So Breitbart.com ran an article about sexbots and the horrifying implications for America and for women (you can Google it if you want—I’m not linking to the crap). Unsurprisingly for a right-wing website, it’s a heaping boatload of undead sexist cliches:
Men only do stuff because they want to impress women and get laid (an idea that’s been around for years, as I noted in my first USC post). With sexbots a guaranteed reality within 50 years, men will no longer need to impress women to get laid. And men are sick and tired of feminism, which is already driving them away from women in droves. So with sexbots making it possible for men to sleep with a hot woman without impressing her, they’ll stop doing anything but partying. All science and civilization will come to a halt because women have never contributed anything to it, and are incapable of contributing to it. So America will collapse and it’s all women’s fault. And they’ll be soooooo sad because now they won’t be able to find a man (just like if they give away the milk)—and apparently there will be no sexbots for women because that would kind of spoil the male writer’s fantasy.
Plus a lot of extra bilge such as the pay gap is a myth, feminism bad for women, Camilla Paglia has said something intelligent (if you’re using Paglia to argue from authority you’re screwed before you start).
Even taken on its own terms, the article (by Milo Yiannopoulos) is illogical. He cites pyramids as an example of the kind of thing only built to impress women, which ignores that pyramids were built by the kings of Egypt. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the pharaohs didn’t have trouble finding mates. And quite simply, men do things for reasons other than getting laid, particularly the geniuses Yiannopoulos is fretting about. Read a biographies of a genius and you’ll usually find they’re driven to apply their talent in ways the rest of us aren’t; they don’t crack problems because they want to impress people (or at least not primarily), they crack problems because they want them solved. To say nothing of Oscar Wilde (talented and gay), or brilliant women (Madame Curie, Grace Hopper, black millionaire CJ Walker).
And even if it were true, why blame the women? If men are sitting on their butts, playing videogames and having sex with machines to the point America falls apart, shouldn’t the author be giving guys a good stiff talking to? But as I’ve noted before (the first link in the post, or this one), it’s never the slacker guys who get criticized, it’s always the women.
As for the idea it’s all the fault of feminism is funny too. Men have fantasized about fembots since 1938 (Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy”) and Fritz Leiber was writing about sex robots in 1961 (The Silver Eggheads). And even without robots, men have always been able to find prostitutes, so I have my doubts it’ll change that much (unless the automatons are phenomenally cheap).
As for men dropping out of the marriage mart, I’ve read plenty of posts by some “men going their own way”, courtesy of We Hunted the Mammoth (here’s some discussion of misogynist posts about sexbots) and I don’t think any women will ever be desperate enough to miss them.
“Even taken on its own terms, the article (by Milo Yiannopoulos) is illogical. He cites pyramids as an example of the kind of thing only built to impress women, which ignores that pyramids were built by the kings of Egypt. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the pharaohs didn’t have trouble finding mates.”
Meh I’d estimate that a 10 acre stone block pyramid reaching a few hundred feet into the air wets more panties then a Ferrari today. The argument is solid.
Today, maybe, but arguing pharaohs built pyramids to get laid? Tissue paper.
It’s one status symbol out of many =)
Thank you for taking this on. The whole thing about sexbots was driving me nuts. And how it was all women’s faults for being nagging feminists. The nerve of us. (Of course, then I asked my husband if he wanted to replace me with a robot, and his first answer was, “What kind?” I hit him.)
Have you considered that while he is asking “What kind?” in jest and you’re returning the favor with a small slap maybe it’s done by both because there is an inkling of truth to the matter?
I know Heather. She’s irreplaceable.
Fraser beat me to it 😉 That is the only possible response to that comment.
Haha sorry, didn’t mean to get personal, it was a general statement.
Sexbots wouldn’t even be an issue in the news/bloggosphere right now if angsty feminists hadn’t started to rally for a ban.
(Because that’s what ‘feminism’ is all about these days – obsessing over and trying to ban things that men do, even if it is by themselves in their own home and not affecting anyone else.)
So if “the whole thing about sexbots was driving [you] nuts”, you can’t blame conservative columnists alone for that.
Angry feminists? We’ve got a proposal by two bioethicists hardly even a fringe movement. And while feminists do try to ban some things that men do, those are things including rape, sexual harassment, etc. So no, banning stuff men do by themselves is not what feminism “is all about.”
And from a cursory survey it seems there’s been far more outcry from MRAs over their right to sexbots than calls for bans.
