization: Introducing ‘Artificial Intelligence & its Discontents’. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 46 (1–2, March): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2020.1840820.
Gordon, John-Stewart, and Ausrine Pasvenskiene. 2021. Human rights for robots? A literature review. AI and Ethics 1: 579–591. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00050-7?utm_source=xmol&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_content=meta&utm_campaign=DDCN_1_GL01_metadata.
Graveris, Dainis. 2019. The best sex dolls for men in 2021: The definitive guide. September 30. https://sexualalpha.com/best-cheap-sex-dolls-for-men/.
Gritt, Emma. 2018. Sex robot creator Sergi Santos says people will marry his creations within the next 20 years–and claims he’s worked out how to have a BABY with one. The Sun, October 5. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4713921/sex-robot-creator-sergi-santos-says-people-will-marry-his-creations-within-the-next-20-years-and-claims-hes-worked-out-how-to-have-a-baby-with-one/#:~:text=Exclusive-,Sex%20robot%20creator%20Sergi%20Santos%20says%20people%20will%20marry%20his,have%20a%20BABY%20with%20one&text=SEX%20robot%20inventor%20Sergi%20Santos,society%20as%20we%20know%20it.
Haas, Benjamin. 2017. Chinese man ‘marries’ robot he built himself. The Guardian, April 4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/chinese-man-marries-robot-bobotuilt-himself.
Harmony. 2022. https://www.realdoll.com/product/harmony-x/.
Hauskeller, Michael. 2017. Automatic sweethearts for transhumanists. In Robot Sex. Social and Ethical Implications, ed. John Danaher and Neil McArthur. Cambridge, MA and London, England: MIT Press.
Hawthorne, Susan. 2020. Vortex The Crisis of Patriarchy. North Geelong: Spinifex Press.
Hill, Jess. 2019. See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse. Black Inc, Carlton.
Hollandbeck, Amy. 2021. In a word: The dark magic of grammar. The Saturday Evening Post, March 4. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/03/in-a-word-the-dark-magic-of-grammar/.
Huyssen, Andreas. 1982. The vamp and the machine: Technology and sexuality in Fritz Lang’s metropolis. New German Critique (Autumn 1981–Winter 1982), 24/25, Special Double Issue on New German Cinema, 221–237.
Illes, Judy, and Farhad R. Udwadia. 2019. Sex robots increase the potential for gender-based violence. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/sex-robots-increase-the-potential-for-gender-based-violence-122361.
Jasanoff, Shelia. 2015. Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power, ed. S. Jasanoff and S.-H. Kim. University Press Scholarship Online.
Jecker, Nancy S. 2021. Nothing to be ashamed of: sex robots for older adults with disabilities. Journal of Medical Ethics 47 (1). https://jme.bmj.com/content/47/1/26.
Jeffreys, Sheila. 2008. Disability and the male sex right. Women’s Studies International Forum 31: 327–335.
Jeffreys, Sheila. 2014. Gender Hurts a Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Routledge.
Jordon, John M. 2019. The Czech play that gave us the word ‘robot’, Medium, adapted from John Jordon’s book Robots, part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, MIT Press, July 29. https://medium.com/@mitpress/the-czech-play-that-gave-us-the-word-robot-86d4fdca003.
Kang, Minsoo. 2016. The mechanical daughter of Rene Descartes: The origin and history of an intellectual fable. Modern Intellectual History 14 (3): 633–660.
Keynote. Davecat. 2021. Speakers, 6th International Congress on Love & Sex With Robots 2021. https://www.lovewithrobots.com/speakers.
Kleeman, Jenny. 2017. ‘The race to build the world’s first sex robot. The Guardian, April 7. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot.
Knox, Patrick. 2018. All dolled up. Meet Japanese porn star Asa Akira who inspired the world’s most expensive sex robot EVER–and she’d even romp with it herself. The Sun, October 5. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4144351/japanese-porn-star-asa-akira-sex-robot/.
