Abstract
Mimicking pornographic stereotypes of femininity, current trends in sex robotics reinforce out-of-date gender stereotypes to the extreme. Feminism has taken this as an invitation to reject the very idea of robot sex as a sexist expression of toxic masculinity. Both proponents and adversaries of sex robots, however, built their arguments on questionable ontological premises. Arguing from a new materialist, sex positive, queer perspective, the article proposes a realignment of sex robotics towards post gender forms and materialities. Liberating sex robots from the obligation to imitate the human body as faithfully as possible, may also serve as an antidote to the eeriness and revulsion many people experience when having to deal with humanoid – but not quite human – replicants.
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Notes
- 1.
See the webpage of www.truecompanion.com, according to their own estimate provider of Roxxxy, “the world’s first sex robot”. There has been some controversy about whether or not Roxxxy actually can be called a robot. Whereas Roxxxy still receives considerable media coverage, many scholars agree that the underlying marketing campaign is ultimately a case of premature swaggering—if not of outright fraud (see Levy 2013).
- 2.
I use the term in the sense of an extension of subjectivities and agency beyond the human species (see Braidotti 2013).
- 3.
Compare e.g. the images on www.realbotix.com or www.truecompanion.com.
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Kubes, T. (2019). Bypassing the Uncanny Valley: Sex Robots and Robot Sex Beyond Mimicry. In: Loh, J., Coeckelbergh, M. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Technology. Techno:Phil – Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Technikphilosophie, vol 2. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04967-4_4
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