My good friend, Elizabeth Vazquez recently brought this film to my attention.

Believe it or not, Robot Sex is something I am extremely fascinated by and wrote an article about it back in the day while a columnist for the Aggie (my most “controversial” piece). 

I want you guys to read it. Sorry I’m posting old shit. 

Buttttt just an FYI my zine project, Neuropuddy is set to publish very soon. It’s awesome! fresh! totally cool! along with other great marketing adjectives! Seriously though, it’s a collection of very funny comics, by some great artists. 

Also, I just recently finished up an interview with Rick Trembles, creator of Motion Picture Purgatory which is also going to be put up on Comics Bulletin any day now. 

Soooo….hold yer horses.

Loves, 

Alison

Column: Robot sex objects

Written by Alison Stevenson
Columnist
Published on November 18, 2010
Filed under Opinion

Meet Roxxxy. She’s 5’7″, brunette, large breasted and white. She knows your likes and dislikes, has genitalia and even a heartbeat.

I know, doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary, but get this: Roxxxy is not human. That’s right, this lovely lady is really a lovely robot – a sex robot. If her initial description doesn’t sound like your perfect girl, know that she can have any other breast size and any other hair color or skin color you’d like.

When I first heard about Roxxxy I rushed straight to the website (TrueCompanion.com) where she can be purchased. I was appalled. I should note that Roxxxy is not alone and also has a male version named Rocky, but seeing as how the target demographic is for heterosexual men, he is much less advertised and not given as many features as Roxxxy.

Unlike Rocky, Roxxxy comes with five different personality settings. She can be any sexist stereotype you like, fellas! There’s Frigid Farrah, Wild Wendy, S&M Susan, Young Yoko and, last but not least, Mature Martha (not a joke, I swear). These “women” can be programmed to do anything their owner desires and never complain. That’s the supposed allure of it all. A machine that looks like a woman, but doesn’t come with all the “baggage” that real women have – like, oh, you know, their own motives and thoughts. The website even promotes owners to swap their sex-bots with other owners, saying, “This is the same as wife or girlfriend swapping without any of the social issues or sexual disease related concerns!” Is this the future or what?

Sex robots are not a new idea, and for decades there’s been a community of people who now refer to themselves as technosexuals and have had fantasies about the day they could make love to robots. However, until recent years this has been mostly the stuff of robot-romance fiction novels and films.

Now that Roxxxy has come along, I was under the impression that the fantasy has finally come true, but this is not exactly the case. David Levy, leader in the field of artificial intelligence research and author of the book Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, insists that a lot of technosexuals want more than just to make love to robots, they want these robots to be their girlfriends and perhaps someday their wives.

My first thought: Why?

In an interview conducted by Charles Q. Choi for MSNBC, Levy states that this is because robots are actually the perfect fit for “people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities.”

This is just sad. Levy is perpetuating the notion that certain people cannot find love if they are “social outcasts” of any kind, which presents an extremely narrow-minded view of what men and women look for in another partner. What’s worse is that technosexuals themselves are expressing similar sentiments. One anonymous technosexual writes, “you remove the possibility for rejection or mutual abuse or hurt or misunderstanding. Remove the human equation and all of that possibility for hurting another human being or being hurt goes away.”

So basically, many of the people who want a robotic partner fear the inevitable rejection and hurt that goes hand in hand with pursuing human romance. It makes sense in a way – people can be scary, are quick to judge and hurt one another frequently. If we were to avoid these kinds of people at all times though, we’d be avoiding pretty much everyone we know. Not just lovers, but friends and family, too.

Robot fetishism is evidently a more complicated matter than meets the eye. It appeals to a wide variety of people, most commonly heterosexual men. Some are purely misogynistic and seek to make love to a woman-like machine that will follow its owner’s every command without resistance. I might be sounding too much like a Defeated Debra, but perhaps it’s best they stick to their robots so women with self-respect won’t have to deal with them. Yet the others that are fond of an artificial partner because it will not reject them or bring them emotional pain I’m more on the fence about. It’s far too bleak to just let a person marry their robot under the pretense that this is the only type of love this person can have.