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.
“another attack on male sexuality”
Hi Ian!
Ok, so I am genuinely confused. Since when does fucking a robot with a vibrating asshole and a sphere for a head constitute a part of male sexuality?
The attack on male sexuality part was referring to “You can be friends with someone of the opposite sex, though it’d be easier if there wasn’t any bullshit about being owed sex or ignoring lack of consent!”
The implication being that ‘rape culture’ is an attack on male sexuality, thereby implying it’s a fundamental part of male sexuality to be willing to fuck people who aren’t freely consenting, which, my god, is complete bullshit!
I KNEW he wouldn’t be able to resist commenting here.
~ cloudiah velvetchasm (Seriously, that’s my real name! I was teased a lot as a kid.)
p.s. Here’s someone who’s much better at predicting things than Ian Ironwood.
Ian, no one said that, learn to read. A lot of us are in favor of your sexbots.
Also, I have no interest — none — in shaming Mr. Ironwood, except over his misogyny. Dude, if what you want out of life is to have sex with a bot with “fairly realistic looking skin” then more power to you. Heck, if you want to have sex with a centaurbot or a turtlebot, it’s really none of my business. I hope this R&D stuff pans out for you.
Signed,
feminists from all over the world hoping you will go your own way now
If it would guarantee that they’d go away and leave women alone I’d try to make them the (non-sentient) bots myself.
I’ve been friends with guys. If any of them was interested in me sexually, they certainly never showed it. I’d hope they weren’t, because I’m only interested in one person that way. Funny part is, he and I are also completely friends, and even if it hadn’t been a sexual relationship the love and affection would still be there.
Even if I felt sexual attraction to other people, the idea of sex with someone I didn’t trust and like a LOT would be repulsive. But then it’s about power and abuse for MRAs, not about mutual pleasure, let alone love.
>Nothing. Male sex dolls are already somewhat popular in Japan, since they seem to be GREAT listeners and never tell you they don’t want to hear about your day.
Stereotypical japanese husbands would be suprisingly easy to simulate. It’s truly a miracle that japanese women aren’t early adopters of sex bots.
>Japanese women are a cultural subset of “Asian women”, and they tend to buck the curve on a lot of fronts. Especially in terms of entitlement. Probably all the Western influence during the post-war period.
Nah, The Life of an Amorous Woman was published in 1686.
Hi Morkais!
Ok I see now. He thinks that all men look at women the way he does. Aw bless!
Well, he does mention gleefully that his fembot will do things that no woman would consent to. He won’t have to worry about coercing or raping anyone to have his desires satisfied, or resenting women who can’t/wont do vibrating anal, so good for him, I guess!
Ian, could you address the fact that you got up in arms about IMAGINARY feminist laws against sexbots? While you claim you are not an idiot, that certainly makes you look like one.
I fail to see what having sex with a mechanical likeness of a celebrity (presumably with a vibrating butt) and a humourous or satirical imitation of a work have in common…
@ ironwood:
Whether or not you are an idiot, a lot of the ideas in your original post are idiotic. If you really do know something about what is actually happening in the industry, then that only makes your original post that much more idiotic. We’ll be able to create humanoid robots that actually talk, walk, feel, respond, and generally act like human beings within the next seven years? I’m sorry, but that’s just absurd.
Maybe you are an incredibly intelligent person most of the time. Everyone says stupid things occasionally. Sometimes people who are generally intelligent can be stupid about a particular topic, advocating a particular pet idea in the face of all evidence and logic. Linus Pauling might have won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, but that didn’t stop him from being kind of stupid about Vitamin C, after all. But just like the fact that Linus Pauling was smart didn’t make his ideas about Vitamin C magically right, your intelligence is absolutely irrelevant to whether or not your beliefs about sexbots are idiotic.
I’d agree with you that the creation of realistic-looking sex dolls does not violate anyone’s rights. If your classmates were trying to make that argument, then they were wrong.
But at the point where you have sex dolls that not only look but act just like human beings do, that are able to respond like a human being, that are able to actually carry on an intelligent conversation, well, then I’d start to worry. At that point, I’d start to worry that the sexbots were conscious entities. And I think that creating conscious entities simply to appease our sexual desires is ethically problematic. What makes an intelligent android forced to sexually pleasure human beings any different from a human sex slave?
