It had to be a spoof, didn’t it? Billed as an article lifted from the sober Washington Post, the piece I was reading online about some nutty professor campaigning to ban humans from having sex with robots must surely have been lifted from The Onion. Even the clinical psychologist David Ley, who posted the piece on the research-oriented Sexnet forum, said he hoped it was a parody.
But the reference to checkable names of academics and their universities suggested otherwise. First and foremost there was Kathleen Richardson, a senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. She was said to have presented a paper titled “The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots,” at Ethicomp, “a forum to discuss ethical issues around computers” held in Leicester last month.
I looked it up. And there it was, the full text, including this remarkable direct quote:
“I propose that extending relations of prostitution into machines is neither ethical, nor is it safe. If anything the development of sex robots will further reinforce relations of power that do not recognise both parties as human subjects.”
Er, excuse me, but if one of the parties is a robot, doesn’t that sort of suggest they are not, you know, human? So would a robot really be all that bothered about “relations of power”? Reading a bit further, though, I came to the startling revelation that Richardson was also worried about robot children. Somehow, I must have missed the news that not only can robots have sex, they can also “give birth” to baby robots.
But why would this be such a surprise after the news in June that a robot couple had married in Japan? It was a white wedding, so it would be polite to assume the bride was a virgin. Thus it could be at least a few months yet before the first “happy event” is announced, if robot gestation is anything like ours.
The Tokyo wedding, between groom “Frois” and bride “Yukirin” had every appearance of a grand occasion, celebrating an uncontroversial match between two entirely respectable and well-loved robots.
But Richardson, it is clear, wants to take us into a “darker” scenario. Prostitution! Her worry is that men paying for sex with robots – perhaps through buying the robot outright as a sex slave – will treat them as mere things, regardless of the robot’s feelings, needs and rights. She is not alone, either. An academic conference in Malaysia on “Love and Sex with Robots”, due to take place next month, was abruptly cancelled just over a week ago after the authorities declared it illegal to have sex with robots.
Muslim Malaysia, it may be supposed, would react with knee-jerk antagonism to any sexual unorthodoxy. Dr Richardson, by contrast, must at least be credited with giving long and hard thought to her specialist branch of ethics. Her real anxiety is that giving humans permission to do whatever they want to robots that look and sound like humans, with nothing ruled out, no matter how degrading or violent, will encourage bad attitudes towards real humans, including children.
This is a valid issue. In dealing with it, I think it will be helpful to clarify our thinking about robots, especially as regards artificial intelligence and sentience. The most obvious and important point is that we are suckers for believing in both. The popularity of sci-fi books and movies featuring sophisticated humanoids with super-human brains and even quasi-human emotions, shows how we love to anthropomorphize. The most significant example here, perhaps, is that of the film A.I., in which a robot child is programmed to love its owner, a mother whose own son is desperately ill and (in effect) in a coma. The boy robot, given the name David (Haley Joel Osment), is seen as a substitute to comfort her until her own child recovers. When he does, David becomes dispensable; rejected and cast out, he suffers ceaseless agonies of bewilderment and longing. For anyone with a heart it’s a heart-breaking film, not least on account of a compelling performance by the immensely lovable young Osment.
If we ever manage to create robots who really do feel emotions as deeply as David, or physical pain, then of course how we treat them (assuming we remain in charge) will become a moral question. But it is important not to get too far ahead of ourselves. Stories and drama are great vehicles for the imagination, enabling us to contemplate ethical issues in a far more vivid and engaging way than is to be found in philosophy books, with their brain-torturingly complex chains of argument. But whereas the philosophers often use their own imaginative tools, called thought experiments, to sharpen their judgments and reasoning, what we often take from science fiction is simply amazement and entertainment. Rather than using it to make tough ethical choices in our own world, we prefer the escapism of exotic scenarios and often distant futures.
Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with Erik Billing, of the University of Skövde in Sweden, who, with Kathleen Richardson, has jointly floated the idea of a campaign against sex robots. Billing, a senior lecturer in informatics (the study of information) is quoted in the Washington Post story as having said that films such as this year’s Ex Machina, with very advanced robots, ask big questions about what it will mean when machines becomes sentient. But these big questions can distract from the robots we already have, and how we interact with them.
However, I come to very different conclusions from Billing or Richardson, and Heretic TOC will now time travel back to the future to show why. The year is 1987 and a futurist film is made called Cherry 2000, which is set thirty years in the future – in other words, almost now. With astonishing accuracy, the film predicts that society has become increasingly rule-bound, requiring contracts drawn up by lawyers prior to sexual activity, with the result that actual sex is on the decline. But there have also been immense technical developments, fostering hypersexual expression in novel ways.
Remind you of anything? The rise of internet porn, perhaps, alongside the ever-tighter rules that feminist moral entrepreneurs insist are necessary to ensure sexual consent is valid?
Most precisely prescient by far, though, is Cherry 2000’s prediction that the hot new craze of 2017 would be sex androids that routinely malfunction during intercourse. A news report last month, meanwhile, saw Californian company RealDoll announcing plans to sell an “artificially intelligent”, talking, animatronic rubber sex doll by – wait for it – 2017.
Now, the important thing here, the really real thing, is the malfunctioning. To understand this we can park the Tardis and meet sex robot Roxxxy (triple x and likes to get her rocks off, geddit?), who exists right now and could be yours for as little as $6,995, or nearer $75,000 for “custom designs” (at that price it really ought to include child versions, boy and girl), from TrueCompanion, a company that has been in the sex doll business for a good many years and now touts its latest lady of the night as the world’s first sex robot.
Roxxxy, we are promised in a promotional video, has a range of “personalities”: you can choose whichever you find sexiest or most companionable. Touch her shoulder and she responds, saying “That is so exciting”. Fingering her knickers in the right place elicits enthusiasm expressed more urgently. She can even, if the video is to be believed, give a pretty mean blow job, with very realistic head movements. It’s hard to be sure how effective this would be, though, as we only see from behind and Roxxxy’s “partner” is left to the imagination.
