Sexbots for Women

I was recently interviewed, along with Kristi Scott, the author of "Andy Droid: Your Sex Doll has Arrived" for H+ Magazine, by Hank Pellissier for IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies). The article, titled "Sexbots for Women," explores the often ambiguous answers to the question, "what do females want in a cyborg lover?"

Click HERE to read full article - Sexbots for Women

Mr. Pellissier is also the author of Inventing Utopia: Transhumanist Suggestions for the Pre-Singularity Era, which is said to be "a startling, controversial collection of essays in which he promotes his hedonist-transhumanist-egalitarian vision of the future. The articles - backed with substantial data and optimistic imagination - examine numerous bio-ethical and politically flammable topics: sexbots, in-vitro meat, Israel, parent licenses, women-only leadership, public nudity, artificial wombs and cryonics."

The subject of romantic interaction between humans and synthetic life forms is of major interest to me in part because I've spent several years working on a screenplay titled M.U.S.E., which is about a woman who has a serious relationship with a non-biological human. The film explores the ups and downs and possibilities of such a connection. Although I am more interested in the companionship that could be offered by androids or cyborgs, there is definitely potential for highly erotic elements which in my opinion could be achieved even by a computer--one that knows you well enough. I believe that love and sex reach their highest peaks when there is a feeling of being intimately known, on the deepest levels, and acknowledged and fully accepted for who you really are at that moment. I hypothesize that even an artificial intelligence could achieve that, in the future.

As a result I have logged in many, many hours of research and collected many books on the subject. I'll share a few titles that are my favorites for those with similar interests:

Cinema’s Amazons and Cyborgs - MP3 of my chat on Changesurfer Radio with Dr. J. Hughes

Dr. James Hughes, IEET Executive Director, a bioethicist and sociologist at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut and author of the book Citizen Cyborg interviewed me on Changesurfer Radio, which is also featured on IEET.org and can be subscribed and downloaded via itunes as well.

Listen to the MP3 at:
Cinema’s Amazons and Cyborgs

 We do talk about my newest book project, with Scott Tapio also:
RISE OF THE MACHINES: Robots, Androids and Cyborgs Invade Cinema


I have to say, it's very sobering for me to do interviews like this. I lost a breast last year and that was traumatic, but I feel it as if I have lost a piece of my brain also. Ever since enduring chemo (FAC) a few years ago, I have suffered a massive lapse in memory in certain ways, specifically in naming and labeling of things. I'm not just a little bit forgetful now, or just suffering the natural effects of getting older as many people say. My life changed drastically in certain ways. They call it "chemo brain" and only just beginning to acknowledge this is a problem. Drug companies definitely want to keep this matter suppressed. I opted not to undergo chemo again this time despite dire warnings because this has been such a problem for me.

Now when I meet people, I go through elaborate systems to remember them, creating "case files" for everyone on my iphone and elaborate systems of notes when I work on books and projects. I use a series of alarms on my iphone throughout the day to help me remember to do things that should be simple. It is really far worse than people understand or acknowledge. The only thing I can do is work out better systems to deal with it.

Share

Sex with Robots and the Algoriythm of Soul

(from LiveScience)

Sex with robots

Yes. Of course we will. Some of us do now. We call them vibrators.

One step up is the implanted spinal cord stimulator: It's been reported since 2004 that a device originally designed for chronic pain control and urinary issues can stimulate orgasm in women — even individuals who thought they'd lost the ability to have them. The appliance is no bigger than a pacemaker, can be wired into a woman's lower back in a physician's office under local anesthetic, is FDA approved (for "bladder problems"), and can be run by remote control. Ask your doctor.

Will you be prepared when she asks you to trigger this device over the Internet in a loving act of telepresent titillation? What happens when this "Orgasmatron" is triggered by intelligent software, in tandem with some fairly straightforward force-feedback actuators, and both are driven by, similarly simple, biometric sensors under some rather rudimentary fuzzy logic?

Answer: the romantic robotic partner.It's not much further along the technology curve to build this package into interactive machinery with humanoid appearance and, well, "feel." Or non-humanoid, if she's feeling adventurous...

See rest of article here:

Sex with Robots - How Humanity Is Screwing Itself | LiveScience

Share

films that incorporate love and sex with robots, dolls and mannequins

In my book CINEMA OF OBESSION: EROTIC FIXATION AND LOVE GONE WRONG IN THE MOVIES, we discuss many films with a Pygmalion story line.