Kubes, Tanja. 2019. New materialist perspectives on sex robots. A feminist dystopia/utopia? Social Science 8 (8): 224.
Lennon, Kathleen. 2015. Imagination and the Imaginary. London: Routledge.
Lerner, Gerda. 1986. The Creation of Patriarchy. NY: Oxford University Press & Oxford.
Levy,. 2007. Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. NY: HarperCollins.
Liautaud, Susan. 2019. David Hanson: On Sophia means Wisdom… Dreams of what machines may be. The Ethics Incubator, June 25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFu0ksO_Wic.
Lockett, Jon. 2017. US military will have more combat robots than human soldiers by 2025. New York Post, June 15. https://nypost.com/2017/06/15/us-military-will-have-more-combat-robots-than-human-soldiers-by-2025/.
Mackinnon, Catharine A. 1987. Desire and power. Feminism Unmodified. Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA & London: England Harvard University Press.
Maloney, Alison. 2018. Sex robot creator claims “five minute romps” with his lifelike android have “improved his marriage. The Sun, October 2. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4592234/sex-robot-creator-claims-five-minute-orgasms-with-his-lifelike-android-has-improved-his-marriage/.
Maloney, Alison. 2022. ‘Sex robot creator claims “five minute romps” with his lifelike android have “improved his marriage”.’ The Sun, October 2. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4592234/sex-robot-creator-claims-five-minute-orgasms-with-his-lifelike-android-has-improved-his-marriage/.
Maslow, A.H. 1943. A theory of motivation. Psychological Review 50: 370–396.
Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. NY: Harper & Row.
Miailhe, Nicolas, and Cyrus Hodes. 2017. The third age of artificial intelligence. Field Actions Science Reports: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in the City 17: 6–11. https://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/4383.
Millet, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Misa, Thomas J. 2003. The Compelling Tangle of Modernity and Technology. In Modernity and Technology, 1–3. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Moran, Rachel. 2013. Paid For. My Journey Through Prostitution. Gill & Macmillan.
Morgan, Robin. 2014. Going Too Far, The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist. NY: Open Road Integrated Media.
Negri, Sergio M. C. Avila. 2021. Robot as legal person: Electronic personhood in robotics and artificial intelligence. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Ethics in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, December 23. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.789327/full.
O’Connor, Patrick. 2018. On sex robots and personhood with Kathleen Richardson. Thales’ Well, podcast, October 4. https://podcastaddict.com/episode/114752143.
Open Society Institute. 2006. Harm Reduction, Health and Human Rights, and Sex Work. NY: Sexual Health and Human Rights Project. https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/1438121e-9fbf-4875-9e9c-b6e50221652d/approaches_20060601.pdf.
Owsianik, Jenna 2022. State of the Sexbot Market: The world’s best sex robot and AI sex doll companies. Future of Sex. https://futureofsex.net/robots/state-of-the-sexbot-market-the-worlds-best-sex-robot-and-ai-love-doll-companies/
Papadaki, Evangelia (Lina). 2019. Feminist perspectives on objectification. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/.
Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Pateman, Carole, and Charles W. Mills. 2007. Contract and Dominationi. UK & Malden MA, USA: Polity Press Cambridge.
Pride Flag Identification Guide. 2021. https://www.prideflags.org.
Qvist, Anastasia. 2020. Possession of childlike sex dolls. Armstrong Legal. https://www.armstronglegal.com.au/criminal-law/nsw/offences/sexual/possession-of-child-like-sex-dolls/.
Rajnerowicz, Kazimierz. 2021. Will AI take your job? Fear of AI and AI trends for 2021. TIDIO. https://www.tidio.com/blog/ai-trends/.
Real Sex Dolls. 2022. https://real-sex-dolls.com/.
