Electric Dreams – Heather Parry

What these men need is not a robot to fuck, but a dismantling of how they think of both men and women, how they think about sex and what they might get from it. Only then will they find that sex can result in any form of real satisfaction. As Katherine Angel puts it, if we abandon the ‘ideals of mastery, we might all find greater pleasure.’29 OceanofPDF.com Chapter 3: Sex robots as a product of colonialist masculinity One of the paradoxes of the sex tech industry, and in fact the tech industry generally, centres around the potential ‘personhood’ of future robots.

Personhood has specific meanings in different contexts—in law, personhood bestows both rights and responsibilities, so a corporation can have ‘corporate personhood’ separate from its human owners and employees—but in a philosophical context, it is generally a moral consideration; personhood means that we see something as a person, i.e. a distinct being that has rights and deserves autonomy. Think of all the debates around foetal development and abortion rights; in these conversations, we are deciding when a cluster of cells becomes not human, but a person, worthy of its own rights and protections.

This question arises in the robot conversation in a similar way. The industry claims, at different times, that the sex robots we’re apparently desperate to create both will and will not be people. Sex robots as we currently have them are not people; they are masturbatory toys. But we have seen it repeated that in the near future, AI-powered robots will be indistinguishable from people; they will be so advanced that we will fall in love with them, and we will also believe that they have internal worlds and minds just like ours.

At the same time, we are told that robots are just machines, that our actions towards them should not be judged in the same way we judge our actions towards other humans. In the short Jenny Kleeman documentary Rise of the Sex Robots, she meets Roberto Cardenas, an entrepreneur building a ‘sex robot’ (in its most wide and untethered-from-reality meaning) in his mother’s garage. Kleeman asks his brother, Noel, if it is ‘perfectly healthy’ to want to own a robot you have sex with. Noel’s answer is very telling: Women experience things like rape and abuse…

this is definitely something that could help people move away from that, so they’re not so angry with their wives. They can be angry at this, and they can beat this. And that should be fine. 30 The idea that male violence is something that exists innately, and that what needs to be changed is the recipient of that violence rather than the fact of that violence itself, is depressingly common; you only have to read the comments under any news article about the murder or rape of women to see that we blame the women for not acting ‘correctly’ around the apparent ticking time bomb of men.

All rights reserved © Heather Parry, 2024. The right of Heather Parry to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the rights owner, except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.

Please note: Some references include URLs which may change or be unavailable after publication of this book. All references within endnotes were accessible and accurate as of January 2024 but may experience link rot from there on in. Editing: Heather McDaid Typesetting: Laura Jones-Rivera Proofreading: Laura Jones-Rivera Cover design: Luke Bird Co-founders and publishers of 404 Ink: Heather McDaid & Laura Jones-Rivera Print ISBN: 978-1-912489-86-2 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-912489-87-9 404 Ink acknowledges and is thankful for support from Creative Scotland in the publication of this title.

OceanofPDF.com Electric Dreams Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism Heather Parry OceanofPDF.com We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. – Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto OceanofPDF.com Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Sex robots as science fiction Chapter 2: Sex robots as symbols of unsatisfied heterosexuality Chapter 3: Sex robots as a product of colonialist masculinity Chapter 4: Sex robots as trigger for regressive feminism Chapter 5: Sex robots as a totem of hyper individualism References Acknowledgements About the Author About the Inklings series OceanofPDF.com Introduction Within mere decades, it will be totally normal for human beings to be in romantic and sexual relationships with robots.

This is the contention of David Levy, chess master, sometime businessman and author of a book lauded by the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Washington Post—a book I read several years ago, and became quietly obsessed with.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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