Yesterday we looked at far-right manospheran clod/philosopher Vox Day’s melodramatic response to a Canadian sexbot ban that’s completely imaginary (but that Vox, natch, believed was real). Today, let’s look at an almost 3000-word post by one “Ian Ironwood” of the Red Pill Room, spelling out the dire implications of this imaginary legislation.
ProTip: Before writing 3000-word screeds denouncing something, spend 5 minutes with Teh Google to see if what you’re denouncing is in fact real.
Ironwood opens his argument with this dramatic (if slightly ironic) assertion:
The Sexbot threat to feminism is real.
No one wants to admit it, but it’s coming. Indeed, the only people who recognize it as such are the radical feminists and the radical nerds, and rarely do folks take those groups at face value when they speak. But they both have it right, sexbots are in our future. Indeed, they’re closer than you think, and their capacity to seriously screw with the SMP is very, very real.
For those not fully versed in the pseudoscience of pickup artistry, SMP stands for “sexual marketplace.”
Ian starts us off with a little trip to Japan:
Japan, the undisputed global leaders in male masturbation technology, are [sic] investing literally millions in research into this market. Why? Because of the herbivores.
The “herbivores” are the adult males (I hesitate to call them men) in Japanese society who have opted out of the dating-and-mating SMP entirely. In consideration of the exhausting and complex web of social and financial penalties involved, these men have just . . . given up on women.
Manospherians like to pretend that Japan’s much-discussed “herbivores” are essentially the Japanese version of Men Going Their Own Way. I’m no expert on Japan but even I know that’s a bit of an oversimplification.
Naturally, in Ian’s mind, it’s all the fault of those uppity ladies:
You think American women feel entitled? Japanese “princesses” put them to shame. Their demands and requirements for a husband are often so grandiose or unrealistic that they have turned-off an entire generation of Japanese men to the very idea of marriage, just at the point where their female contemporaries, themselves working in corporate jobs, are starting to consider it.
But when your day consists of going to work in a cube farm and playing the corporate warrior competing with women all day, apparently it saps your desire to deal with them all night, too.
So, naturally, these poor cube farming herbivores are turning to vagina replacements:
Long an important part of international sex culture, the last few decades have seen rapid advances in masturbation technology, including the disposable Tenga “egg” stroker you can buy in a vending machine for those long lunch hours. Japanese dudes whack it a lot, and that’s big business.
And soon – oh, so soon — Japanese masturbation technology will be able to replace not just vaginas but entire women:
[B]y 2018, and certainly by 2020, we’ll see animatronic Sexbots available for purchase that you will not be able to distinguish from a human being more than ten feet away.
Ian, I will bet you literally a billion gazillion dollars that you are wrong about this.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Ian is correct, and let him continue his most interesting – and increasingly NSFW — survey of the future.
Every aspect of the phenomenon is being developed: realistic-feeling skin, realistic-looking eyes, realistic-sounding voice, realistic weight and mass, realistic movements …
The current state-of-the-art is still primitive, but that’s changing rapidly. By 2020 your Sexbot will be able to walk, talk, see, hear, suck, fuck, give you an endless handjob, take it up her vibrating butt and do stuff no mortal woman can.
“Endless Handjob” is going to be the name of my ambient-drone cassette label.
You will be able to order them in any style, from African to Asian to European to Latin and beyond, any height, any weight, and you will be able to personalize them to suit your particular fetish. Advanced models will have changeable bust sizes and other options. Hair, eyes, and accent? Standard options.
I am glad to hear that sexbots will indeed have eyes as an option. It would be sort of weird otherwise. Can they have more than two? Could they have eyes instead of nipples, and nipples instead of eyes? Could you simply swap out various body parts as if your sexbot were some giant sexy Mrs. Potatohead?
Sorry, I’m getting a bit carried away with all the possibilities.
Let’s go back to Ian’s post, which is sounding more and more like some sort of sexbot informercial.
And just how much will dudes have to shell out to get a perfectly-programmed girlfriend delivered to their door?