Sometimes I think the political world could properly be divided, not into left and right, but into people with a sense of humor and people without. That aside, you’re foolish to ignore the underlying warning here. I said the same to the feminist proponents of Atheism Plus back in the day (to steal a phrase “you can Google it if you want—I’m not linking to the crap”), and was likewise mocked that myself and the people being driven away wouldn’t be missed. Well years later their forums are a barren wasteland, they have no presence on twitter (unless you count satire accounts there to ridicule them), and they are remembered by precisely no one other than the slymepit (again, a group that exists almost exclusively to laugh at them).
Are you suggesting it was meant as satire? Given the views expressed (feminism bad, if women don’t get back in the home We R Doomed, etc.) are quite standard, I disagree.
And I’m not ignoring the underlying “warning,” I’m responding to it. Even if it is a load of codswallop.
“He cites pyramids as an example of the kind of thing only built to impress women, which ignores that pyramids were built by the kings of Egypt.”
This sentence makes me chuckle
This guy Milo just wants to outrage progressives/feminists/the entire planet, don’t take the bs he writes too seriously…You’re giving him the attention he craves. He perfectly knows he doesn’t make sense, he just wants to upset people, and my bet is he also is perfectly aware of how stupid his fans are. Just read the comments on his article, it’s a bunch of depressed, lonely, hateful, entitled nerds, mad at the entire female population because they don’t get to fuck them as they please.
I get this argument a lot when I write about a particularly embarrassing right-winger. And I don’t doubt that a lot of right-wing bloggers are just tossing their readers what they want to here without believing it. But there are people who believe it, and as noted in my reply to jetlag the views the gentleman expresses crop up a lot. So I think it’s worth pushing back.
I’m a successful, mostly liberal person, married to a lovely woman, and yet, what Milo says still resonates with me. I do think a lot of men find less incentive these days to be with a woman, partly because of things like feminism, or if you’re a college student, well I’d be terrified of even talking to a woman at college these days with all the rape hysteria and Title IX abuses that’s going on. Meanwhile, men are shamed for their sexuality when say, they prefer an athletically built woman over a fat one, because unknown to men, they only prefer such women because they’ve been socially conditioned to prefer such women and not because they’re naturally, biologically attracted to them.
Now if you’re a fat woman, and you can’t find a man, that’s no longer you’re fault. It’s the fault of the patriarchy conditioning men to only like healthy looking thin women. And all the shame and fault is put back onto the men.I also found Milo’s point interesting about the way traditionally female sex toys are seen as empowering, yet things such as porn which men tend to enjoy or potentially these sex bots, is regarded with such contempt and again, men must bear the brunt of the shame.
Some of Milo’s comments on the decline of civilization itself may be hyperbolic, but I do think men and women losing interest in one another does have serious consequences and I definitely think feminism as it stands is now is a huge turn off for men and it’s women lately who have created such a hostile environment for relationships. I think at the very least we shouldn’t wonder so much why men would rather just look at porn and play video games, and by the way, you can do those things and still and be ambitious and successful.
Agreed on the videogames. I don’t play myself, but I have accomplished professional friends who do.
I do think if men are discomforted (and I’d blame that at least as much on the right-wingers who shriek that If You Kiss a Drunk Girl They Will Arrest You) it’s going to get better, not worse. We’ve adapted to a lot of changes—couples where women make more money than men, women taking the initiative, working wives, interracial dating—and the freak-out gets less over time. Fifty years from now, I think Yiannopoulis’ predictions will look pretty laughable.
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I look at the comments here, from 2015 .
In the here and now, 2017 I look at this concept called Gatebox; essentially a virtual female personality for at-home assistance use.
It seems to be a rather phantom-ish substitute for a living person.
However, that isn’t the point. The point is, this idea is becoming a reality. And the only reason it is becoming a reality, is because people want it.
Humanity has come a long way hasn’t it? Once there was blow-up love dolls. Now there are Silicon love dolls that cost thousands of dollars. And last I checked these companies are still in business.
Seems like every year you hear about “artificial intelligence” becoming a reality, and now there is an electronic gizmo in the works that will simulate a simple, virtual feminine personality
Humanity has come this far replacing one aspect after another of the female idea, and the ideals of companionship. Humanity has come this far, because of desire, and it is this desire that people are willing to open their wallets, funding advancement.
Call men pathetic, call this reality impossible, call Yiannopoulis’ predictions laughable if you want.
But I will say this, man is trying pretty damn hard to replace women. And when man creates woman’s replacement, they will lose all the power they had, and we will never look back.
Um, some men may try to replace women. A lot of us like them just fine. And of course, if men drop out of sex, they lose whatever power they had. So feel free not to look back–those of us who actually like real women won’t miss you.
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