Sex Robots and The Future of F…ing
By Ethan Ryan
TC: Do you think the desire for more sophisticated sex robots reflects the capitalist view that science and technology can solve all our problems?
LGD: Yes. [laughs] Yeah, when I was talking about the very common pop cultural depictions of sex robots as always servile, and submissive, and constantly turned on, that does stem in some ways from a lot of sex robot projects being commercial products, and there are people purchasing them in a marketplace. It’s understandable that you don’t want to pay a lot of money for a product only to have it decide it doesn’t like you and leave.
That’s why some of the most radical reimaginings of what it would be like to infuse our sex lives with technology may come from noncommercial projects. Open source projects are really exciting because they allow people to take technology and manipulate it into what their imaginings are, as opposed to it necessarily conforming to what people think the market needs are. So I think the bigger stuff is gonna be driven by market need, but I’m more excited to see how open source users, and people in basement workshops, take those commercial designs and take the burgeoning field of sex tech and make it their own, and adapt it, and maybe start looking for alternatives.
Almost all pop culture depictions of sex robots are portrayed heterosexually. It’s strange, because it’s a relationship between a human and a machine. By giving it a sexual orientation you’re also gendering that robot, which is interesting, but why do we feel the need to do that? Why do we need to take the human-robot relationship and make it fit in this mold that we’ve created, in human society? It’s an interesting example of how the market dictates need. Most people see the market for sex robotics to be a heterosexual market, which is not entirely true. I hope that as we move forward, we’ll see more diverse representations. There’s so much potential to really play with the way we think about gender, we think about beauty, we think about relationships.
The future could be really hot. I mean, we’re talking about sex robots! People can explore all sorts of fetishes and desires. It’s sort of unfortunate that we have people going, “Oh, sex robots, I can have missionary-style, heterosexual pleasure.” Really? Is that really the pinnacle of what we’re going for? Try something new! So I hope that we get to the point where more people start experimenting. You’ve got the entire gamut of sexual pleasure. Let’s get a little more creative.
TC: In his book Love and Sex With Robots, David Levy argues that by the year 2050, some people will choose to marry robots. If people start marrying robots, how long will it take for robots to start divorcing people?
LGD: If we do get married to robots, it won’t take long for robots to start divorcing people. If you’re a robot and you’ve been programmed with all these crazy skills, why limit yourself? You’re immortal.
I really like David Levy’s book. I think he did a really good job of building the argument for robot marriage. 2050 seems really soon, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that with technology, if you think it’s gonna happen, it probably will.
There have already been a couple news stories of men marrying videogame characters. I’m not sure about the legality of those unions, they’re probably not legal, but there’s pictures online—it’s only been men that I’ve seen, there’s probably other people too—of people in full tuxedos holding their Nintendo DS with their computerized women on the screen.
People are already marrying videogame characters, so marrying robots is not a huge stretch. But having an intimate relationship with a robot, as opposed to just using a robot as a sex toy, I think that’s a big conceptual shift. I look forward to 2050 to see if I’m proven wrong.
TC: You seem to have a very positive, prorobotics stance. What advice do you have for neurotic people like me, who fear robots and the approaching Singularity?
LGD: I do fall in the prorobotic camp, but you should probably read those words back to me when I’m enslaved by robot overlords in twenty years. In that case, I’ll eat my words.
What allows me to be prorobots is I’ve seen when you have great sexual desire, people like to do crazy stuff. I think it’s really exciting. Yes, you are gonna have robots that can transform into tanks and machine guns and kill us all, but you’re also gonna have people who have created robots that can indulge your fetish for robots wearing high heels or something.
What scares me the most is the military projects for robots. When you see people who have these intimate relationships with robots, in many ways it seems tender. Or, on the other hand, dirty and hot. So those desires scare me less than technological colonization and world domination. Those are more scary to me than the idea of someone in the basement having sex with a robot for twelve hours. That seems like a less disturbing concept.
So I guess if you take that to its logical conclusion, for people who are scared of robots, you should just have sex with them. Know thy enemy, in a carnal sense.
TC: Am I a robot?
LGD: Not a robot. I would say you are a cyborg. Robots are entirely technological. Cyborgs are part biological, part technological. People consider cyborgs to be way off in the future, and this science fictional concept, but when you think about medicine, and the ways in which we interact with each other, via email, via Skype, our physical bodies are already utilizing technology in a very real way.
When you think about bionic medical implants inside people, you can make the argument that they already are cyborgs. In some ways that’s identity crisis-causing, but in some ways it’s exciting. People have so integrated medical implants into their worldview that it’s become the new natural. A hundred years ago, people would have thought artificial hips were wild science fiction, but we’ve so integrated them into our everyday practices that people find the concept that we’re already cyborgs shocking not because they’re not familiar with the example, but because they’re too familiar with the example.
So I would argue, yes, we are already cyborgs.
TC: What most excites you about the future of fucking, or the future in general?
LGD: In some ways the most exciting thing about the future is the future of fucking. As someone who works as a sex educator, who studies sexuality, my life is infused with sex, I’m thinking about it all the time.
The future of sexuality can clearly go in a lot of directions, but what excites me is the possibility of an opening up of options. We now see sex robots used in very mainstream, very conventional ways, which is interesting and useful, but what happens when you really start exploring the question of what it means to live in a body, what it means to feel arousal, what it means to feel pleasure, what it means to have sex. I think some really hot stuff can come out of that.
Our society is so steeped in sexual shame. It has a very narrow definition of what is appropriate sexuality, what is natural sexuality, what is healthy sexuality. It leads to a lot of unhealthy concepts of sexuality, and very unsatisfied, very lonely people. So I hope that as technology expands our definitions of what is a body, what is a relationship, what is sexuality, and especially what is sexual pleasure, and where can we find it and how can we share it, we’ll be expanding the options, and doing away with very narrow, shame-based concepts of sexuality.