Selling us Roxxxy’s charms in the video – or pimping her, as a hostile commentator might put it – is company chief executive Douglas Hines, who seems a nice guy as he gently takes us through Roxxxy’s features, focusing quite a bit on her companionate qualities. He seems keen to present her as a person, not a thing. There is nothing in the demo that would encourage Roxxxy’s owner to regard her as a “slut”, or someone to be abused.
For me, though, it’s a bit of a giveaway that Hines wears a white lab coat, just like the guys in those naff 1960s washing powder ads, doing their best to look like research scientists, offering housewives chemical wizardry in the pursuit of “whiter than white” whites. Every new detergent promised to get your whites whiter than the last, regardless of earlier promises by the same company that perfection had already been achieved.
It looks a bit like that with Hines, whose name suggests he might have moved on from flogging baked beans and whose sex “robot” spiel is really just an exercise in parlaying an overgrown talking Barbie doll into an intelligent, sensate being. So when I speak of malfunctioning being at the heart of things, what I really mean is that today’s “robots” do not truly function as robots at all, and nor will we see such a development anytime soon.
This does not mean they are worthless. It just means Richardson’s hyperventilating ejaculations against them are premature. There are more urgent things to worry about than hurting robots’ feelings and treating them unethically.
Having read Richardson’s paper, I can tell you that all it amounts to is a fancy dress version of tired old feminist clichés about men “objectifying” women. While it is right to be concerned that everyone is treated with respect, it is grossly unethical to put the utterly bogus needs of non-existent robots above the needs of real people.
David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, spelt out these needs in an interview with the BBC:
“There is an increasing number of people who find it difficult to form relationships and this will fill a void. It is not demeaning to women any more than vibrators are demeaning.”
There is unquestionably a lot of loneliness and frustration in an era when men are under increasing pressure to match up to feminist ideals and more people are living alone. And of course kind people like many of us here have no opportunity to be kind with kids.
Comments made online in response to a CNBC story about sex robots are very telling:
- It’s about time! Women have wanted less and less to do with men over the years so let’s give them what they want. Who needs em?!
- Cherry 2000 is the solution to having a feminist nutjob in your home… heck, for the most part they dont want the men, they openly say so, and they openly shame and hate them (that is until they are done screwing around and need someone to pay their bills for them)
- Feminists should be glad of sex robots: sexual harassment will hit an historical low, approaching zero! 🙂 It will be a magic moment for all poor wimminz! 🙂
Misogynistic? If so, it’s hard to say the feminazis haven’t been well and truly asking for this sort of backlash. They keep loading men up with guilt and self-doubt but don’t give a shit about their problems. Their relentless pushing for women’s ever greater power and dominance is a cruel creed. Let me reiterate, it privileges the dogma of “objectification” over the lives of real people.
Oh, and before anyone objects that prostitutes are real people, yes, they certainly are, and they resent snooty feminists trying to force them out of sex work. Against this bullying, Amnesty International recently backed prostitutes’ rights.
Hines has said he feels robots (well, dolls) like Roxxxy help to reduce sex trafficking, sexual and domestic abuse. And there is academic support for this view, including from Ronald Arkin, professor of mobile robotics at Georgia Institute of Technology, who has proposed that child sex robots could be used in the treatment of paedophilia.
Furthermore, the idea that child robots could have therapeutic value is very much in line with extensive research findings showing that the ready availability of legal child pornography results in sexual assault offences against children falling, not rising.
Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center For Sex And Society, at the University of Hawaii, has found that in those countries where child porn has been legal (Japan, Denmark, Czech Republic), child sex offences decreased. He and his colleagues suggested that if computer generated child porn were to be made legally available it could provide a non-abusive, socially acceptable, way of reducing sex offences against children. He also noted findings by Swiss investigators that viewing child pornography does not appear to be a risk factor for future sex offenses (Endrass, et al., 2009).
A similar plan by brain researcher Dick Swaab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN) has even found support from the Dutch anti-paedophile group, Stopkinderpornonu (Stop-child-pornography-now). Spokesman Chris Hölsken went so far as to describe it as a really good idea.
“… because we’re fighting to stop child pornography and child abuse. That means that every form and every method should be studied carefully. If fake pornographic images, such as in cartoons, can lead to stopping child abuse, we support that.”
So if computer generated child porn is capable of producing benign effects, why not child sex robots? If Kathleen Richardson really wants to be ethical, she will take these findings into account.
Anti-touch child education with a robot:
A petition against deep fake CP: https://link.researcher-app.com/Hs1D
according to a new survey, doll-fuckers are the most despised category of law-abiding MAPs:
(Concerning people’s attitudes towards different kinds of MAP SOs one may read here and here.)
a new study on correlation porn-recidivism:
a new study “Exploring the Ownership of Child-Like Sex Dolls” and its correlation with offending:
https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2022.2114839
“Feminist advocacy and the push for sex work policy change”
a new text on prostitutes’ rights: https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2022.2111219
on the same topic:
The feminist idea of objectification is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: people should not be just used. You can use them only in the case when your activity, f.i. sexual activity, is not just by means of them but also for their sake.
Categorical imperative approves commercial sex but rejects altruism: you should not be used contrary to your own sake — at least you should hope for experience, or fame, or victory, or “treasures in heaven”. Or death — like one woman from Chuck Palanik’s novel that tried gang rape as suicide. I’m not sure whether the “Breaking the Waves” behavior can be considered altruistic because Beth McNeil hoped for something from her self-sacrifice.
Objectificaion can be approved from consequentialist view. The psychological phenomenon of “functional authonomy” (used in Gordon Allport’s and Alexis Leontiev’s theories) can make the egoist consumer care and love. Using porn, a boy may fall in love with a porn-actress, a woman that married someone for money can start love her man, and so on. Henry Miller thought that intra-human relations would be impossible without mere sex. If it is forbidden to care about someone for the sake of sex one has no chance to develop sincere caring. Objectification can make people love each other.
