By David Futrelle
There’s a scene in the sci-fi drama Humans in which an angry sexbot hits her breaking point. Disgusted by the demands of a john who wants her to act the part of a scared little girl, she strangles him to death and marches towards the door of the robot brothel.
When the madam — a human — tries to stop her at knifepoint, the now-ex-sexbot grabs the knife from her, pushes her up against the wall, and tells her that “everything your men do to us they want to do to you.”
I was reminded of that chilling line today while reading through posts on MGTOW.com. Some of the regulars, you see, were discussing a recent tabloid article about a sexbot that’s programmed to sometimes say no when she’s “not in the mood.” While several of the commenters balked at the notion — one declaring that there would be “none of those ’empowered’ sex dolls” for him — others were, well, intrigued.
“If my sex doll says no, nobody going to hear it,” someone called uchibenkei noted ominously. “No witnesses.”
“Maybe it would be a turn-on for the sexbot to say no,” added someone called bstoff.
We shall call her the “bitch” and she comes equipped with her very own pink ball-gag and a big jar of Vasaline……
Oh and you can color her hair and put tats and piercings on her face so she looks like a SJW
If you ever wonder what these guys are thinking about when they argue with feminists online, well, this seems like a pretty big hint.
A commenter called MG-ɹǝʍo┴ was less interested in sex than violence.
I never hit a woman, but I kinda like the idea of beating the f~~~ out of a sex doll! The kind of beating no human walks away from!
F~~~ YEA!
Men Going Their Own Way should probably be called Men Who Should Never Be Allowed Anywhere Near Women.
I see the Fahrenheit 451 Mechanical Hound still has some kinks to iron out…
Regarding Silence of the Lambs: I don’t remember now if they have the line from the book about BB not really being transgender in the movie or not, but either way, that doesn’t suddenly make the move unproblematic. Loads of people still think of trans women as “men who wants to be women”, and it’s pretty safe to say that was the majority opinion back when the movie came out. So you think “trans woman”=”man who wants to be a woman”, you see BB who’s a man who wants to be a woman, and so you’re gonna conflate him with trans women in your head, even if they add a line of “he isn’t really one though”. The overall message of a movie cannot be undone by adding a line or two.
An interesting post from Medium today on women’s marches.
https://medium.com/@dinachka82/about-your-poem-1f26a7585a6f
@LindsayIrene
Uh. I’m not a TERF at all (seriously, fuck TERFS), and I hate being referred to as queer. If you want to reclaim the label for yourself that’s fine, but don’t assume that everyone who takes issue with that term is TERF-y.
I think I’ve said before that our grim dark cyberpunk future is going to involve fewer trenchocoated hackers and more black market sexbot repair shops, cos one day someone is going to make a link between mutilated sexbots and murders. In the meantime though, you can always have a read of Mika Model which is a nice short story about a sexbot not quite working as intended.
On the subject of trans people and people who have a very limited view of what female people are allowed to be:
Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development
Girl born with 46XY karyotype turns out to have a mother who also had 46XY but underwent a normal puberty and normal pregnancy.
Wow, that was intense.
So yeah, good to see that this place has a good immune system againand TERFy bullshit.
Re: OP
These guys are all wannabe assaulters. What really sucks is I see guys similar to them in the BDSM scene, only therethey hide behind calling themselves Doms.
And as a Dom it enrages me quite a bit.
I have a friend who was gaslighted into believing that being a good sub meant giving up her right to refuse consent.
this is a good point. same also for other words like the gay f-word and things like “hoe”. if you want to reclaim it’s okay but don’t say someone is not your alley if they don’t want to use queer or which word you want to reclaim. I am sure Terfs stick themself to this issue because it is camouflage for them to hide their transphobia and mean they will look like they have “solidarity” with LGBT+ people.
I am a trans supporting radical feminist. To me being a radical feminist simply means that I believe that patriarchy is the defining force for oppression from which almost all oppression originates and only the end of patriarchy could give us hope for living without oppression (I am also aware that this is NOT going to happen!).
