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Robotics Researcher Starts Campaign To Ban Development of Sexbots
Earthquake Retrofit writes: A robotics ethicist from the UK's De Montfort University has started a campaign to ban the development and use of sex robots. "She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical." The campaign was spurred by news that some companies claim to be fairly far along in development of such technology. One company even plans to start selling them later this year. The campaign's goals and concerns include "We propose that the development of sex robots will further reduce human empathy that can only be developed by an experience of mutual relationship," and, "We challenge the view that the development of adults and child sex robots will have a positive benefit to society, but instead further reinforce power relations of inequality and violence."
The interesting thing and lack of basic reasoning skills comes from the fact that Dr. Richardson apparently can only picture sex robots as being a simulacrum of the female gender. Although I don't have hard numbers at hand, I read in an interview with the Real Doll creator, that the male gender did sell almost as well as their female gendered dolls. The kicker is that most dolls were soled with the swap-able genitalia and both genitalia. If we see a usable sex robot any time soon, you can rest assured that it will probably come in both gendered versions.
But no, let's make this about women and how they are objectified.
The robots are designed to be as human like as possible in appearance and in the way that they move. The key difference is that unlike human women they are souless sex slaves who only exist to fulfil their owners every desire. I can see why she finds it distasteful - I think I'd feel a bit odd about a cotton picking robot that was designed to look like a black slave, complete with stereotypical attributes and "broken slave" personality.
Of course it applies for male sexbots too, before someone complaints about that.
By the way, the way that porn negatively affects some people's attitudes towards their partners, particularly teenagers (who shouldn't own a sexbot, but inevitably will gain access to them just like porn) is quite well documented. Part of modern sex education in UK schools is to point out how unrealistic porn is, and to counteract peer pressure to act like a pornstar in bed. The fear is that sexbots will create the same unrealistic and harmful expectations.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ethics is the study of right and wrong choices. Once the freedom to make such choices is taken away, ethics ceases to be involved. That is, if you outlaw sex bots, then the choice not to obtain a sex bot is not an ethical choice anymore, it is a pragmatic or utilitarian choice.
We have addressed the "points" she makes elsewhere. Here, we are discussing the contradiction inherent in an ethicist advocating authoritarian policies.
Pedos want to fuck, too.
And bluntly, if some small plastic sex toy spares one child that experience, I do WANT them to exist!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Makes you 100% more likely to spout something else, though.
-- "Oh. This guy again."