Sex With Robots Was Never the Point
Whenever I mention that I write about sex and technology, I wind up in a conversation about sex robots. Over the past few years, digital assistants like Siri and Alexa have become fixtures in our daily lives, acclimating many of us to the idea of intimacy with a virtual intelligence. And as movies and TV shows like Her, Ex Machina, and, of course, Westworld have explored what an intimate relationship with a robot might look like, it has become easier to believe that it’s only a matter of time until robot sex is de rigueur.
But as commentators eagerly launch into debates about the ethics of it all, they tend to neglect some important points. For starters, the technology that would make realistic humanoid droid lovers a reality is still out of reach. Perhaps more significant, the sci-fi canon depicting future relationships with robotic lovers was never meant to be taken literally.
Although recent advances in robotics and A.I. can make digitally enhanced sex feel like a particularly timely topic, the reality is that writers have been exploring what a future filled with nonhuman sex partners might look like for quite some time — well over a century, in fact. In stories like R.U.R. and The Clockwork Man, both published in 1923, robots weren’t intended to be literal machines, but rather a metaphor for societal change. Like, for instance, the liberation of women.
In the early days of sci-fi writing, stories about sex with robots were “a way to think of women’s rights and what it would mean to have sex with a woman who wasn’t your slave or your property or wasn’t some kind of possession,” says Annalee Newitz, a science journalist and author of Autonomous, explaining that The Clockwork Man, the novel that invented the concept of a cyborg, is also deeply concerned with how men might adapt to a world filled with suffragettes. “If you can’t imagine what a liberated woman looks like, you can just imagine a robot” — and use that artificial being as a way to explore what futuristic relationships might look like, she explains.
Society has evolved past those early visions of robot sex — and so, too, have the anxieties and cultural shifts that we’re exploring through stories of tech-augmented sex. “A lot of portrayals that we’re seeing nowadays reflect this deep-seated anxiety and uncertainty about the future,” says Jeph Jacques, creator of the webcomic Questionable Content. “When people are worried about what having sex with a robot means for humanity, they’re really worried about what people no longer having jobs means, because it’s all automated.”
“We’re scared that technology is going to make sex less meaningful or less rewarding emotionally or spiritually, that it’s going to take us away from the fundamentals of sex,” says Charlie Jane Anders, author of City in the Middle of the Night. She adds that, for some of us, these tropes aren’t a manifestation of our anxieties, but a form of wish fulfillment. “Sex is kinda scary. Everybody is scared we’re not good at it, or that we’re not going to be able to do it at all, or that there will be some negative consequence, like pregnancy or STDs. The idea of removing all of that from the equation is tantalizing,” and stories that replace the human elements of sex with something more predictable, more technological, can offer us a fantasy of sex that feels under our control.
But as we’re panicking over — or eagerly anticipating — the supposedly imminent arrival of sex that feels more mechanical than human, many of us overlook many of the other predictions sci-fi authors have made about sex. Equally as prevalent as these visions of technologically augmented sexual experiences are stories of futures where sex is less monogamous, more queer, and organized in ways that are wildly different than the exclusive heterosexual partnerships that many of us are taught to see as the default. The sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land envisions future sex as a polyamorous free-for-all unburdened from the restraints of monogamous marriage. Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood imagines humans blending with a race of aliens to form blended families led by three parents. Numerous books (including Joanna Russ’ The Female Man and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Ethan of Athos) have offered visions of worlds where queerness, rather than heterosexuality, is the default.
Why do these stories fail to dominate mainstream conversation the same way that male-catering, gadget-heavy sex does?
“I think the gadgets don’t threaten anybody,” says Meg Elison, author of The Road to Nowhere series. Stories about sex robots may be a way to work through our anxieties about what the future has in store for us, and they’re a safe way to explore that fear, because these fantasy technologies are firmly lodged in the distant future or explicitly impossible.
But stories that envision a reworking of the social order, a shake-up of what sorts of sex is considered socially acceptable? These narratives truly have the power to shape the future of sex.
“Science fiction was very influential on me understanding that queerness was an option,” says Alex White, author of A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy. “Gender-bending stories are the reason why I knew, in a small town in Alabama growing up, that I was not alone.”
In their writing, White incorporates queer themes and narratives to help other readers feel similarly seen. And the potential sci-fi has to make people with nonnormative sexualities and gender identities feel seen, understood, and capable of envisioning a future for themselves is far more worthwhile than fantasies about when we’ll all be boning robots. It’s through these stories that sci-fi truly has the power to help us envision — and create — a better future.
Sex With Robots Was Never the Point
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