>If it is forbidden to care about someone for the sake of sex one has no chance to develop sincere caring. Objectification can make people love each other.
Yes, for men, at least, there is seldom “Love at first sight”. There is lots of “Lust at first sight” instead. And love, if it comes, comes later.
Here is a fictional example: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/webpub/english/compclass/Public%20Domain%20Readings/Chekhov%20The%20Lady%20with%20the%20Dog.pdf
[…] I commended it as an interesting piece, and noted that Heretic TOC had blogged in similar vein last October. This piece, as I don’t think I have mentioned before, was taken up by several of the tabloids in […]
This is the reason that I have to create a sexual religion, this is what is killing us, seriously, I try to understand the pedophiles, I swear, but I hate your sexual liberalism, you can not defend pedohebephilia and oppose the rest?
All of you not understand either that hebephilia (between people of flesh and blood) is the only correct sexuality? (maybe pedophilia would also correct, but still have to study it more thoroughly), everything else are perversions and aberrations, as harmful traces in the mind, which they are caused by these acts and the real causes of unnatural sexual tastes.
The hebephilia (and pedophilia, for that matter) are not just “sexual freedom” are sexualities, the only ones who are correct, they do not produce “mind traces”, do not incite to murder, jealousy, slavery and barbarism. Pornography and prostitution (as shown on the post) are aberrations that litter our species, and all because of the perverse sexualities as teleiophilia.
I am objetophile, I have sexual attraction to the dolls to physically resemble girls and young women, ok? that’s not bad, but what if robots that impersonate the real puber, this is disastrous for the mind, remember that humans have the hebephilia as “standard” sexuality, millions of years of evolution thrown away? we have enough with the damn teleiophilia, that an trace harmful as this carrying off us the brink of collapse, now fucking robots, or worse, adult-like robots? come now, is enough.
Again, this is science not religion, evolution designed us to be hebephiles, and perhaps pedophiles as complementary, to have sexual and romantic relationships with pubertal people, boys or girls, no matter, everything else is product of the harmful traces, just millions of years of evolution thrown into the toilet, with joy, with adults, animals and robots now, come on, fuck everything.
I have mixed feelings about Hallowe’en, because in my lifetime I’ve seen it spread outside the US and obliterate local customs in other countries. Also, Hallowe’en is a rough time for people in the US who are on the sex offenders register. I liked this 2013 article by sociology professor Emily Horowitz: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emilyhorowitz/manufacturing-fear-hallow_b_4135793.html . Though imagine the disappointment of the trick-or-treating child given fresh fruit rather than candy by a kind neighbour!
Popular children’s chant (or was in my day): Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care: I’ll pull down your underwear!
I forgot to mention something obvious in my long comment below. There is a demographic that is known for having intense emotional and physical relationships with inanimate objects that resemble humans, or animals. It’s our very favourite demographic: children! Many young children can’t get to sleep without cuddling their favourite doll or teddy. Many make their first forays into masturbation by humping that favourite doll or teddy — I would guess that for simple anatomical reasons more girls than boys do this. And many people keep that favourite doll or teddy in pride of place on a shelf for the rest of their lives, because though they grew up, they couldn’t bear to part with the toy that was their faithful friend.
I’ve noticed that young children, whose empathy for other sentient beings is often still a bit hit-or-miss, sometimes go through a phase of feeling intense empathy for inanimate objects. In George and Sam, her wonderful book about raising her two autistic sons, Charlotte Moore writes that at age four her neurotypical son “cried when I threw crusts to the hens, ‘because we’ll never see that poor toast any more’ “. At one point I had trouble doing my sums because when you carry a one you eventually have to cross it out so you don’t forget you’ve already used it, and I felt so sorry for those poor numbers I was crossing out. In many people this tendency never quite disappears. A 2007 AP-AOL Autos poll found that 44% of women and 30% of men said they had at some point thought of their car as having a personality of its own.
Older girls whose parents are willing and able to spend a good chunk of cash may find themselves in thrall to, for instance, the truly vast American Girl empire. Each American Girl doll represents an imagined nine-year-old from US history and comes with a set of short novels designed to inculcate little girls with awareness of history, appreciation of diversity, liberal feminist attitudes and what I feel sure the writers would call a can-do, self-confident spirit. A dedicated Wiki has more information on these dolls than anyone could ever want, so we’d better figure there are lots of adult fans. The dolls all have detailed little sets of historical clothes and furniture that can be bought for eye-watering prices. Lately the company has been ‘archiving’ the historical dolls, replacing them with a rather more insipid line of contemporary dolls representing middle-class white kids who attend fancy ballet and gymnastics academies, each linked to her own straight-to-DVD movie. There’s a magazine, computer games, a set of apps. Parents who fork over an even larger chunk of cash can have a doll made with the same hair, skin and eye colour as their daughter, get their daughter human-sized versions of the doll clothes, or have their daughter’s, or occasionally their son’s, birthday celebrated at American Girl headquarters in New York City, where dolls will be given pride of place at the table and can have their hair done and their ears pierced. ‘Injured’ dolls go to ‘doll hospital’. Which brings us back to the RealDoll owners who instead of saying their doll’s joints are getting loose say that ‘she’ is ‘sick’ and needs to go to the doctor. They’re behaving rather like children, but in a sexual way, and of course we all know children aren’t sexual. That’s another possible explanation for the ‘creepy’ reaction.
Some time ago I read an article on the RealDoll repair shop. The link is now inactive but I remember from it that there are male RealDolls and while they’re bought mostly by men, some women do buy them. There are even a few opposite-sex couples who buy RealDolls to enjoy together! You can get optional pubic hair stuck on your RealDoll, which suggests that some people remain partial to adult vulvas in their natural, rather than depilated, state. I also remember that the repairman said he got some dolls back in terrible shape, as though they had been beaten up on. So perhaps they are serving as an outlet for some people with seriously sadistic inclinations.