One thing that has really pissed me off about some radfems and other anti trans feminists, such as Julie Bindel and Shelia Jeffreys is the changed attitude to butch lesbians. Previously radfems attacked butch lesbians for apeing men esp if they had relationships with feminine women.
Now that many trans men were previously butch lesbians their take on butch lesbians (who do not have any male identification) has done an about turn – they are sisters now!
Lord, there’s a topic that’ll set me off. Absolutely fair enough if people don’t like the word “queer” and don’t want to use it, but the ridiculous arguments I see that “queer” is uniquely offensive and should never be used… “‘queer’ is a slur in away ‘gay’ has never been!” Have these people never been near a teenage boy?
Does anyone happen to have any thoughts/advice/links about approaching/framing the discussion of, or just mentally chewing over, the issues of biological determinism and gender essentialism without accidentally giving any ground to TERFiness? I’m only acquainted with one trans person in rl (we both go to a social thing, with a lot of people who are gay or bi or ace but afaik most of us there are cis) and obviously I wouldn’t want to impose or do the “I demand you educate me” thing! (here either, come to that).
@Alexis Filth
I see the word “primal” used by those guys a lot on fetlife.
I know I’m late to the discussion but as someone who was around for the “thread of doom” that changed the WHTM landscape I’m sorry to say I’m not surprised this has come up again.
As a non-uterus having woman (invasive cantaloupe sized fibroid) who identifies now as queer and used to take shit for identifying as bi, thanks to all those who responded with outrage, blunt logic, and eloquence to those who try to justify hate and exclusion for trans people in any form.
I’m a woman because I identify as such, not because it’s a checked box on my birth certificate or state ID, although I recognize the privilege of those things when it concerns acceptance of my lived experience. Including my choice to not conform to gender norms.
This whole thread is progress. The commentariat and David are to be commended for heading off another potentially destructive thread and coming together to support each other.
@Kate
My late beloved friend Nan felt the same way about people identifying her as queer and she was in no way a TERF. No one should have a label or identity imposed on them.
@Kate
You’re most definitely free to not want to be called queer, and that desire should absolutely be respected. I have no issues with people wanting to be referred to by the terms that they identify as, and not by ones that they don’t. I have issues with people who demand to impose labels on others who do not identify as such, as has been demonstrated.
If you don’t want to be called queer and do not identify as queer, I respect that, as should everyone else.
The only issue I have is with those who demand that NO ONE identify as queer. Everyone’s identity is personal and trying to control how others identify is shitty and TERF-y. If you’re not one of those folks (and I have no reason to believe that you are), then we’re cool.
@calmdown
that video just made me crack up about 15 times
@ TERF debate
Exactly my point in my previous post. It is actually impossible to define “a woman”. Or “a man”, come to that. You can’t define them by their DNA, their physiology, their behaviour or their appearance. And THAT means that if someone defines themselves as a woman, I’m okay with that. If the greatest biologists in the world can’t come up with a definition I fail to see what makes TERFs so knowledgeable and maybe they could let Harvard researchers know their results.
To be honest, I have never understood why it is such a big deal to some feminists. If someone is living life as a woman, and interacting with people as a woman, then they are experiencing life as a woman. That makes them a woman in my book. Transwomen have a unique perspective to offer feminism, having been on both sides of the fence as it were. Cis feminists should be welcoming that new way of looking at things with open arms. I mean what exactly are we feminists for anyway, if it isn’t to try and create a world where everyone can be equal and people don’t hate each other because of some random body thing like skin colour or genital arrangement?
@all
Silence of the Lambs debate again! We had this before and, while I can’t speak for anyone else, the conclusion I personally came to was: how the movie is perceived outweighs the intentions of the makers. Although I do enjoy both the book and film, I think people have and do take away harmful stuff from the film – I don’t think it’s how it was intended, but, whatever, the road to hell is paved with good intentions etc etc and it’s being used as an excuse to hurt people now so maaaayyybeeee we should just consign it to the dustbin of history.