Quick review of the myth of Pygmalion (compliments of wikipedia, this is the Ovid viewpoint):
Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides prostituting themselves, he is 'not interested in women', but his statue is so realistic that he falls in love with it. He offers the statue gifts and eventually prays to Venus (Aphrodite). She takes pity on him and brings the statue to life, and they marry...

This is to me where we are going with our android love in the future essentially. Some of us are alienated by the world and would love to build something better than us to love and maybe worship.

As cinema and TV is the collective consciousness of society, I believe it forms the ultimate emotional beta-testing ground for most new thought concepts. The following are just a few movies in which androids and various dolls become objects of love and worship, or just friendship:




Jude Law and Ashley Scott in AI are simply sex workers. Although Jude Law's character is programmed to show sensitivity and emotional caring towards women, and even incorporates a little romantic tune to get things warmed up. He later helps fellow artificial being to reach his goal of finding his creator. This modern day fairy tale shows androids and ai, especially at the end of the film, to have more human warmth and compassion than humans do. But in typical fashion, humans just use the androids as slaves and toys and disposable trash rather than being responsible for the life they have created, simply because it is not traditionally biological. Future artificial beings are shown to be evolved far beyond humanity, kind and cruelty-free beings.


"It's hard to find a man with a good warranty" is the premise of Making Mr. Right.
The 80s seemed a prime time for cheesy movies about building the perfect man or woman. Although who would have thought John Malkovich would be considered the "perfect man"?

"When she comes to life, anything can happen" in Mannequin.
That's a rather symbolic statement in a feminist sense. Once you release a woman from just being a mannequin, anything could happen, couldn't it? Of course, this is the 80s, so nothing scary is going to happen when this sweet little mannequin comes to life.



Now we begin to move into strange new territory with Lars and the Real Girl. Now we are seriously looking at a man having a real human-like relationship with an artificial woman, treating her and interacting in an extremely caring way. However, it's due to a temporary mental illness. His "illness" is essentially loneliness and alienation from the loss of his mother. The doll becomes a healing mechanism.

This film was written by a woman, Nancy Oliver, who saw the craze over the the RealDolls (the next stage in blow up sex dolls for men - life size, fully anatomically correct sex dolls that are quote expensive), but I find it interesting that she incorporated it into the film in a completely non-sexual way.

This is the way I believe that androids will come into our everyday lives in the future. First in medical capacities (which is already happening essentially, though they are less humanoid in appearance) , and when they are shown to be an assistance to people in healing and care, it can move on more to innocuous "pets" and then companions, tutors, counselors, etc.

our sexual future: jacking off while jacked in?

Photo from David Cronenberg's film Existenz

I wish I had time to really discuss my own thoughts and projections about how sex will evolve (or devolve) in the future. The latest issue of h+ that I have been blogging about lately has a section titled: "Sex and the Singularity" in which various professors and even a resident of Second Life project their ideas of sex in the future in under 400 words. One futurist, Ben Goertzel, CEO of AI companies Novamente and Biomind pontificates:

The experience of gaining pleasure via in some sense merging with another

being... that will probably survive the Singularity, but will likely be customizable

into various forms, which may end up bearing little resemblance to “sex” as

we know it today....

The idea of trying on simulated relationships for size in also discussed. In essence, it seems like the future provides one huge beta-testing ground. But one thing I wonder about, having done extensive study into fetishism, erotology and paraphilia over the years, is how differently future generations will perceive this issue compared to us.

Most of us into adulthood have formed various preferences and sexual fantasies based upon things that happened to us in younger years, various bonding mixed with decades of media and society conditioning. But what if you have just been born in this day and age, and you are growing up into this new world where your first experiences could be simulated sex. In a way this has already happened with the internet, and teenagers discovering cybersex, RPG games and online POV porn.