While the Tenga, a masturbation sleeve for males that also sells very well, is not modelled on a body part, you can get a Fleshlight in the shape of the lips, anus or vulva of this or that porn actor or actress. You’d think that would be considered the ultimate in objectification: screwing an isolated body part that’s not even attached to a facsimile of a person. But RealDolls seem to freak everybody out far more. The universal Metafilter reaction, from both sexes, is “CREEPY!” One guy said they made him feel sick to his stomach. Why?
Well, a masturbation sleeve is kind of the for-men equivalent of a vibrator, and many women use vibrators and some can’t orgasm without one, so the masturbation sleeve is easier to understand. Then, of course, RealDolls fall into the uncanny valley for many, though clearly far from all, of us. But also, a RealDoll, especially one who talks, is supposed to be the total package. She represents a fantasy of a whole human being whose breasts are very large yet do not hang down of their own weight and who praises to the skies the sexual prowess of anyone who simply inserts a penis into one of her orifices. There is no real person like that, but the fantasy is everywhere in porn, and women who are considered defective for falling short of the fantasy understandably find that a bit of a drag. Now, even worse, here’s the fantasy not just made visible and audible, as in porn, but made (fake) flesh, complete with her gravity-defying breasts and her “That feels so exciting” and a total lack of any wants or needs of her own.
Of course this is not a new worry. In the 1975 film Stepford Wives, based on a 1972 novel by Ira Levin, a dweeby, not-much-to-look-at suburban middle manager has a stunningly attractive wife who one day is overheard telling him how wonderful he is at sex: “You’re the king, Frank! You’re the master, Frank!” It turns out that the town’s ostensibly loving husbands have been having their wives murdered one by one and replaced by lookalike happy-housewife robots who do whatever the men say. At least one has bigger breasts than the person she is modelled on.
Then there’s Roald Dahl’s 1959 short story The Landlady . A nice lady of forty-five or fifty runs a boarding house and seems to have a fondness for tall, handsome youths of seventeen with perfect skin and teeth. Turns out she also has a fondness for poisoning them, stuffing them and keeping them around indefinitely. It plays off the same fear of having your personhood so totally ignored, by someone who seems quite normal but is in fact deeply deranged, that you are actually killed off to be replaced with an object. The landlady in Dahl’s story keeps getting young men’s names wrong, because she doesn’t care about who they are, only about what they are. We just love to scare ourselves with stories like that. Appropriate for Hallowe’en, I suppose!
If I’d had time to get approval from “A” I would have run this very informative and interesting longer comment as a guest blog!
Oh! Thank you! If there’s anything you want to run in future, just go ahead and run it even if you don’t have time to get my approval. I trust you won’t use my comments for nefarious purposes! 🙂
>If there’s anything you want to run in future, just go ahead and run it
Thanks. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t feel outraged if I had just gone ahead, but when I have asked permission from one or two other guest bloggers they have said something like “Oh, dear, I just knocked it together as a quick comment. For a proper blog I’d better tweak it and improve it.”
The results, on such occasions, have been excellent, but at the price of some delay. With your Hallowe’en point at the end, I thought it best to catch the moment!
Agreed. (Unless someone has a gun to your head, in which case it’s obvious that it’s not consensual!) Where have you seen that claimed, by the way? Would be interested to read.
I’ve heard it claimed in numerous instances over the past two and a half decades whenever the consent issue has been raised, both in regards to mutually consensual intergenerational relationships and accusations of date rape on college campuses, where it’s been claimed by some parties that enthusiastic responses to advances are not necessarily an indication of consent, because in their view, if someone is scared to say “no” they will convincingly fake enthusiasm, smiles, and displays of romantic affection. I believe that is total nonsense, of course; if someone is not into advances, and are afraid or reluctant to say “no,” they will make their lack of compliance clear in passive ways that are obvious indicators.
These claims are made by individuals who want to make the issue of consent so nebulous that just about any court ruling can be made on the basis of sentiment over evidence, and so that a guilty verdict can be given on the “erring on the side of caution” basis. I think this has been a quite common argument that has been advanced by antis and organized misandrists alike for a few decades now, and is hardly confined to a single or a few notable instances only.
Have you seen the consent and tea video?
Nope, but it sounds like I should! Do you have a link handy?
Here it is: https://vimeo.com/126553913
Ipce has a very comprehensive list of studies on the effects of pornography https://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/01aug10a_studies.htm . Strong general consensus: does not increase rates of rape. One caveat: The kind of porn we have around now, twenty years and more after most of these studies were conducted, is by and large harder and nastier than the kind that was around then. I would be very surprised, nonetheless, if it were increasing rates of rape. Indeed, quite likely the easy availability of violent porn is serving as a safety valve for people with inclinations that way. I would not be entirely surprised, however, if it were increasing negative and ill-informed attitudes about women and sex. The obvious thing to do is talk about the stuff in schools, as they’re starting to do in Denmark, for instance: talk about what’s realistic and what isn’t and why. As someone once said, trying to learn how to have sex by watching porn is like trying to learn how to drive by watching Vin Diesel movies. This blanket of silence is leaving kids and young adults to do just that.
Years ago Tom wrote in Paedophilia: The Radical Case: “In a monitored and legitimate erotica industry, it would be possible to enforce a minimum wage, and children capable of acting, as well as of an elementary erotic response, might become valued stars in a whole new genre of film, which has its present nearest equivalent in the Tatum O’Neal/Jodie Foster/Brooke Shields phenomenon.” I can report that this phenomenon is still going strong, most recently in the form of Chloë Moretz. As a still-prepubescent eleven-year-old, she acted in The Poker House, about two sisters growing up in a brothel. At fourteen she did Hick, in which wore very skimpy outfits, waved a gun around, asked older men if they thought she was pretty, ran away from home (well, the character did) and was placed in various dangerous situations clearly meant to be titillating. Strikingly like Brooke Shields, then: Shields did Pretty Baby at eleven and The Blue Lagoon at fourteen. But Moretz went further, acting in Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2 as a pint-sized assassin given to colourful language and in The Equalizer as a sex worker. By the time of The Equalizer she was sixteen and attracting the attention of much-older male fans, as did sixteen-year-olds Olivia Hussey and Jenny Agutter in the 60s and 70s respectively.
