Sex with robots?

As you can probably guess, ‘sex’ is one of my favorite topics, probably because I have so little experience with it, LoL) but that's neither here nor there. Like SCOTUS candidate Brett Kavanaugh, I kept my virginity (figuratively speaking, as an XY person) until I was well out of secondary school.

That sad fact shared (scandal!), I recently came across an interesting book by one Dr. Olivia Judson, a woman who has a baccalaureate from Stanford and a doctorate from Oxford. The book in reference is titled ‘Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation’ and it deals with the reproductive habits and behaviors of everything from fruit flies to human beings.

Using a touch of skillfully contrived whimsey, Judson employs the familiar form anyone who recalls the ‘Advice to the Lovelorn’ (a popular 1933 movie of that name) style of such personal advice columnists as Joyce Brothers, Pauline Phillips… AKA: Abigail van Buren, Ann Landers…and many others over the past 4 or 5 decades they will be familiar with (e.g. “Dear Dr. Tatiana, I’m a field cricket from Arkansas…”, etc.).

The foregoing book has absolutely nothing at all to do with the title of this blog, but I thought I’d mention it here since we’re talking about sexual reproduction and all the complexities that go along with it.

Getting back to the straight and narrow of my subject (‘Sex with Robots’), yesterday while scanning some commentary at an internet site specializing in unusual and/or out-of-the-mainstream concepts associated with human behavior, the abstract remarks of one particular article all but leapt out at me. It stated, “Prostitutes in the Netherlands Warn that Sex with Robots is Potentially Harmful.”

And why, do you suppose, this was? They were referring to some of the latest ‘leading-edge’ sex simulacrums (manikins?) coming (no pun intended, blush) out of Japan & China. These ‘robots’ have replicated human polymeric skeletal internal structures to which is bonded a soft polymeric exterior that almost perfectly mimics the contours, feel, substance and sensory characteristics of an exceptionally attractive female body. They have flexible joints (allowing them to assume just about any position in or out of the Kama Sutra), articulated limbs, features, fingers and necks…as well as perfectly replicated (female) genitalia.

With wigs of human hair also bonded to their heads, they have all the appearance of a substantially endowed, desirable woman and would probably fool the unwary observer at a distance of about 10 feet, so perfectly are they designed and crafted to resemble a real, living human female.

Further, these manikins come is all ethnicities and racial flavors, so you can select, anything from, say, a slim Asian woman, to a voluptuous Caucasian redhead (should that be your preference), or just about anything in between that you can imagine.

The purpose of these robots is, as anyone can plainly imagine, to provide basic sexual services to men. In terms of their features, there is no physical/mechanical sexual function that a real, live human female is capable of that can’t be done with these manikins. Vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, oral sex; the sky’s the limit. No worries about reluctance, virginity and/or squeamishness! Of course, there is no on-board intelligence, no CNS, no brain and certainly nothing that could possibly be construed as ‘life’ (or, god forbid, emotions). Wherein lies one of these manikins’ primary attractions: they are available any time, anywhere, with no inclination to ‘not cooperate’ whenever the moment arises, and totally without hesitation.

All of this means that for a certain kind of extremely self-centered male (perhaps tending more towards sociopathy than is normal), they are ideal sex partners, since there’s no need for a man to deal with the other 99% of behavioral/mental nuances of a real, live human female. There is, least of all, absolutely no emotional or verbal interchange required.

And there, apparently, lies the principal objection that those Dutch prostitutes voice. Their argument is that by normalizing sexual acts with these lifeless, but endlessly ‘willing’ robots, the stage is set for men to (perhaps subconsciously) cultivate a cripplingly dehumanizing attitude towards the living, breathing type of real human female. Abusing a robot device has absolutely no adverse or undesirable consequences. Taking the same tack with a live human female can (and often does) result in heinous, remorseless outrages being committed against real live women…and egregious violations of both the sanctions of common decency and normative social conventions.

All of these reflections are worthy of a prodigeous amount of discussion (legal and philosophical) and consideration, naturally enough, for in an age in which electronic social media is already destroying remaining vestigial human abilities to relate to other real people, this could potentially take things a radical step further towards disaster.