Riccio, Thomas. 2021. Sophia robot. An emergent ethnography. The Drama Review 65: 3. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-drama-review/article/sophia-robot/724ECA22CFC406398D70DE0443B2FF0F.
Rich, Adrienne. 1980. Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs 5 (4) (Summer 1980); Women: Sex and Sexuality (Summer): 631–660.
Rich, Adrienne. 1995. Of Woman Born. Motherhood as Experience and Institution. NY & London: W. W. Norton.
Richardson, Kathleen. 2016. Sex robot matters. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, June. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7484884.
Richardson, Kathleen. 2021. Sex, robots and ‘artificial intimacy’: A threat or the next best thing? Presentation at Is it Time to have Sex with Robots? Centre for Humans and Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, May 31. https://www.cursor.tue.nl/en/news/2021/mei/week-2/is-it-time-to-have-sex-with-robots/?fbclid=IwAR1yn_EReM4IJz-vnX18m_JDKbYbtaQ4USgkmk2BOZP3PtVzAUK7HnhrHQ0.
Robosexuality. n.d. MOGAI Encyclopedia. https://rainbowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Robosexuality#:~:text=A%20robosexual%20(or%20technosexual)%20is,be%20of%20any%20sexual%20orientation.
Sohrabi-Shiraz, Ariane. 2018. Sex robot maker Sergi Santos: Who is he and what does Synthea Amatus do? Daily Star, January 9. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/sex-robot-sergi-santos-who-16837966.
Sophia. 2021. Hanson robotics. https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia/.
Srinivasan, Amia. 2021. The Right To Sex. London & Dublin: Bloomsbury.
Stevenson, Daniel C. 1994–2000. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book the Tenth, Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al. The Internet Classics Archive. http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.mb.txt.
Switzky, Lawrence. 2020. ELIZA effects: Pygmalion and the early development of artificial intelligence. Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 40 (1): 50–68.
Taylor, Lin. 2017. Sex robots: Perverted or practical in fight against sex trafficking? Reuters, July 20. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-robots-sextrafficking-idUSKBN1A50HD.
Touching Base Inc 2022. https://www.touchingbase.org/.
Turkle, Sherry. 2021. The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir. London: Penguin Press.
UN Office on Drugs and Crime. 2019. Global Study on Homicide. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html.
UN Women. 2021. Facts and figures: Ending violence against women. March. https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures.
UNDP. 2021. UNDP in Asia and the Pacific Appoints World’s First Non-Human Innovation Champion. United Nations Development Program. https://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2017/11/22/rbfsingapore.html.
Urbi Jaden, and MacKenzie Sigalos. (2018). The complicated truth about Sophia the robot—an almost human robot or a PR stunt. CNBC, June 5. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/hanson-robotics-sophia-the-robot-pr-stunt-artificial-intelligence.html.
Vaswani, Karishma. 2021. Alibaba accepts record China fine and vows to change. BBC News, April 12. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56713508.
Vice Media. 2018. The first sex doll brothel in Europe. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcBJ-vA5AoE.
Willis, Ellen. 2012. ‘Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?’ In E. Willis (Ed.). No more nice girls. Countercultural Essays. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus 109 (1): 121–136.
Wiseman, Eva. 2015. Sex, love and robots: is this the end of intimacy? The Guardian, December 13. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/13/sex-love-and-robots-the-end-of-intimacy.
Women’s Declaration International. 2022. Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights: Full Text. https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/declaration-womens-sex-based-rights-full-text/#article-1.
Zarkodakis, George. 2013. Love machines. aeon, March 26. https://aeon.co/essays/the-lure-of-ai-is-erotic-as-much-as-it-is-rational.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morrigan, V. (2022). Patriarchal Imaginaries Beyond the Human: ‘Sex’ Robots, Fetish and Fantasy in the Domination and Control of Women. In: Richardson, K., Odlind, C. (eds) Man-Made Women. Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19381-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19381-1_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-19380-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-19381-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)