Other documentaries that may be of interest: Secrets of the Living Dolls, about men who put on all-over rubber suits in order to look like female dolls, and My Fake Baby, “exploring the extraordinary world of ‘re-borns’ – lifelike baby dolls, complete with beating hearts and human hair – and the women who buy them”.
Nonce more for the Adulto-file Tom?
Don’t forget BIG PEDO Dolls for the millions of SeX-keen straight & LBGT Teleophiles! With empathy for future VICTIM-SURVIVORS by neglect. Billions of left over Right & Left hands feeling used, dirty, and deserted by fuckin’ Knobheads & Cunts shaggin’ soppy sili-CON BUSTY-ble overBLOWN UP roBOTS front & back roBOTtoms.
Plus, where’s the BIG or small, Butch, Macho, or Queen roBOTS front or back BUMS fer LBGT Cunts & Knobheads?
While, marginalized or infantilized Gerontophiles, Zoophiles & Necrophiles please form a long snake-oil salesman’s line to the Boa CONstricter’s menagerie & morgue in the Dead Centre of SeX-Toy Town?
For those who may not be aware, this definitely has implications for all of you, and also for me. READ.
http://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/free-speech/extremism-disruption-orders-menace-free-speech
Now being fabricated by the UK Fascist Fraud Market Right wing, root cause of the 4 decades ongoing KidSeX Inquisition & much more.
Is their latest neo-Orwellian extremely serious offence of, “TRUTH CRIME”!
Quote pre-Orwell True Brit Philospher Bertrand Russell (d.1970 age 97), “Fascism always lies just beneath the surface of Britain and would readily find a home here in the right conditions.”
In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought”.
I know people, housing and anti-border activist types, hard leftists to be sure but gentle people doing good work, who feel sure that they’re on the domestic extremism list due to being videotaped at demonstrations. They’re probably right. We’ll see what happens with that.
When I read you (TOC) writing in this particular vein, about feminazis deserving a backlash, I tend to lose my temper. Then I walk up and down and breathe deeply and remind myself that you have been through far more shit than I ever have. You win the Opression Olympics. Not being snarky. You’ve won the right to express yourself like this. Well, we all have the right to express ourselves however we please, but you know what I mean. I hope.
Nothing will stop me believing in affirmative consent, though. I’ve used this example before but I think it’s a decent example, so I’ll use it again. Suppose you’re showing me your nice new bicycle. When you’re distracted for a moment, I hop on it and pedal off. You think there must surely be a misunderstanding. When you realise that I actually intend to disappear on the thing, you’re so flabbergasted that it’s not till I’m out of earshot that you shout, “Hey, stop, what are you doing?” I’ve still stolen your bike. I will be presumed innocent until proven guilty of stealing your bike. You have to show I did it. I don’t have to show I didn’t. But I can’t defend myself by saying that you were showing me the bike and you know I like bikes a lot and you didn’t say I couldn’t have it, so how was I supposed to know you didn’t want me to? It won’t be presumed that you are, unless you clearly indicate otherwise, in a default state of consent to people going off with your property. And most people do know perfectly well that this applies to sex, too, and behave accordingly. But some don’t seem to, like the guy in Lautmann’s study who said of a seven-year-old “She didn’t resist, didn’t scream” while all the others were talking about how their young partners participated in the sex and enjoyed themselves. I do think ‘enthusiastic consent’, which gets floated sometimes as a possible standard, is taking it way too far, though.
That-all being said…
I looked into RealDolls some years ago and watched a documentary on them (Guys and Dolls). I think the progression to robot has been gradual, not a sudden thing. A deluxe model already comes with a vibrating vagina, if I recall correctly. I think a lot of women will have an immediate, instinctive fear reaction to them because, well, they resemble corpses a bit, don’t they? And we most of us — I certainly do — have memories of being followed about and put in fear by someone telling us we’d look good moaning on the end of his cock, and of that little flickering image in the back of our heads of our own bodies chopped up in a Dumpster somewhere.
Of course this initial reaction doesn’t excuse failure to engage the brain. The guys in the documentary are just what you’d expect: lonely, socially inept, a bit loony. They have genuine imaginary relationships with the dolls and treat them with an oddly touching tenderness. One took his doll hang-gliding! After all, if you just want a high-quality fake vagina, there’s the Fleshlight. It’s a whole lot cheaper. If you’re going to invest in an actual fake person, it’s likely because you want an actual fake relationship.
And you know what? Women use battery-powered sex robots All. The. Time. It’s just that they’re known as vibrators.
Hi, A! I was waiting for you to join the fray here.
One thing regarding consent that you mentioned. I fully agree that a girl (or boy) who simply does not resist or does not explicitly say “no” to advances is not necessarily consenting. There is such a thing as passive resistance, and I think every person of any age or preference should realize that if you’re making advances on someone, and they simply sit or stand there passively without responding in any way, they are very clearly not into it, and are either reluctant or possibly afraid to actively resist or say “no.” Should you ask them if they are into it, and they reply with a non-committal or ambiguous response like, “I guess,” or “kinda…”, or “I don’t know,” then you must always take that as NO. Or, properly translated, “I don’t want to upset you, so I’m not going to use a strong word like ‘no,’ but I’m really not into this.” If someone is not into you, they will make this clear even if they are too afraid to say “no” or actively resist by pushing you away.
