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.
Oops, I think I posted that last comment on the wrong story.
@Ariblester
I hope you’re not implying what it looks like you are.
@ cindy:
I think by “men,” Ariblester meant the “men claiming to be “feminist allies” who had a very clearly defined meaning for “person” in their heads, which didn’t include women” in the theoretical example.
@Moon_custafer:
I remember that PSA, yes.
I’ve long maintained that a lot of biology is akin to the old joke about the Russian dancing bear. “All applaud the great bear that dances at the circus. They do not applaud because it dances very well; they applaud because it is amazing it manages to dance at all.” Huge stretches of biochemistry are this incredibly complex semi-random collection of pick-up sticks where hundreds and thousands of things lean on each other for support. Sure, sometimes removing one could still cause the entire structure to collapse, but it’s usually going to take a long time collapsing because of all the partial fallbacks along the way.
Not to mention the constant back-and-forth wars of toxins and immunities. People forget that things like nicotine and caffeine exist at least in part because those compounds are often lethal to insects or animals that would otherwise eat the plant. Now we cultivate plants specifically for those ‘toxic’ compounds.
@Alexis Filth:
I think being a good dom requires a high level of empathy and understanding, because you have to be able to feel where the limits are even if the limits change during the session due to other events. There’s a lot of trust involved, and you have to make sure to keep that.
@Bakunin
I’ve already had to do so once already though 🙁 The people in question came around but yeah, it’s exhausting.
I still think Shylock or Svengali analogies are appropriate TBH. Not least because (from my own experience) the tone and methods of transmisogyny are very similar to anti-Semitism – stirring up public anger by framing the targets as predators. The things people say about trans women now, they still sometimes say about Jews too.
@various re the BDSM scene
Yeah, I’ve gotten to be extremely wary of people who ID as doms or tops, even as someone who is not involved in BDSM myself. Most I’ve met have been emotionally abusive, and allowed their controlling tendencies to take hold outside the bedroom and even outside relationships. And that’s just people who were openly queer.
I’ve seen the end state in long term emotional abuse, and I’ve come close to living it. When I see even traces of that dynamic, I go on high alert.
@Cindy
Absolutely not.
I am emphatically not espousing even the slightest bit of support for TERFs, and I apologize that my statement could be interpreted as such.
(Thanks to @Moon_custafer for identifying the ambiguity in my statement.)
I only mean to note that the hypothetical that Surplus proposed, intended to get TERFs to rethink their dogmatism, would probably be summarily rejected by them without much consideration, since the arguments that TERFs use to delegitimize transwomen (i.e. “it is men intruding into women’s spaces”) would also apply to the hypothetical “male ‘feminist allies’” in Surplus’ proposal.
On the topic of modeling human brains, scientists have mapped the brain of a fruit fly. Not modeled, just mapped. It takes up 12 terabytes.
Honestly, I want full, sapient AI to exist for three reasons.
1) Each new way of thinking is a new lens to look at the world. We’ve eliminated, one way or the other, all the non-Homo sapiens sapiens intelligences on this planet, and this means we have vastly reduced our potential perspective.
2) The universe is a vast, cold, and lonely place, one that humans may not survive; I’m hoping AI can live on past our fleshy bodies.
3) The most selfish one: I kind of want to help raise someone to maturity, but I know my genes are utter bullshit that shouldn’t be passed on, and normal reproduction isn’t an option for my partners and me, and I can barely remember to take care of my own fucking body, much less that of a helpless child; but I am pretty good at socializing over a computer screen, so raising someone who exists on a computer would be the ideal option for us.
@Jenora
Yep, it’s important to know what your sub is feeling and to be able to read cues.
I use the “stoplight” system of safewords, & while I won’t beat myself up over a yellow getting tossed out, if a Red gets called that would mean I didn’t “read the room” right.
I have the advantage of being in a long term healthy marriage that the BDSM stuff kind of evolved in, rather than having a relationship that started that way or a short term thing, so I generally know what he likes & wants just as well as he does.
@Cyborgette agreed. There’s ahuge contingent of people who have never learned what they’re doing and aren’t interested in being “good Doms” so much as just being able to do as they please.
Sometimes our D/s stuff gets a little playful carry over into regular life (in a flirty, teasing way) but far too many people who claim that life just want to be controlling garbage humans.
Last night I found a film on Youtube of El Fantástico Mundo Del Doctor Coppelius (1966), a version of the ballet Coppelia. It’s even weirder to watch after all this talk about sexbots.
@Alexis Filth @Cyborgette
I have an inclination towards BDSM which I have not explored because of this.
I did join Fetlife, but found it terrifying – I wanted to meet a friend to explore my submissive side with, but a lot of the Doms I saw were people who seemed to want someone to straight-up abuse. I was only interested in physical kink (restraint, rope play, and pain), but even though I explicitly stated that in my profile, I still got a lot of emails from guys who wanted to humiliate me or were into rape fantasies. I am a child sex abuse survivor and I am absolutely not into rape play. And I said that (I’m not daft enough to say I’m a survivor on my profile, but I mentioned I was not interested in even a pretence at non-consent)
But the requests kept coming.
I was also sincerely disturbed by some of the daddy/little posts I saw (I am absolutely not criticising anyone’s fetish here, people should have the right to do what they like consensually. I’m talking about posts which were basically thinly disguised apologias/appeals for paedophilia).
So anyway. My personal kinks remain unexplored haha
@Violet
Ugh yeah. I especially hate this because kinks are, like, often one of the ways abuse survivors do psychological damage control and healing. Taking advantage of that to abuse them further is incredibly fucked up – and now I think of it, I wonder if the guys just don’t care, or if the idea of that betrayal actually gives them a thrill.
Also,
(CW: child sexual abuse)
I’m not at all surprised about some of them being pedos. Patriarchy quietly normalizes the shit of of child sexual abuse. I’ve seen men talk about checking out their nieces and daughters like it was nothing, and over the years I’ve gotten more and more convinced that a lot of male protectionism is about sexual jealousy.
I’m not gonna say all men are trash, but men as a general demographic? Are fucking trash.
Back in my single days (early ’90s) I was quite sexually adventuresome. I met and hit it off with several men who practiced D/s, and I found that I had a facility for domming. It has occurred to me in the years since that being a good dom is like being a good Dungeon Master in D&D – you have to be prepared to put a lot of work into someone else having a good time, and much of your own enjoyment is derived from knowing that the sub is thoroughly enjoying the situation. In both cases, playing the role solely for your own gratification is a jerk move and should rightly result in you not having anyone to play with.
@Robert:
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yes, that sounds like a good way of describing it.
Having done both, it very much is.
@Alexis Filth
I also notice a troubling one is breeders from my own personal experiences they tend to be the most violent(own experiences)
I am an off and on fetlife user(no more info then that) and yes a lot of the users are ..creepy and that is not just regulated to men (personal experience)
As for primals I know one who calls himself that but he’s super laid back (we’re friends So it could be friend bias)
@Violet the Vile, Moonbat Screech Junky
Same. All I explored was online and there I found nothing but creeps. Although to be honest looking for a non-kink partner was equally creep-filled. Even though I eventually met someone there, most of my online dating experiences were very negative, and I think I got off easy.
Pz Myers has written quite a few times about the concept of uploading conciousness and some of the zealots that adhere to the idea like a religion of sorts
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/08/06/reconstructing-a-brain/
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/14/and-everyone-gets-a-robot-pony/