I look at sites like MrSkin.com where movie moments are collected and analyzed for actresses showing a nipple or any nudity and celebrity sex scenes to "fast forward to the good parts." Back in the day it was still actually exciting for people to see some type of tamer version of movie sex and teasing in mainstream theater. I know it still is today in the movie industry. But really, most people can remember certain classic scenes of nudity or sex in films like the famous masturbation fantasy scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. These are iconic for our generation and I think they had more long lasting impact on us than straight porn because of the story and characters which bring some level (even if slight for some) of emotional involvement into the mix, as well as that certain flavor or taboo, and tease and denial that mainstream cinema offers as opposed to porn that just makes sex plain, and then even kinky sex becomes plain, and the consumer finds they can only reach climax from wildly exotic or absurd due to desensitization and overindulgence in synthetic, disposable, one-dimensional sexual experiences .

But what happens if while growing up, young people do not have the same base experiences with maternal bonding, or they grow up with the turning points in their first memorable sexual experiences being with say, some type of synthetic human? Maybe not even that advanced. Take the famed Living Dolls--what if they went way down in price. Check out this latest new version of sex doll for instance:

The Girl Below Is Actually An Android Sex Doll | The Frisky

(She also has a “heavy breathing” function and an actual G-spot.)

If these become more advanced, then the young man's point of reference for initial sexual experiences becomes something synthetic. Next thing you know, later in life he has a rubber fetish or something, and needs the slight scent of rubber in order to trigger release. There are so many different types of fantasy triggers that seem to implant in men by a much larger ratio than women for reasons that have never been really explained scientifically. You don't see near as many female shoe fetishists for instance as you do men (although the women are generally profiting on men's fetishes)

But the point is that if the early sexual frames of reference change dramatically, the emotional triggers, in the next generation, then I believe we will really be dealing with some interesting situations, some very confused people perhaps. Maybe people that may not even understand why they are depressed and lonely, especially when they have so many "friends." (On a side note: Jeffrey Dahmler used to sleep with and keep mannequins which he carried out sexual acts with and simulated acts of violence. It's easy to see that having "dolls" could possibly lead to some other desensitization.)

The other thing that I find interesting is wondering about how polarizing this issue could become. I am a woman, and I am obsessed with ai, robotics, the future. I fully plan on having a wonderful non-human boyfriend as soon as that is feasible (which I hope will be in the next decade, even if a bit rough still). However, the reasons that men and women would choose such companions seems very different in my opinion. As it is now, if I start a discussion about androids or ai, the first thing men think about is the creation of what would essentially be hot female sex slaves. And if you look at any female bots being created right now, like the animatronic versions and such in Japan - I guarantee you they are all in some type of subservient role. Females are used to be tour guides in museums, and to ask "how can I serve you" or "how can I help you" in a pleasing female voice in smile. Our female robots are already being groomed as Stepford slaves. Meanwhile, look at the current examples of male robots - they are shown as wise sages that answer difficult questions and have far greater intellectual range. Their creators create these male bots in their own images, using their own faces at times. People flock around them and ask questions in a far more respectful manner you would give to an authority on a subject. We don't see male robots poised to clean your house anytime soon.

The other method of sexual slavery/consumerism presented in the future doesn't come in the strictly physical form, but more of a direct hook up to the brain in the form of "going into another world" in a sense, more of a direct sex with a machine, a computer just by plugging in and experiencing fantasies, and maybe hooking up to nerve impulses to provide a form of remote stimulation. This offers an even more complex situation of alienation and distance between biological humans. No one has to be in real physical contact anymore. We touch base mentally. We do it now by email, social media, text messaging. We keep in touch more, but we see each other less somehow.

But going back to the strictly physical, look at the current sex trade, and sexual tourism. I went to Bangkok myself and sampled this once and wrote about it. (I'll save that story for another entry) While there is a considerable amount of research and commentary on men's use of women (or men) in the sex trade and male consumerism in this area, there is virtually none on women. Why don't women hire sex workers? Or in the more rare instances that they do (if it is even available), why do they do it?

The answers to this I think are key in figuring out where sex will evolve (or as I said, devolve possibly) in the future. If a man hires a sex worker, it is just about unequivocally for the purpose of a physical experience (no withstanding cases where someone may have a disability or be considered undesirable enough that perhaps they seek more overall human contact beyond just sexual) Men want "no strings attached" more often than women. Whereas when women may hire a sex worker, it is more in an "escort" capacity. They want a man to take them to an event, take them shopping, tell them they are beautiful, get the door, make them feel special. So keeping that in mind, where will that lead us in the future, with non-biological beings?

A couple films come to mind for me (besides Stepford Wives) on this subject of developing relationships with mannequins or dolls. I think I will post them in my next entry.