Reddit MRAs are all in a tizzy about the evil feminist plot to deprive them of sexbots that don’t yet exist.
Playing the part of “the feminists” in this scenario: two European robot ethicists — that is, two human beings who study the ethical issues raised by robotics — who have launched what they call a Campaign Against Sex Robots. Their concern? That sex robots will “contribute to inequalities in society” and “further objectif[y] women and children.”
As a position paper on the Campaign’s website argues,
extending relations of prostitution into machines is neither ethical, nor is it safe. If anything the development of sex robots will further reinforce relations of power that do not recognise both parties as human subjects.
It’s not clear that there is anything to the campaign beyond this position paper, a bare-bones website, a crappy logo, and its two organizers, but the fellas on the Men’s Rights subreddit are treating this like some kind of sexbot Pearl Harbor.
In a post to the subreddit that’s garnered close to 1300 upvotes, one Redditor sounds the alarm: Feminists already trying to ban sex robots as “demeaning to women”, to control male sexuality.
Naturally the discussion was full of the thoughtful analysis and good sense that we have come to expect from the Men’s Rights Movement.
Yes, that’s right. The guy who reacted to a news article about a two-person campaign to ban hypothetical future sex robots by pounding out a slur-ridden polemic talking about how much he’d like to punch “these mentally bipolar cunts … hard in the face” is complaining that other people are too easily offended.
Tilting_Gambit, meanwhile, explained the pussyconomics behind it all.
![richardnorth 135 points 1 day ago Many in the manosphere predicted this would happen many years ago. This article is like clockwork. It's completely unsurprising that they're gonna start freaking out over men being able to get sexual satisfaction while bypassing all the bs, drama and baggage that comes with real women. permalinkembedunsavereportgive goldreply [–]Tilting_Gambit 100 points 1 day ago It's why women slut shame and cock-block. They like to keep the value of sex high so that men pour more resources/effort/time into pursuing it. If women ever just allow their sexual inhibitions to disappear then men are no longer the pursuers in relationships and women don't get to select their partners with the same frequency. Women don't know they don't want other girls to put out, but they benefit greatly when the value of sex is high. Exactly the same with hypothetical sex AIs. If men are getting sexually satisfied by robots then they're not going to pursue women with the same intensity. In economics terms, the demand for women would drop and therefore the price men are willing to](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sexrobotecon.png?resize=527%2C488&ssl=1)
And since most women don’t have anything to offer men beyond sex — at least in the eyes of quite a few Men’s Rights Redditors — a plunge in the price of sex will render many of the utterly worthless.
There was much agreement on this point.
Much much agreement:
![heDongerNeedsFood 24 points 1 day ago When it comes to sex, these robots are competiton for real women, plain and simple. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]Demonspawn 38 points 1 day ago They are competition for women who offer nothing more than sex. The sad state of western women is that the vast majority of them offer little more than sex. They have bought into feminism and shed their feminine qualities as they ape being men such that the only thing they have to offer men (who desire feminine qualities in partners) is sex. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]5th_Law_of_Robotics 9 points 1 day ago Which the fact that so many women vociferously oppose porn, prostitution, male masturbatory aids, etc suggest that those women think all they have to offer is sex.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/5tlaw.png?resize=527%2C376&ssl=1)
A couple of Redditors broke down the math:
![yayimadeit 63 points 1 day ago My friends and I were just discussing this the other day. It's my opinion that if they can get a decently priced robot that can give sexual pleasure that is 60% of what a real woman can give then it will end society as we know it. Most men would settle for 'ok' sex in exchange for having it when they want it, as often as they want, and with none of the financial risk that a marriage carries. For untold generations women used sexuality to ensure they were taken care of. That's about to end, and it's going to be a very, very ugly transition. Oh, and my friends think that 60% is too high. They would settle for less if they got the positives outlined above. Ugh, it all makes me really sad too because this is going to happen and no feminist scholars are going to stop it. Men will walk through fire to get laid and someone somewhere will offer this no matter how outlawed it would be. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]intensely_human 23 points 1 day ago If the robot can change in appearance, I think it can get away with 30% of quality. Sex with the same woman year after year approaches 10% quality level or lower, IMO. The difference in level of arousal between having sex with your wife and having sex with a woman you've just met is incredible.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/60percent.png?resize=526%2C502&ssl=1)
ExpendableOne suggested that we wouldn’t even need to destroy women with sexbots if non-robot women were just nicer to nice guys like (presumably) him.
Toysjoe wonders what the feminists will try to ban next.
ATTENTION FEMINISTS! CODE RED!
THEY KNOW!
(Non-feminists, just ignore that last bit. Nothing to see here, nothing at all.)
HoundDog, meanwhile, has concluded that sexbots are pretty much unbannable, and is quite looking forward to the newly chastened women he thinks the sexbot revolution will create.
Somehow I don’t think that the disappearance of these guys from the dating marketplace is going to make many non-robot women all that sad.
See the rest of the thread for much more of the same, including gratuitous references to Anita Sarkeesian, attacks on non-STEM academic fields, and one dude who seems to have a sexual fetish for C-3PO.
H/T — A bunch of people sent me this one. Thanks!
EDIT: Added a link to the Reddit thread which I somehow had neglected to put in here.
So… if women choose to have sex with more men, then they won’t get to choose to have sex with as many men as they could before they decided to have sex with more men? What?
It’s like saying that if women buy more shoes then they won’t be able to have as many shoes as they did before they started buying shoes. It doesn’t only make no sense, it actually makes negative amounts of sense.