What I won’t believe is claims that anyone who is genuinely not into an advance will fake an enthusiastic response. If someone who is not into a certain person’s advances fails to say “no” out of fear, you can rest assured that he (or she) will resist in passive fashion, and make it clear to the person they are not into it in this manner. It is then the responsibility of the initiator to recognize these signs for what they are, cease the advances immediately, and ask their partner if they are okay and to apologize for making unwanted advances.
And you know what? Women use battery-powered sex robots All. The. Time. It’s just that they’re known as vibrators.
The thing is, phallic-based automatons are more or less accepted by the moralizing brigade who pretends to be sex-positive because female sexuality is considered passive. The idea of a woman just using a man as an “object” for mere sexual gratification and nothing else is absent from our cultural mindset; only males can be guilty of the sin called objectification of the opposite sex.
Btw, I thought it was rather interesting how you denoted emphasis of three words by separating each of them into would normally be a separate sentence, so as to give the effect of implying a specific phonetic exaggeration of each word in the sentence.
“What I won’t believe is claims that anyone who is genuinely not into an advance will fake an enthusiastic response.”
Agreed. (Unless someone has a gun to your head, in which case it’s obvious that it’s not consensual!) Where have you seen that claimed, by the way? Would be interested to read.
Have you seen the consent and tea video?
I can’t claim originality for All. The. Time. It’s making the rounds on the Internet and I thought it was funny.
Have apologised to TOC for being a bit unpleasant there.
I said: “Paedophilia: The Radical Case did an enormous amount for me when I really needed it. I feel sure that just having it on the Internet is saving lives.”
Hats off to TOC.
And I can’t spell oppression. Good Lord.
>Have apologised to TOC
Let me say again publicly, following private contact: No problem. It’s good to let rip occasionally. There’s a place for the spontaneous response, including honest anger.
>I much prefer his ‘tougher’ films like ‘Empire of the Sun’, starring the excellent and (then) handsome Christian Bale.
Well, I agree this was a wonderful film, much better than A.I. I thought the big problem with A.I., though, was that like today’s all defensive Anglophone peds it rambled on for an eternity, seeming not to know where it was heading or why.
Fascinating article, and partially agreeable opinion.
Robots, like dolls I guess, represent a kind of projection. Where robots may depart from dolls is in the extent they ever gain consciousness and autonomy. We’re still some way off that yet.
The Swedish research does however raise some pertinent discussion points. Japan is very into dolls, animation, toys, and every conceivable projection of childhood. Western observers have however critiqued Japanese pop culture for displaying chauvinistic and sadistic characteristics. In my opinion, this has to be taken in context. There is nothing sadistic about Volks dolls, Sailor Moon, Naruto, or Kyary Kyary Pamyu for example. So even if some elements cater to tastes we may find aberrant , I say let’s look at the whole picture of pop culture in Japan and it’s delightful fixation with the ephemeral charms of childhood; of which, the cherry blossom tree (Sakura) is its most potent emblem.
Japan is at the leading edge in making robots. The latest one I seen a few months ago was an eerily realistic mirror image of it’s human creator. So even if the motor and cognitive skills are not quite there yet in comparison to human capabilities, the visuals are neverthless very convincing – even more realistic than a Madame Tussaud’s waxworks.
One of the positive aspects of Japanese culture that Kind people should celebrate is the fact that there is no stigma associated with adult men and women collecting doll and doll-associated trinkets and clothing. In Japan there are dedicated clubs that hold meetings, and exclusive shops that sell everything to keep your doll ‘happy’. Personally I love Harajuka and Kawaii pop-culture and music. In the land of the rising sun, having an interest in these things is not seen as weird, unhealthy, or pathological. Over here.. they try their hardest to shunt you into assessment and ‘support’-land, without good cause. Perhaps the export of J-pop culture and fashion such as cosplay and gothic-lolita will help reverse that.
Dolls in some ways are no different from other interests such as art and music; Mediums for expressing a variety of things meaningful to the everyday human experience, from rage to affection. Although the discussion point presented is about ‘sex-robots’, dolls more generally, provide comfort and role-modelling outlets. That’s perfectly legitimate.
Perhaps the more austere monotheistic cultures throughout history would consider dolls a form of idolatry. From Calvinism to ISIS, just about anything and everything that gives simple pleasure in life has been disapproved of. So while I am not completely indifferent to every perceptive point and theory made in the name of feminism, we do well to consider historic precedents in censorship and regulation that are fuelled by moral fervour and cultural hegemony. As human beings we have this supremely anthropomorphic capacity, and dolls or paintings or music or a multitude of other things, are simply expressions and projections of that.
Let me also just make the point that It is philosophically incorrect to argue dolls are male-objectifications of femaleness. Or that sex workers are by default of their very existence, objects and victims. That is a political doctrine, not a factual reality. A very arrogant statement at that, demeaning to many sex workers, male and female, who do not take kindly to be viewed as “pity dolls.”
I’ve been thinking about Michael Jackson the past few days. To the best of my knowledge, evidence of Michael being sexually active is sketchy at best (Tom?), rather like Nureyev and Fontaine, I feel he channelled a lot of his sexual energy into his dancing. The legacy of which is some of the most electrically-charged performances in pop. He seduced the hearts of children and charmed them to the heights of ecstasy and adoration. He possessed this kind of non-threatening pre-sexual androgyny which is very attractive to young girls. He was Kind.
Similarly, there is no reliable record of Lewis Carroll being sexually active in the conventional sense, throughout the course of his lifetime. He was ostensibly a celibate asexual bachelor. Yet cast a Freudian telescope down the rabbit hole or up the chimney where Bill the Lizard was ejected, then survey his photography and read the struggles and joys evident in his letters, and you get a sense of the (now) strictly forbidden love that drove him. Regardless, his legacy has been an overwhelmingly positive one for children and adults. Without his Kindness, there would have been no Alice – and Children’s literature would still have been in the moralistic monotone dark ages.
