So the Boobz are getting worked up – again – over some imaginary “proposed legislation” to ban sexbots. Vox Day, one of the esteemed elder statesmen of the right-wing of the manosphere, has resurrected an urban legend that first fooled his comrades about two years ago, reposting a “statement” of mysterious Canadian origin explaining that
provisions have been proposed for the new Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act, the first draft of which is currently being finalized.The provisions are specifically meant to target the concerns that were expressed at the roundtable that sexbots will negatively impact the pursuit for gender equality and may unduly emphasize the objectification of women as sexual objects.The suggested provisions fall into the larger framework of regulating the emerging service robot industry that will be governed by the Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act and under the direction of the Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence, to be established in Ontario and other Canadian provinces and territories at the end of next year.
The main provision of this dastardly Femi-Canadian proposed legislation?
The use of sexbots in the privacy of one’s home is prohibited, unless otherwise permitted by the Ministry of Robots and Artificial intelligence or a relevant regulating agency as per the criteria outlined in the Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act.
You may wonder: Why didn’t I read anything in the papers about this Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act? Why haven’t I heard about this Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence?
Well, you guessed it. Because neither of them exist. I looked into this two years ago when the story first, er, broke in the manosphere. There’s no vast feminist conspiracy to deny Canadian men (or, for that matter, women) their still-imaginary sexbots. The “statement” was evidently written as part of a law school class project on law and robotics taught by Prof. Ian Kerr at the University of Ottawa Law School.
If you Google “Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act” or “Ministry of Robots and Artificial Intelligence” you will find that literally the only people talking about this issue are MRAs and PUAs and conspiracy theorists. And some of the more gullible 4channers, though a few of them quickly figured out that the whole thing was fake. (As did the Real Doll enthusiasts.)
Vox Day, who has yet to come to this realization, draws some dire conclusions from this thing that isn’t real, declaring that the
This Canadian attempt to preemptively ban sexbots is an overt confession by feminists of both sexes concerning their belief that women have nothing significant to offer men but sexual services. Moreover, it is proof that their “pursuit for gender equality” is directly and fundamentally opposed to the most basic human freedom. …
One would think that even those only superficially acquainted with human history would realize that attempts to put the technological genie back in the bottle almost always fail, as do attempts to prevent men and women from pursuing pleasure in ways deemed illicit. But then, a near-complete ignorance of human history is required to either be a feminist or possess a genuine belief in the rainbow-tailed unicorn of equality.
Well, not so much. Though Vox proves yet again that there are few people on planet earth as gullible as the manosphere’s pompous philosophers.
NOTE: Vox isn’t the only manospherian up in arms about the evil imaginary sexbot ban; more on this tomorrow.
@Kim
Blade Runner! Of course! That’s possibly my favourite film and yet I forgot that one.
Think you were ninja’d on Austin Powers, though.
At the risk of making everyone here feel geriatric, I was probably a bit young for Firefly, Austin Powers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer when they were first out.
@Kim I really like it but it’s a very specific kind of show, if you aren’t a fan of that sort of scifi then it probably isn’t for you, and it’s really dark but in a more psychological way than Buffy or Firefly.
@Kim: I agree that you gotta put some kind of emotions into a robot, or it would just sit there. But I don’t think you could easily pull of simultaneously making it a) intelligent enough for advanced, human-style decision-making, and b) completely content with merely carrying out orders.
I’m not saying this is logically impossible, but it might be impossible for us to pull off in real life.
@Noadi. Yeah, I like my sci-fi a bit more cheerful and not too dystopian.
Re Bladerunner I actually preferred the book its loosely based on… Plus I think the scene where Deckard grabs Rachel and goes TELL ME YOU WANT ME and she’s like “okay I want you” is creepy as hell, although it’s supposed to be all romantic.
In the book androids differ from people by being completely devoid of empathy. Which also means that they’re eventually pretty crap at escaping and revolting against the humans, since they can’t handle prisoner’s-dilemma-situations. They’ll just immediately betray each other as soon as there’s something they can gain from it personally.
I think there’s more of an ethical dilemma for Deckard in the book, since on the one hand, the androids are self-aware, rational, intelligent etc, so you think it would be wrong to kill them… BUT with them being completely unempathic you sometimes feel that it’s sort of okay anyway. In the movie it’s just OBVIOUS that it’s wrong to kill them, even if Deckard himself doesn’t think so.
I still don’t know what Firefly is, never having bothered to Google it! (Speaking of geriatric, that’s what my internet connection is like tonight, so looking it up can wait.)
Blade Runner I do know (as well as the Pube Terror film of that name) and it says a lot about the problems if robots were machine equivalents of people – it wouldn’t be a matter of machines any more but of enslavement.
Ha, as to souls, I believe in them, but right now I’d be more willing to bet on a sapient robot like Data or the replicants having one than a zombie like Abnoy.
lowquacks – XP user here, too! We got changed to Windows 7 at work and we don’t like it at all, or rather, don’t like the Microsoft Office changes we got lumbered with at the same time.
My boss has some very rude and decidedly strange ideas about what should be done to Mr Gates …
@Dvarghungspossen
I’ve read that, and prefer Blade Runner – it’s paced perfectly. Not sure how much the Deckard-rapes-Rachael scene is meant to be “romantic” – I thought it was pretty iffy and so did most of the English class I studied the film with.
It’s mostly perfect in aesthetic and pacing and cinematography, though – give me anything Sir Ridley’s done and I’ll be happy.
Sounds like the MRM … maybe that’s it! They’re an all-male mob of androids or cyborgs or some such, no wonder they want fembots.
Oh, wait, the words rational and intelligent were in there too. Scrap that theory.
