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.
Scott:
A couple things, first of all, I really don’t like the whole “access to women” thing. the Manosphere guys use that a lot, and it always makes women’s bodies seem like “territory” they have a right to invade. But anyway, as for the rest, just how long do you think the men are going to spend with their sex bots? They’ll presumably go to work, or the store, or many places outside of their homes. And assuming women won’t all be at home with their own sexbots, they will have to interact with real live women. Can you be sure that these types of guys, when they have a perfectly obedient and malleable fake woman at home, will not want or maybe expect real women to be the same? This is part of the issue in this whole hypothetical argument. Seriously, look at how modern mainstream porn has affected how these kinds of guys view women and how they should behave.
The Japanese and Korean governments seem to believe it’s the Scandinavians and French who have the reproductive culture working in their societies. Japan may cater to men’s fantasies but the result is a plummeting fertility rate. Women go their own way and keep their careers.
“Since the early 2000s France has consistently topped European rankings (in birth rates). After two decades of decline, in the 1970s-80s, the fertility rate started picking up again in the late 1990s. Since then the country has registered scores just short of the mythical threshold of 2.1 children per woman, which would secure a steady population.”
Yet there is nothing mysterious about the approach that is working in both France and Scandinavia. It combines the idea of a modern family based on gender equality and powerful government policies. “Nowadays, both ingredients are needed to sustain the population.”
“A woman entering into a relationship (in Japan) must also accept marriage, obey her husband, have a child, stop working after it is born and make room for her ageing in-laws. It’s a case of all or nothing.” “In Japan the traditional family package clearly has a dramatic impact on fertility, with fewer than 1.4 births per woman.”
In France the package is more flexible: one doesn’t have to get married or have children or stop working following childbirth. Norms are more open and families more diverse.””The principle of gender equality and the necessary corollary of women being free to work are the key factors in this family model that emerged at the end of the 20th century. Yet in the 1960s-70s advocates of traditional family values claimed that the birthrate would be the first thing to suffer from this trend. Fifty years on it seems they were mistaken: fertility in Europe is higher in countries where women go out to work, lower in those where they generally stay at home. “Women’s freedom of decision is essential to this system,”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/21/france-population-europe-fertility-rate
Lurker, commenter, you guys know the drill.
I’m sorry, but all I can think of is this:
I don’t have an issue with these “sex robots” as it keeps these creepster dudes away from flesh and blood women. I also have no issue with prostitution (as long as it’s 100% consensual) or porn. The issue I have with prostitution is that where I live (Thailand), is that it’s not consensual and is borne of institutionalized sexism and classism. Some guys (not the majority, thankfully!) come to Thailand to capitalize on the poverty here and brag that they can “buy any Thai woman they want”. If sex robots will keep them home, happy and not exploiting desperate women who are forced into prostitution, that’s fantastic.
Sexbots are only a threat to women if all women had to offer was sex. Since this is not true, who cares about sexbots? MRAs have really built up this fantasy that women will be weeping on the roadsides if sexbots become popular. They forget that women can buy sexbots too.
One of the things that keeps popping up and starts to irk me more and more is how they (well, not just the mras) always talk about Prostitution as if there is no actual human being involved in sexwork. Prostitution takes away the sex Monopoly from women? Only if prostitutes aren’t women. They make them even more into objects than the rest of us. Obviously that’s a thing mras and puas and redpillers would do, because they are the ultimate shitweasels, and resent that at least some women have the option to NOT be objects, but i’ve seen it elsewhere too, liberals going on about how prostitution will reduce the rate of rapes occuring, because… mysterious reasons, but when you think it through, what it boils down to, is saying that sexworkers can’t be violated, because they are prostitutes and don’t count like ‘normal’ women. That they will do and have to put up with anything and anyone for money. They are the sacrifice to male entitlement and violence so the rest of us can be safe. It’s so wrong and skeevy and needs to stop.
That said, i look forward to the fit the redpillers will throw when they’ve spent thousands of dollars on their robots and try to rub it into our faces, just to realise that at best no one cares and at worst people will laugh at them and then go on to lead happy lifes (with lots of kitties) .
Bring it on.
Women have had sexbots since victorian times. And let’s be honest, ladies — they are the best. Every time I use mine I become convinced that every technological advance leading up to the invention of the illustrious vibrator has now come to its natural completion, and human advancement might as well just stop right there. Because vibrators. Vibrators you guys.
And yet, though we have literally the best sex toy ever conceived sitting conveniently in our bedside tables, and have done since 1869, the human race has persevered. We have continued to have emotionally fulfilling relationships. We have continued to have children when we chose, and enjoyed their company. We have continued to write and dream and eat spaghetti and go to the park and have whole lives like whole humans because THE WORLD DOES NOT BEGIN AND END WITH YOUR BONERS, MRAs.
Christ, they’re dumb.
All I can say to non-mysoginists, is ENJOY DIVORCE COURT, BECAUSE YOU WILL PROBABLY END UP THERE.
*sigh* this is for the typo police: Misogynists!