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This book presents a unique, feminist approach to 'sex' dolls and 'sex' robots, taking a critical look at the academic and business narratives that serve to rationalise them. As new forms of pornography (porn robots), this edited volume provides an urgent women's centred critique.
The emergence of 'sex' robots is situated within the wider context of the attack on women's rights and the relentless rise of techno-pornography. As an outgrowth of the industries of prostitution, pornography and child sex abuse, these objects offer new ways to dehumanise women and girls. While support for 'sex' robots is positioned as progressive and emancipatory, the contributors in this volume argue they reduce women to consumable parts. They explore how law, the arts, ethics, economy, politics and culture are interconnected with harmful technological developments.
List of contents
1. Introduction: The end of sex robots - for the dignity of women and girls.- 2. Modern-Day Pygmalions - Reproducing the Patriarchy.- 3. Mapping the uses of 'sex' dolls: pornographic content, doll brothels and the similarities with rape.- 4. Fetishism and the Construction of Male Sexuality.- 5. Playthings and Corpses - Turning Women into Dead Body Objects.- 6. Patriarchal imaginaries beyond the human: 'Sex robots', fetish, and fantasy in the domination and control of women.- 7. Paedophilia, child sex abuse dolls and the male sex right: Challenging justifications for men's sexual access to children and child sexual abuse material.- 8. The Voice of the 'Sex Robot': From peep-show bucket to willing victim - the terrorism of women's speech.- 9. The End of Sex Robots: Porn Robots and Representational Technologies of Women and Girls.
About the author
Kathleen Richardson is Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media at De Montfort University. She is author of
An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines (2015) and
Challenging Sociality? An Anthropology of Autism, Attachment and Robots (2018). In 2015 she launched the Campaign Against Porn Robots (formerly the Campaign Against Sex Robots) to draw attention to the ethical harms of normalising pornographic technologies of women and girls.
Charlotta Odlind is a freelance writer, coach and women's rights campaigner based in Brussels, Belgium. She has a BA (Hons) in European Studies with French and Spanish and an MA in International Relations. She has worked on child protection issues at Save the Children Brussels and volunteered with VSO for a year, advising on advocacy and communications strategies in a women's rights NGO in Kano, Nigeria..
Report
"This is an interesting read for lawmakers, philosophers, writers, and scholars who are working in the area of human rights. Having sex dolls/robots as an alternative to real/physical relations is an interesting argument that makes the book worth reading." (Lalit Saxena, Computing Reviews, March 21, 2024)