@EJ (The Other One): A friend of a friend uh of a umm friend says hentai Words’ Worth has a scenario like that (the protagonist gets flung in time due to magic going awry, loses his memory and it is not explicitly spelled out, just vaguely suggested it might be, or might not be). Not like I would know anything about that. I hear it has a catgirl in it and life-resuscitating wild sex post-undead attack.
Catalpa
It’s supposed to be the typical “women are the gatekeepers of sex” thing. If women are the pursuers, like men, they will get rejected and learn just how horrible men have it. (My eye roll just now was so powerful, it could be seen from space.)
Tessa:
I’m not sticking my dick in a vacuum! Even my Dyson!
“There is no problem with becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t deal with.” -Douglas Adams (paraphrasing, because I don’t have the book here)
@anon
Ugh. David Pakman has been interviewing antifeminists and supporters of Gamergate so I am not really surprised by this. Even though he and some other “progressive media” claim they are a alternative to mainstream media, they do seem to use a lot of the same tactics: clickbait and drama. I used to follow his videos. I just watch the Hatriot Mail segment now.
About this robot-post. I read many of the comments in the subreddit and holy shit..They have a sad view of their own sex and their relationships to their wives and women in general.
I don’t mind the robots, though. They can have them if they want. I don’t agree that they are a threat in any way. Not to women, not to society.
Does Chef Lebowski believe everything he sees in anime is real? Did you know that Japan has buses which are actual living cats?
http://img.allw.mn/content/2013/09/24124535_6668.jpg
What if it’s a triple-bag easy-glide vac with turbo suction and a self-emptying dustbag?
@tg
Goddamnit. I wish I owned the Chucky movies. They’ll probably be on TV soon anyway.
painteyelash
Oh yeah? What about when:
A) They become self aware, become angry at being mere toys for the amusement of others and revolt?
or B) They become self aware but are so beholden to their programming they see other people in their owner’s life as competition and take… “measures.”
Time traveling incest is a JAPANESE thing? Does nobody read Heinlein anymore?
I’m with frootloopsie. Male sex robots will exist if female sex robots exist. Can’t you just imagine the deer-in-the-headlights freeze of an MRA/PUA once they realize that their negging might just drive a woman to conclude that she’d rather spend time with something that doesn’t insult her, doesn’t have some sort of slimy agenda, and doesn’t bear the risk of overriding her consent?
@vaiyt
Thanks! He’s…really a sad case. The cartoon equivalent of a bunch of fail videos or maybe a few Hell’s Angels. I can see that something went horribly wrong very early on.
If the sexbots serve as sex objects, then that frees up women to be free to be all the other things they could be without the patriarchy constantly oppressing them, it’s a win situation for females surely.
Don’t female sex robots exist now? Indeed, have they not existed for far longer than male sex toys have existed?
@Kat
Oh, no, Hell’s Angels are WAY more productive than he is. They help kids. He pisses on things and plays the bass with his dick. Way different.
These guys don’t think much of most men if they think all most men want out of a woman is automatic sex. Most men I know what what the majority of people want: a good, healthy and loving relationship. Guys that write the kinds of comments like in this blog need to take a long hard look at themselves if they bemoan not being able to get a real woman.
@EJ
Real Dolls are sex dolls. Sometimes they can have voice boxes put in them to say things but they don’t move around and shit like the MRAsshats want.
Well my two observations are that as usual anything these guys don’t like is branded feminist, regardless of it’s actual motivations; and that there again that women have no sexual desires, they just use sex as a means of currency.
There’s an MRA blogger Anglobitch who uses these arguments in favour of prostitution, he is convinced that women oppose prostitution because they fear the competition, he cannot conceive that feminists might want to assist and protect other women from exploitation. He also insists that sex trafficking is a myth made up by feminists. Likewise these redditors cannot conceive that the Campaign Against Sex Robots stems from a concern for the rights of sentient robots, not a desire to spoil their fun.
I’ve mentioned on previous threads my misgivings about self aware robots, and that if they can think for themselves they deserve autonomy. This wouldn’t just apply to sex robots, but also military ones. I’ve seen Blade Runner enough times 😉
When I show this stuff to men in my life, be it friends or colleagues, they laugh at these guys. They can see the pathetic frustration and that reminds me that their hyperbole and beliefs about women and sex are not the majority, the mature or the stable.
-raises hand- Um, personally I fully support these dudes getting all the ‘bots they need to avoid ever interacting with another human female (or any, really) ever again. Just saying.
The only problem I have is AI. Because let’s face it, if they ever achieve actual sentience, electric ladies don’t deserve this shit either…
Anyone else see someone following Warren Mears’ entire story arc here?
I’ve also backed the hell off of sex work discussions in general except in very broad terms because yeaaaahhhh errggh.
I wonder, is any country trying the approach of decriminalizing individual sex work but criminalizing the fuck out of pimping? Maybe to the point of being super stringent about anything looking like a brothel?
I can imagine how it could be problematic, and loopholes to be exploited, but…
(I don’t mean the Swedish approach, ie johns)
Just wanted to thank you, David, for going through the pain of reading those threads and selecting the most relevant (I should just probably say “worst”) comments for us.
I went to the link and tried to read the comments myself, but stop halfway through the first one: too much stupid condensed in very few comments.
I even have a hard time understanting what is meant to be sarcasm and what isn’t, since sarcasm and satire are actually more moderate than the real thing.
It’s hard to believe this is even real. A paper is written with the position that sexbots will add to the objectification of women and children, and how do MRAs interpret it? “These things that exist for me to have sex with are mad because sexbots will be new things for me to have sex with!” Women as sex objects is such a core concept for them that when they encounter a different viewpoint their eyes just slip off the page.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/187110559493811674/