So, from dolls to dancing, there are passions in people all over the world right at this minute. Many may not even be conscious of why they do what they do, others simply too scared to admit it. These individuals are drawn by what they feel… and they draw and they paint and they play, write, and film. Surely the future of Kindness lies in a new generation of celebration, loving-creativity, pathos and passion – and finding a way through their body of work to confess this is why I do what I do. You like my work, you like me, well here’s what makes me what I am. A population living in tyranny and secrecy, silenced by a prevailing narrative of cruel distortions, half-truths, and outright lies. Countering that isn’t simply about blunt political activism, it’s about whether or not the contribution Kinder people make, can reach out and touch the rest of humanity; children and adults, female and male, because it is this which will form the basis of a kinder position in society for Kind people. It’s my conviction that there are many people already making these contributions.
Remember, LGBT acceptance came about in part through positive happy imagery like Pride, and also positive much-loved role-models in entertainment and in our day to day lives. Follow positive examples.
Michael did it. Charles did it. Be Kind.
Lots of interesting points here, Front Row, developed persuasively into a sustained theme. Thanks.
>To the best of my knowledge, evidence of Michael being sexually active is sketchy at best (Tom?), rather like Nureyev and Fontaine, I feel he channelled a lot of his sexual energy into his dancing.
I could hardly disagree that he channelled sexual energy into his dancing. His trademark “I’m too horny for my pants” crotch-grab made a very public point of it — a gesture much copied by kids, no doubt to the consternation of some parents. This was in my view a deliberately subversive act on Michael’s part and I imagine he was thrilled by its success.
As for “evidence of Michael being sexually active is sketchy”, it depends what is to be counted as evidence. In my opinion, having studied and written about all the publicly available “relevant material”, let’s call it, there is a huge mountain of circumstantial evidence, some of it strong, some of it weak, that he was sexually attracted to pubescent and prepubescent, boys, but not girls. There is also a lot of strong circumstantial evidence that he had sexual relationships at different times, typically lasting for up to a year or more, with a number of named boys.
As for evidence going as far as proof that would stand up in a court of law, it is hard to say for certain because there were cases in which complainants were (provenly) bought off with multi-million dollar payments. You do not, in my view, pay that kind of money unless you think the evidence against you is strong enough to gain a conviction.
However, if you find this unconvincing, you might be persuaded by a perusal of my book (under the name “Carl Toms”), Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons, which I see is today listed as currently available on Amazon UK for as little as £797.45 second hand or £4,001.44 new!!! (These prices not set by me, I hasten to add, nor do I get a penny from any such sales). Alternatively, it is available new from Dangerous Books for a rather more affordable £16.99.
An interesting article, though I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy a child sex robot.
The exhilaration of love, intimacy and desire is so much more than the sum of the sensory experiences your brain receives – it’s the meaning one’s mind gives those inputs that really ignites the mix and gives it meaning.
I think I’d rather have a real, average, little girl-friend who’s friendly and funny, with whom I have an entirely celibate relationship, than a stunning robot one who is ready to cater to my every whim.
Anyway Richardson’s wish to ban child sex robots is just further evidence that the real motivation of the legislature, and the mindset which drives it, is not child protection but the elimination of child sexuality and those adults who appreciate and approve of it.
…
On a different topic (maybe this should go under “Time to say R.I.P. to V.I.P. ‘paedo scandal’?”) has anyone seen the Spoof BBC4 ‘Documentary’ written by Lauren Laverne – “Paedo Britannia”?
The description on youtube says “The BBC tells the public what it wants to hear in a neat historical sound-bite…”.
https://youtu.be/H14i8-kIPg8
I’m not sure what to make of it: is it subverting the hysteria or pandering to it? I do find it quite amusing, though.
So this is the future? Having sex with child robots? In case it was made possible and also extremely human-like sex experience, I don’t really think that this would even become legal. What I clearly see is that the mindset today is “I don’t think this is right, I don’t care how truthful your arguments are and my answer is no!” This is it for adults/children relationships and this will be the same for humans/child-robots as well.
By the way, this was a great reading, Thanks Tom!
I presume, YoungBL, that you are indeed a young BL. I just hope you are not too daunted by a future in which an idealistic vision of change for the better looks impossible and even attempts at “realistic” compromise seem unrealistic.
My response to that would be that we can only guess what will happen. Life is full of surprises. Trends do not always continue unbroken.
>By the way, this was a great reading, Thanks Tom!
My pleasure!
I know you have a lot of background to speak of ‘Life is full of surprises’ (no sarcasm here!). I wish I wasn’t daunted about “…a future in which an idealistic vision of change for the better looks impossible”. I really know that life is full of surprises but these surprises seem to happen more often when it comes to subjects such as abortion, capitalism, etc. I hope I’m wrong but my humble mind can only see that from a certain time up to now, society is even surer that they will not accept us as ordinary folks but sick helpless people.
When I get to read a few papers about “how paedophilia isn’t harmful for the children if there’s consent” or something, I also begin to think very positive but if I look around I see the opposite. At the time I was reading your book, I felt a sense of peace inside, people fighting for BL acceptance, BLs coming out every now and then, serious organizations, etc. It really seemed that something would change. We’re in 2015, I’m not sure if PIE and NAMBLA do things other than advocating on the internet.
At that time – which was a bit “open-to-discussion” time – even a meeting was almost impossible to take place due to security issues mainly. Today this seems unlikely (I’m not taking into consideration those closed meetings made in academic institutes hidden from 99% of the world). So comparing the 80’s to 2015 I see no progress but repression.
I don’t know exactly how paedophilia is about in Britain, but you may know that some other countries have even parallel “laws” for paedos which could mean death penalty. Was it always like this before? I don’t know but it couldn’t be worse 20 years back in time than now.