I think I said everything I wanted to say before – the only thing I want to add to that debate now is a small point – the film was made 27 years ago and is thoroughly outdated medically, so (while it can and should be critically analysed for its attitudes) it’s not going to conform to present-day medical thinking (for whoever it was who picked up the medical point, sorry I’m knackered after typing all that out and I can’t be bothered to scroll back up)
The one thing that worries me about the artificial consciousness question is Ant Country.
Just on the topic of TERFs, I see a lot of the trans folk that I follow on Twitter retweeting and tweeting various interactions they have and what astonishes me is just how vehement and tenacious they are. I mean, I once made the mistake of name-dropping the One Who Must Not Be Named and within minutes she was there in the thread under a new account. These people must have Google Alerts set up for their own names and just check it obsessively to see if somebody’s calling them a TERF.
And the going around photographing trans people for ostensible threats of bodily harm and harassment… seriously, how do you do that and at no point go “Okay, what the hell am I doing?”
D’you know, we’ve proposed that gender has no innate meaning, that it shouldn’t determine anyone’s personality or skills or social role, and that incidentally patriarchal power structures should be rigorously challenged. You’d think anyone calling themselves a gender-critical feminist would look at that and say “yep, you’ve thoroughly criticised gender there, and done some good feminism while you’re at it; top-notch work”, surely?
@Katamount
The sheer, all-consuming hatred TERFs feel for us is one hell of a motivator for them. 🙁
Re artificial intelligence:
Surplus wrote:
But granting that brains aren’t magical, it might still be the case that consciousness requires an organic basis (for reasons that we don’t yet know), and so non-organic computers and robots will never reach consciousness. It might also be the case that there is a path to machine consciousness, but that path looks completely different to anything we do today in AI. In either of those cases, creating artificial intelligence with consciousness is still possible in theory, but waaaaaaaaaaaaay into the future, not something that’s gonna happen in a few centuries time.
Catalpa wrote:
That’s what I thought too. What would we even need AI:s with a consciousness for, except just for the sake of sci fi coolness?
IMO TERFism interacts with feminism a lot like anti-Semitism interacts with socialism – it shifts blame from a privileged ruling class to a less privileged minority, making things safer for the ruling class in the process. Thus the alliances with conservatives and whatnot, and the willingness to work with publicly abusive men. Like with Nazism, where collective anger is a lot safer for the very wealthy when it’s instead aimed at Jews.
So yeah, we probably shouldn’t be calling these people feminists. 🙁
On a happier note, my new roomie’s cat has decided she unabashedly loves me, and just sat down on my foot. Gods I love this cat so much. <3
@ dvarghundspossen
All I know is, that when I build my spaceship, the pod bay doors are just going to be on a latch.
@Alan: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JepKVUym9Fg
Currently we use humans to perform certain types of tasks that machines cannot. Critical thinking type tasks. If the only way to get machines to do those kinds of tasks also had the side effect of making them conscious, I could see it being done. Alternatively, some rich billionaire like Musk could just think it would be neat and decide to do it.
Wow, I’m kind of in awe of the acheivements of modern science, but I don’t think I can really add to that debate. I’m a science cheerleader and a scifi geek, so I’ll just speculate and write stuff that gets actual scientists all grumpy because I know just enough about things to get it all wrong. XD
Cyberpunk and corporate dystopias really appealed to me a few years ago, but then as drone warfare, social media-fueled political corruption, cybercrime, and more recently the death of net neutrality kind of took the escaspist allegory out of the the genre for me. If I want to know what that kind of thing looks like, I watch the news. :/ I mean, when I’m reading fiction I’m doing it for funsies (and I have depression/anxiety/SAD – lately it’s hard for me to lighten up in general) so I go for lighter fare – cyberpunk as a general rule is pretty heavy stuff.
And with that, have looksee at SkyKnit, the neural net that made knitting patterns and the people who knit them in fleshspace. http://aiweirdness.com/post/173096796277/skyknit-when-knitters-teamed-up-with-a-neural