I can imagine some of my less empathetic male friends sniggering among themselves that a robot woman who ‘puts out’ on command with no hesitation, no reluctance and no objection (and no ability to voice an emphatic NO!) is literally a dream come true. In fact, it is this very set of female characteristics that often creates endless frustration for certain randy members of the male persuasion who feel that it is a woman’s main biological duty to provide relief from their sexual frustrations (on command, willing, forced or not).

At the same time, the long-term consequences of such a trend (having sex with unliving robots where and whenever desired) could easily have a rather serious and catastrophic impact on the ability of men and women to relate to each other in every possible manner conceivable.

Looked at from another perspective, the obverse of this development has already been in existence for many decades and I speak here of sex toys provided for female enjoyment (notably the ubiquitous dildo). Dildos have long provided women with a pleasurable alternative to dealing with all the unpleasing behavioral excesses of sexually aroused men, and especially for individuals who profess same-sex affinities the dildo is an absolute necessity. While other forms of erotic interaction have pleasing & distinct usefulness for same-sex female couples, ‘penetration’ is, after all, still one of the most important sexual acts.

And when it comes to that, unless one has a dildo, the only alternative is a fully equipped and hormonally topped-off live male. Lesbians have gotten along just fine without men for a long, long time, thank you very much, but men have not generally been so fortunate (if one excludes today’s disturbing tendency for both sexes to ‘reconsider’ their gender preferences with little or no attendant complexities of consideration).

In this last regard, hundreds of thousands of pages have filled professional literature with discussions of the benefits and/or perils of masturbation, although to a great degree masturbation remains an important alternative to male/female sexual interaction.

With the further complicating development of what is now being investigated as Artificial Intelligence (AI), a whole new area of concerns arises regarding sex-substitute robots, concerns that I am neither qualified nor inclined to discuss in any great detail.

Even in the area of microprocessor-enabled virtual reality, there have long been fanciful guesses and/or projections made about the possibilities of providing sexual pleasuring stimuli via machine/computerized augmented nexuses (several episodes of the vastly amusing program ‘The Big Bang Theory’...love that name!...have whimsically plumbed that particular aspect of sex, coincidentally).

What the future holds in terms of combining all these subject-specific areas of scientific investigation to develop alternative to normal human sexual interactions one may only guess, but for the moment (and returning to the subject of passive ‘sex robots’), all that comes to mind when I think further about this subject are the thousands of men who resignedly hear that common enough phrase of mid-to-later-life that goes “Not tonight, dear; I have a headache”, and desperately WISH they had one of these amazing Asian polymeric sex dolls hidden away in the closet for just such moments.

There’s little question that at the present moment, in the wake of sorely aroused left-of-center female outrage over male perpetrated ‘sexual abuses’, with the media chattering incessantly about ‘me too’ victims (both real and alleged), American maledom is under attack on all fronts like it has never been before. It certainly gives those of us who have spent a lifetime being polite, considerate and gentle in our dealings with the female of the species much additional pause for thought. Given this increasingly poisonous climate and the fact that thinking logically and rationally about such a highly emotional subject as human sexuality is increasingly becoming impossible, perhaps there’s a valid argument for emotionless, mechanical sex (robots) after all?

And now, I think I’ll let this subject expire on its own, here, since god (sic) knows I’ve probably gotten myself in waaaay over my head enough, as it is, and She would probably never forgive me, a pathetic male, for merely being human (as She routinely does females of the species)!

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Postscript: On a more serious note, there is a strong argument for NASA seriously investigating 'artificial' means of satisfying sexual needs of spacecraft crew on long missions (such as the projected Mars Mission, since interplanetary transit voyages of 6 months or more will definitely raise questions about satisfying the sexual needs (especially if there are mixed gender crews) of those aboard. Aerospace Psychosocial experts have already been investigating the subject of how male/female polarity (gender role attitudes) may interfere with normal 'chain of command' roles on those craft. Considering how radically polarised Russian crews are with regard to gender roles, sexual customs and so forth, a Mars Mission 'mixed crew' that includes not just males and females, but also members from other nations (such as Russia, etc.) raises a whole new area of potential concern. This is definitely an area of study that is in its infancy, and it is never too soon to start conducting studies, since space travel is starting to become an unignorable reality (especially as private sector/commercial entities enter the arena, such as Space-X, et al). Lots of food for thought here!