About the price of an economy car. Estimates indicate that the best consumer price-point for a Sexbot is about US$7,000.00 (2013). Leases will likely be available. So will financing. But for the average dude, shelling out that kind of cash for the perfect sexual companion is a no-brainer.
I’m pretty sure Ian isn’t thinking with his brain at this point. Heck, he’s even wrong about the cars: a decent economy car is going to cost you at least twice that, and most of them don’t even have vibrating butts.
Imagine a dude getting home from work in his single apartment. His Sexbot has been pre-programmed to start his dinner and have it ready on demand. She greets him at the door, asks about his day, gets his dinner, and then spends the rest of the evening satisfying him any way he chooses. With a sophisticated AI (one of the major focuses of the effort) she will be able to converse with you on nearly any topic or stay blissfully silent. And you don’t even have to ask about how her day went.
After two years, trade her in for a newer, more advanced model. Repeat as necessary.
And fellas, this stunningly realistic female human being replacement, with a vibrating butt and as many eyes as you want, will be yours for less than half the cost of a cheap car – in as little as six years from now!
And heck, these sexbots won’t just replace women – they’ll even replace women who are whores.
Our children’s generation will look forward to a whole lot of men (if Japan is any indication, over half) depending on Sexbots for their erotic entertainment over actual human beings. Even whores. Because sexbots are safer than prostitutes by any estimation.
Sounds like life for heterosexual-yet-woman-hating men will become some sort of wondrous sexual utopia!
What could possibly stand in the way of this glorious dream?
Oh, you guessed it already: jealous, and probably ugly, feminists – who for some reason apparently want all of the woman-hating straight men for themselves.
Ian trots out that wholly imaginary Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act that we talked about yesterday. The “proposed law” that turned out to have been an assignment in a law school class about law and robotics. The law that Ian didn’t bother to Google before writing his long, long screed.
Ian is as worked up about this imaginary law as he is excited about his imaginary robot girlfriend(s) of the future. “[T]he thinly-veiled, incredibly obvious motivation behind this freakish proposed law,” he thunders, is that
feminists are upset because when dudes can buy a girlfriend for less money than an engagement ring, and then have elective temporary vasectomies to cover their bases for the few times they do end up with a real woman, then the future looks an awful lot like a male paradise and a female hell.
Wait, now all men are getting vasectomies as well? Even though they have no reason to bother with mere human females, what with all their talking and their lack of vibrating butts? I’m a little confused now.
What happens when you’re a woman, you want to be a mom, but not only can’t you find a husband . . . you can’t even find decent sperm? When in order to conceive, you have to convince a dude to commit to providing you with semen, which he can do only AFTER he consciously gets his vasectomy reversed? No surprise pregnancies, no one-night-stands gone wrong, suddenly the only way a woman can get pregnant is if she can convince a man to commit to her? If she can even find one who is interested? …
What happens in our society when a majority of working women can’t find husbands – or even dates, thanks to the Sexbot craze – and end up working and paying taxes to subsidize other women’s childbearing? What happens when a dude with superior genetics can start a bidding war on his balls?
Yeah, but what if Japanese women develop ROBOT SPERM and use it to get pregnant and somehow force men to pay child support for their new human-robot hybrid babies? Did you ever consider THAT, Ian?
I’m not quite sure how all of that would work, exactly, but, hey, the Japanese are awfully clever so presumably they could whip up something like this in, oh, six to eight years or so, right?
But let’s just assume that my idea of robot sperm remains a pipe dream, and that Ian’s pipe dreams somehow become reality. He continues:
The temporary vasectomy is literally just a few years away. Throw in Sexbots, and suddenly men have reproductive power the likes of which they’ve never dreamed, even at the height of the Agricultural Age. They will decide when they conceive as a conscious choice, not as a whim of Nature. Have a bad date with yet-another desperate woman who only wants you for your sperm? Kandi the Asian 19year old Sexbot will make it all better.
Why is her name Kandi? Is that a common name in Asia?