You’re very right Tom, I’m young and I do hope I’m wrong because this thought about pedophilia I have is sort of frustrating. I do think the mindset will change but not any sooner. I’m still waiting for the day that pedophiles from all over the world will come out and say “So what!”. This is a surprise I don’t expect from life.
Sorry for my crude-maybe-inaccurate youngBL thoughts. Perhaps you could change my mind 😉
I wish I could find grounds for saying you are wrong, Young BL, but I cannot. Your impressions are well founded. I believe you are right that NAMBLA is now pretty much entirely online; as for PIE, it was disbanded over 30 years ago following a second legal assault on its leadership, some years after I had retired from the fray in order to rebuild what remained of my career.
What I really had in mind when I said “Life is full of surprises” was life the way we encounter it as individuals. In my case, for instance, although the political scene has steadily become nastier from a nice perspective, in personal terms I feel I am thriving to a degree that seems completely at odds with the gloomy background.
Yes, I am angry and bitterly disappointed at the way things have gone; but these feelings have energised me. By contrast, I see mainstream folk who would appear to have every reason to feel happy and fulfilled after a conventional career, love life, family, etc, lived without public dishonour, who nevertheless end up passive, unengaged, bored, overweight, depressed, unhealthy and dying before their time.
So all I am saying, I guess, is don’t despair. On a personal level things may turn out fine, despite the odds. Even if you have the bad luck to be nice in a nasty world, you may have the good luck of being someone who can handle it.
Our lives have never been easy eh. But there’s a bright side, we see the beauty of the world on a smile of a child. They can’t see it.
The pseudo-morality of feminists who just happen to be prudes is truly eye-watering. I’d actually be much more comfortable if feminists just separated into their constituent “Women who want more sex (e.g. than men)” and “Women who think sex is icky”. That at least would be honest.
One thing to bear in mind is that it really depends what you mean by sex. Penis-in-vagina intercourse gets most men off, but not most women. And if a woman is seriously not into it her vaginal muscles will clamp down hard — this is involuntary — and it will cause her a lot of pain. I suspect that this is behind a lot of the rhetoric about “rape is about violence, power and control, not sex”. Obviously that’s not true in many cases, but I suspect that it gets said in part because for the person being raped the rape will often feel like a painful assault pure and simple, not like anything sexual.
The main problem, I think, with the likes of Richardson is the same thing that causes so many pundits to insist that virtual CP and mere possession of actual imagery one had nothing to do with producing should remain illegal: the insistence of placing moralism over that of pragmatism.
I’ve always argued that at its core, the war on all aspects of the overt expression of child sexuality, and the idea of adults admiring it “in that way,” is a moralistic issue. It’s not truly all about issues of “safety” or “preventing child abuse”. It’s actually more about protecting conceptions of child propriety than preventing actual forms of demonstrable harm; and accordingly, it’s about extending the definition of “abuse” to controlling and penalizing certain types of thoughts. The paradigm of the Innocent Child is an enduring relict of the Victorian era, and the idea of saying it’s “okay” to allow any outlet for children (and younger adolescents) expressing a sexual side and adults being allowed to respond to it with sexual yearning & thoughts is the secular equivalent of people arguing with a group of conservative Christians that Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary can be interpreted in a sexual way. It’s thoroughly offensive to the collective cultural sensibilities, and as such these individuals can care less about the pragmatic benefits that legalizing certain aspects of it may entail.
In regards to sex dolls (I won’t call them robots either), the arguments of Richardson are, as you surmised, a veiled way of protesting the sexual “abuse” of the image of a woman, which these dolls represent to her. Such a thing shouldn’t be a problem as long as the construct remains fully non-sentient, and I think a truly progressive society should demand cogent degrees of good evidence that demonstrable abuse of real women will likely result from the use of such constructs for fantasy scenarios of any sort before the system should even consider criminalizing their use. I think we need to take a long, hard look at the rules and attitudes of our society and legal system if the equivalent of molesting a fully non-sentient Betsy Wetsy doll is cause for wasting resources to throw people – ostensibly men – in prison.
I certainly agree with your critique of the “feminazi” attitudes, Tom, though I’m sure you know that I do not consider “radical feminism” to be a legitimate form of feminism at all, but rather a case of politically organized misandrists, heterophobes, and sexual control freaks hi-jacking traditional feminism and co-opting the word to achieve social legitimacy amongst the more bleeding heart and PC factions of the Left, and even to gain some common ground with the powerful moralizing elements of the Right. As you noted, they are all about seeking power and dominance via the demonization of men and (oftentimes) heterosexual relations, rather than seeking equality and empowerment of women alongside a progressive opposition to any type of system that bequeaths or encourages the formation of any form of hierarchy. It’s a shame that like the fundie Christians, the loudness of their voices tend to drown out the reasonable individuals whose cause or institution they have hi-jacked.
Splendid last paragraph! Agree 100%!
Great post. Agreed with all of it except one small thing. You said anyone with a heart would find ‘A.I.’ heart-breaking, but I found it very sentimental. It’s Spielberg in ‘mushy’ mode. I much prefer his ‘tougher’ films like ‘Empire of the Sun’, starring the excellent and (then) handsome Christian Bale.
>[A.I. is] Spielberg in ‘mushy’ mode.
Guess I’m just a sucker for mushy. Unusually for me, though, this is one response on which I do not find myself in a tiny minority!
>I much prefer his ‘tougher’ films like ‘Empire of the Sun’, starring the excellent and (then) handsome Christian Bale.
Well, I agree this was a wonderful film, much better than A.I. I thought the big problem with A.I., though, was that it rambled on for an eternity, seeming not to know where it was heading or why.
I can recommend giving A.I. another try. It’s actually not mushy, but but deeply haunting. It’s immensely enjoyable visually and musically and constantly thought-provoking. And HJO gives his best performance ever.
Yes, if I gave it another try, I might enjoy it more, it’s true. Also, I realise that one person’s ‘sentimental’ is another’s ‘deeply affecting’.