Gods, a seven-year-old girl raped in Goa and massive protests about it – I wonder how the MRM will turn that into it being her fault?
Rhetorical question. I don’t really want to know, because they will.
That reminds me of the IQ detector I wanted installed when I worked at the Museum. If you didn’t trigger it, you didn’t get in. Would have made customer service a lot easier.
In the case of Vox, maybe you should have a card-carrying Mensa-member alarm. I mean, what is your intelligent people:Mensa members acquaintance ratio? I know a lot of PhDs and other assorted smartypants but no one has ever admitted to Mensa membership, and when I think Mensa the first people I think of are that douche who writes Dilbert, a guy who killed his neighbour by thallium poisoning, and as a distant third, Vox. That is, of course, assuming he’s actually a member, which I chose to believe because seriously, who gives a shit?
One question: who cleans the sex robot after use? I assume given that housework and its ilk is women’s stuff, and they’re avoiding women, one of the sex robot functions will be to do this?
And what about upkeep? I mean, let’s assume you get the $5,000+ required to buy a reasonable sex doll. She is covered in consumables, and how many guys are really going to keep up on that? And if you have to patch things, well, have you ever tried to get a custom paint color matched exactly? Imagine that but fake skin. Sure, some guys will get all into repairing and painting and upgrading, just like some can’t stop working on their cars. The rest will slowly start creating a disturbing, after-market-patched fetish memoir.
“Sure, some guys will get all into repairing and painting and upgrading, just like some can’t stop working on their cars.”
LOL and that leads to the thought of the guys who spend all their time working on them and never actually drive anywhere. Which is an even funnier image applied to these clowns.
@ Kittehs
The idea that by creating these bots they’d be punishing women for our non-compliance, and that we’d then all either try desperately to regain their favor or starve to death because we can’t possibly do anything for ourselves, seems to be a key component of this particular MRA fantasy.
It’s strange, the MRAs truly believe that women deeply and desperately want them, no matter how many feminists drop-by their blogs to reassure them that we don’t. Do they just spend a lot of time around unusually desperate women, or is there something else going on here? It vaguely reminds me of ‘gay panic’, that fear that straight men sometimes express that gay men would want to seduce them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense… anyone got a theory?
The weird thing is how they’re capable of believing both that we want them and that we despise and want to destroy them. That kind of cognitive dissonance has to lead to some serious headaches.
“It’s strange, the MRAs truly believe that women deeply and desperately want them”
I’m not sure they do, at least not some of them.
Okay…
Tell you what, if there are ever fully functioning sexbots able to accommodate your “beta/omega”-ass with a “…24-7 PA…” (what ever that means) not only will I refrain from attempting to indoctrinate your robot, I will cheer. And that goes for all the manospherians worried about what will happen to their hypothetical sexbots. Truly.
Rah-fucking-rah!
To be fair, I once made my parents throw out a book because it depicted penguins and polar bears in the same place, and was therefore completely untrustworthy as a fact source…
“‘No silicon heaven’? Where would all of the calculators go?” – Kryten, Red Dwarf. “The Last Day”
And I seriously hoping you’re joking about the soul thing, otherwise it sounds like you’re seriously looking forward to enslaving an angel for your personal use and abuse.
And in today’s depressing news:
“A 13-year-old girl who had been sexually abused slipped and fell to her death while begging a boy to delete a sex tape, an inquest has heard.
Coroner Bernard Richmond QC described Chevonea Kendall-Bryan’s death as a “ghastly accident”, saying she did not intend to kill herself when she plunged 60ft from her bedroom window in Battersea.
He told Westminster coroner’s court that he believed Chevonea was leaning out of the window to convince the boy, known as E6, that she would jump if he did not erase mobile phone footage of her being sexually abused.
He added that he believed that she never intended to follow her threat through.
The inquest was adjourned and will reconvene for the verdict on Wednesday.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/a-ghastly-accident-13yearold-girl-slipped-and-fell-60ft-to-her-death-while-begging-boy-to-delete-mobile-phone-footage-of-her-being-sexually-abused-8451169.html
@Historophilia: That’s awful.
And the 7-year-old who was assaulted is also awful.
Kitten?
You mean, let’s cheat on each other, don’t you? Metaphorically speaking?
Let’s face it, you think men are helpless and/or lazy. I guess you like thinking of yourself as Jabba the Hutt, but some of us can actually take care of ourselves.
Wipe someone’s ass, clean their clothes, cut their hair, cook their food, never get thanked, never get paid, always get told this is what they’re meant for? Would you take that job?
One does not enslave angels, they willingly serve from the sheer joy of altruistic service to others as they are perfect beings of pure love 🙂 that`s the Catholic Christian theology.
@Kim – about people sexing auto-welding robots… well, stupider things have happened!
Somehow I suspect Abnoyance doesn’t have the sentience to realize that he’s advocating building an entire robotic species as the better option than MRAs like him learning to treat women as human beings. Because learning and personal growth are misandry! As is any man wanting to actually wash dishes or do his own laundry!
Do you think Abnoy and those MRA guys think the fembots will be exactly like the Austin Powers ones? I bet they do. All chiffon and fluffy bras and feathered high heel slippers haha.
I hope they make them, and I hope when they do, that they look like this http://uglymailbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/100_1491-204×300.jpg
“If the damned thing can make decisions of its own volition, and not just from programmed options, then we’re fucking shit up again if we insist on what “option” they must take. Non-sapient robots / just doing as programmed, well ok, they only have programming to go on; hiring sapient bots akin to hiring a human? Dandy, good luck moving that couch!”
It’s the same as the question of what relationship God and humans have: does God control our destiny, or do we have free will? Clearly MRAs are not interested in anything but themselves having free will.