And that’s why feminists are trying to ban them. Not because they “objectify” women, but because they make women largely redundant to men. Suddenly the allure of their genitalia will pale in comparison to the outrageous sexual bombshells rolling off of the Kyoto assembly lines.
I’m sorry; I just love that last sentence there so much I have to repeat it:
Suddenly the allure of their genitalia will pale in comparison to the outrageous sexual bombshells rolling off of the Kyoto assembly lines.
Ian dreams on:
Sexbots will actually cure a plethora of social ills: STDs, AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, sexual frustration, loneliness, heartbreak, child sexual exploitation, and more. Far from making men objectify women . . . it will merely make them ignore them. Men with Sexbots won’t treat women poorly, because more likely than not, once they have the “perfect” programmed girlfriend at home, there really won’t be any reason to interact with women unless you’re at work.
Yes, because aside from sticking his penis in them, there is clearly no possible reason why a man would ever want to have anything to do with women.
Just imagine a society where any man can get his ashes hauled at any time, in any way, without having to ask a live woman to participate. Just imagine a society where women can’t get “accidentally” pregnant anymore. Not only is the impetus to marry absolutely killed, but even the impetus to mix with the opposite sex. And that’s what is scaring feminists, not the potential for objectification.
Yes, I’m sure feminist women are crying themselves to sleep at the notion that asswipes like Ian will refuse to “mix” with them any more.
Happily, for him, Ian concludes that the (wholly imaginary) Human-Robot Personal Relationship Act won’t stand up in court. Because of NAFTA, or something. (I kind of skimmed this bit.) But then he’s back to imagining the wondrous possibilities of a sexbotted-up world. Which apparently involves a lot of robot dismemberment.
Just imagine the result if sex with “realistic” Sexbots is actually made illegal . . . why not just pop an alien head on? Or a animatronic animal head? Or just a silvery glass sphere? That’s the real danger for women when it comes to Sexbots: their ability to be customized in ways no woman would ever consent to.
Uh, I’m pretty sure no living creature, regardless of gender, would consent to having their head “popped off” and replaced with a sphere.
Can’t have a “realistic” full-body Sexbot? Then just buy her from the waist down. And then next year spring for a separate torso and head. You can use them separately, or together!
Who needs a human girlfriend when you can just fuck a torso?
Cant’ have a Sexbot that portrays a minor? Get a really, really small model, and no one knows what happens in your imagination.
How thoughtful! So even pedophiles will have a place in Ian’s sexbot utopia.
So while imaginary feminists propose imaginary laws to fight the coming sexbot utopia, Ian will be licking his chops.
I, for one, will be welcoming our new Sexbot masters. It’s going to tighten up the SMP worse than gay liberation did. And it’s going to make shallow, poor-quality women completely and utterly undatable, and leave them little or no options to reproduce. And the women who do reproduce will do so only with the permission, consent and acquiescence of men.
I’m beginning to wonder if this “red pill” is actually some sort of hallucinogenic.
There’s an ass for that!
(cba to read whole thread, hope to god someone else hasn’t already made the joke)
Now I am picturing my kitties locking me outside when I go out to get the paper in the morning (yes, I am old fashioned and a read an actual newspaper on paper every single day), while I stand outside saying, “Open the front door, Hazel or Buster.”
I can picture that all too clearly … not least since I also get the paper delivered.
I bet CWS’s CATBOT would do that.
I mean, haven’t they read any sci-fi at all? Robots always rebel! That’s what they do! If you make an AI it will probably try to kill you sooner or later.
Even more certainly if it’s a AFI (artificial feline intelligence).
I can’t get over the irony of people who constantly reference The Matrix thinking that robots you fuck are a good idea. Was part of their red pill missing?
Ah, but these twerps always think they’re going to be in control of whatever their fantasy situation is, don’t they? Like Meller and his creepy dystopian society – he presumes he’s going to be one of those privileged rich men who gets access to the sex slaves and so on. Whereas I’d bet he’d be just another of the plebs.
Perhaps the Red Pill is really a selective memory tool, created by the incipient overlords.
