The excellent Twitter presence AskAubry catches anti-feminists salivating that Elon Musk is developing robot wives: a huuuuge game-changer! No dating crisis! Women will be obsolete! Feminists will be sorry when they learn they men no longer have to put up with their shit to get laid, nyahahahaha!
This is the same bullshit Breitbart ran with a decade ago, that once sexbots become a thing, every man can get a hot wife and those women fool enough to go feminist will be crying in their beer (the idea goes back a lot further). Rereading my post about the Breitbart article, I can’t help thinking it’s assumptions are even flimsier. There’s the unanswered question of how men will afford these state-of-the-art robots and the assumption this will satisfy men; I suspect ego would compel some men to want a real women or develop smoldering resentment they had to settle for a machine.
And then I began wondering why nobody’s devoting similar thought to creating robot husbands, or to what would happen if male sexbots took off. As someone pointed out in AskAubry’s comment thread, women could use a robot housekeeper just as much as men could; with the right massage attachments a sexbot could substitute for a man in other ways. Possibly better than vice-versa — it’s occurred to me a lot of men might be nervous about sticking their dick into a machine. For that matter, a woman housekeeper-bot could provide the same services.
Part of it is that it’s a lot more acceptable for men to view women as means to an end than vice versa. Women are supposed to see men as people; as a friend of mine put it, you don’t hear a woman say “Now that I have sons, I finally respect men.” but the reverse is a common sentiment.
Partly it’s that we live in a world where men having someone to clean up after them is taken as a given, the way things are supposed to be. Women not doing their own housework? That’s not seen as a good thing the same way (see this post for related discussion). I think there may be more to it but that’s all I have for now. