By J. DeVoy
It’s coming!
As far back as 2007, Marc blogged about the coming of full artificial intimacy. The topic has been hotly debated in some spheres, and predicted to be the great equalizer for men who choose not to date the women available to them. In just a few short years, the technology needed for these electric mistresses has improved drastically.
At In Mala Fide, Ferdinand Bardamu discusses this recent piece in h+ Magazine. It turns out that the technology’s promise is better than ever.
Remember the most convulsive, brain-ripping climax you ever had? The one that left you with “I could die happy now” satiety? Sexbots will electrocute our flesh with climaxes twice as gigantic because they’ll be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, andtheir anatomy will feature sexplosive devices.
Of course, this idea is hardly new. But these robots’ first real-life steps are being made out of the lab, with some trepidation, all over the world.
Cinema has already depicted very desirable stars as Sexbots — a “mecha gigilo” (Jude Law in “A.I.”) and a “pleasure model” (Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner). Now tech is getting close to producing mainstream sexbots. “First Android” in Germany offers male & female models that breathe, are warm, and have heartbeats that thump louder with sex. In Toronto, inventor Le Trung has fashioned “Aiko” — he claims she’s not for sex, but she can have an orgasm, her name translates as “love child” and her measurements are 32″ 23″ 33″.
This poses a dilemma for even the biggest gender egalitarians. Given the wide variety of sex toys that exist for women, one would assume there’d be more acceptance of men achieving parity in this arena. Still, the specter of the double standard looms large. Some men fear that women will act to stop research and development of all sexbot technology to retain their control in the Matrix-like sexual market. Men with the current equivalent of sexbots, Real Dolls, are typecast as moribund losers incapable of human interaction. It doesn’t help that a documentary about their owners fed this impression. Recent news about one man’s marriage to a 2D anime character isn’t removing the stigma, either.
In contrast, women broadcast their sexuality and are rewarded for doing so. For some women, advertising their sexual appetite through their conspicuous ownership and use of various devices may be an effective mating strategy. And surely every heterosexual male has become acquainted with the shrieking misery thrill of his wife, girlfriend or significant other’s sex toy party escapades. Based on conversations with past hosts, the woman who has her friends over can reap substantial rewards in terms of products, cash and other incentives.
Men have their own depravity in the form of bachelor parties…but can they really compare to the liberation women enjoy? Can anyone envision a modern America where men celebrate their sexual preferences and genitalia as freely as women do? This has nothing to do with law, but the norms and standards governing day-to-day interactions — “policy” in law school speak — would be different if men advertised their preferences the same way as women.
When that day comes, there will be a market for these robots outside the cloistered basements of single men.