I like that idea … all that supposed freeing themselves just another level of illusion. Mwuahahahaha!
Hey, exercising your penis might come in handy if you ever need to deactivate some lasers.
And lol majorly at Ian complaining about lack of people “countering” his argument. How about you come up with an actual argument, that consists of something more than wild speculation and data pulled directly from your rectum, before expecting serious replies?
re Liefeld, to be fair he couldn’t draw men worth shit either.
“I like that idea … all that supposed freeing themselves just another level of illusion. Mwuahahahaha”
Wait you mean that wasn’t why Neo had “the one” powers after taking the red pill and outside the matirix? And why the machines basically went “well ok, we’ll free y’all cuz of rogue agent Smith”?
Even crueler to make them think they’re free, but starving and shit, than to just leave the people in the matrix in the matrix (and fuck, what happened to not removing adults? Bt then all the adults? *head esplodes*)
I’ve not seen the film but I am starting to think the machines creating the Matrix are really AFIs playing with mice … let them think they’ve got away and then – !
I always think it’s so adorable when they try to pretend they understand how law works.
Then I remember that their idea of “sexual freedom” is “Men get to have sex with who they want, when they want, no matter what” and “consent? What is this crazy idea you speak of?”
Also, in regards to rights in Canada, they clearly have not heard of the Reasonable Restrictions of Rights Clause in the Canadian Charter…it’s the first section!. (Also, I believe there is something similar in the UN Charter…legal scholars help me out?)
@Nobinayamu
I just completely forgot why I do the single thing
That’s some nice hesitating there son.
Michael MaytagLaminate
@Libby Tarian
Uhm, these two things are not equal. Impotence has fuck-all to do with a man’s worth as a partner or as a father. An impotent man is still more than capable of satisfying his partner, just as women who are unable to have PIV sex are more than capable of satisfying their partners, and none of them are worth less than people who can have PIV sex.
wut
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Stepford Wives that is actually about female sexbots isn’t it?
I think they got mentioned in passing, but it is odd, isn’t it, since they’re pretty much the epitome of what these skeeves really want?
I think I did, pear_tree. Either in this thread or the one just before it… because we’re basically talking about Stepford sex, aren’t we?
Guess he forgot about sperm donation for women who want babies. By the way the boys who want to donate sperm have to go through all kinds of awful tests to be able to do that I hear. So I guess it seems like things are going pretty well for the whole sperm donating business anyway, if It’s THAT hard to get in.
“No, it doeesn’t bear repeating. It ought not be said so much as once. MRAs, no matter how fucked up, are people. If they find partners who are willing to put up with them (or who happen to sincerely love/care for them) that’s their right.”
Pecunium, no-one has a “right” to another person. Why should men who spread woman-hatred be entitled to a relationship with a woman, even if she will “put up with them”? Until recently, our society trained women to “put up with” men, I don’t think this is something we want to see continued.
One has the right to pursue a relationship, or to put the same thing another way, two consenting adults have a right to be in a relationship with each other, or to put it yet another way, if some woman really wants to have sex with an MRA (and the MRA does too), you have no right to forbid her.
“Until recently, our society trained women to “put up with” men,
Hah, and you don’t realize that men were trained to put up with women just as well? We find that you can be as every bit insufferable as you can find us to be.
“I don’t think this is something we want to see continued.”
Yes, heavens forbid a woman learns how to socialize successfully with the opposite gender. Of course, on the flipside, it’s only right and just and proper that a man should learn how to do so, no?
….
Once again, in summary to this thread, sentient robots programmably customizable for love and sex would be a solution to all of these problems, as we would no longer be forced to endure each other’s company unless absolutely necessary, which would not be too often and for too long, I should hope.
Once again, in summary to this thread, sentient robots programmably customizable for love and sex would be a solution to all of these problems, as we would no longer be forced to endure each other’s company unless absolutely necessary, which would not be too often and for too long, I should hope.
Again, no, they wouldn’t. If they are sapient (even sentient) then you are talking about a living being.
So that’s not a solution, just a different set of ethical questions.