Of course, given that we simply aren’t anywhere near creating an artificial intelligence that mimics human intelligence, this isn’t something that anyone is going to have to worry about within our lifetimes.
If temporary vasectomies become feasible, then great. If the male equivalent of a birth control pill is invented, then that would be fantastic. I don’t think that anyone here is objecting to the idea of men using contraception.
The fact that you think that women would be absolutely devastated by it is what we find amusing.
Ian seems as invested in the idea of causing distress as anything else – look at how pleased he seems contemplating famous people being unable to prevent robot images of themselves being made.
My porn name is Fifi Poinciana.
You completely missed the opportunity to describe tentacles or pick-and-choose arthropod parts! For shame.
Why are you shaming herbivores, Ian?
So are you okay with having sex with a bot you CAN distinguish from a human at close range, or are you able to have sex with a bot more than 10 feet away? Not shaming, just curious.
I know it’s nice to prolong pleasure, but wouldn’t you at some point want the handjob to have a (happy) ending? Again, not shaming, it just seems like chafing could become a problem.
So many questions…I’m actually in the market for a new car. Can you tell me which make/model is available for $7,000?
Leasing: How will you deal with the squick factor of selling used sexbots? I know it’s sort of counterintuitive, since people have sex with people who’ve had sex with other people, but I just wonder about the marketing aspect. Will they be sold on lots with big pink/green stickers saying “Extra Clean!” “Easy Terms!” “Heated Tits!” “Both Eyes Included!” and the like?
I’m for them!
Except, you know, we’re not. But by all means, keep fucking that chicken. Or that chickenbot. Probably named Kandi.
“Yeah but vibrating BUTTS Cassandra. Sphere heads and vibrating BUTTS.”
The ideal sexbot is starting to sound like Homer Simpson’s dream car.
I feel like Pierre needs to find work in a bank, where he encounters the R&D dude looking for funding for his sexbot company, but katz could probably use a rest.
@Penny – I actually lolled!
I really hate this idea that physical attraction somehow cheapens or lessens a friendship and that therefore men and women cannot be friends ever and definitely not with people they are attracted to. I’m hella attracted to my beau and we fuck as often as we can. I also consider him one of my best friends. I don’t think I would want to fuck him as much as I do, nor would I have dated him this long if I hadn’t felt that he was someone I could trust and wasn’t someone who’s company I enjoyed. Which, I mean, I dunno about anyone else, my definition of a friend is someone I trust and someone who’s company I enjoy. I often side-eye a lot of people who subscribe to this idea that men and women just “can’t be friends, because, SEX” because aside from the heterocentrism of their belief (I mean, really, do they think bi folks just don’t have ANY friends?) it makes me think perhaps they don’t necessarily have terribly great romantic relationships. If spending time with your partner of another gender aside from time spent fucking is just SO AWFUL and unfun that you literally cannot imagine having a good connection with someone else of their gender without being able to fuck them, then I kind of feel bad for you.
Cue the crazed rant about feminists creating a race of evil sexbots trying to enslave men (because women hate sex anyway and all want alpha male sperm) in 5… 4…
I, too, find it perplexing that, suddenly, Japanese women are the cause of all the world’s ills rather than the solution. What, the geisha/dominatrix thing wasn’t enough, guys? It’s only a matter of time until these boys prop up and knock down every single nationality of women out there. I imagine that’s how their individual relationships go, too. Such a bother, these on-robot women, with their distinct personalities.
“@Penny – I actually lolled!”
Please, call me Dreadful : )
I think the reason guys like Ian aren’t worried about that, other than the fact that they don’t care if women suffer or are enslaved, is that they see the potential lack of sentience of the bots as a feature, not a bug. They want something that’s designed to simulate human behavior without any of that pesky personality or free will business.
::high fives ostara::
This, this, this! You said it much better than I did.
“Why are you shaming herbivores, Ian?”
I bet Ian doesn’t think asexual men are real men, either, since “male sexuality” is about “sex with someone or something that cannot consent” – that “do things no woman would consent to” line was as rapey as hell.
Cassandra – can you imagine the screams if the robots were sentient and anti-slavery laws were passed to protect them?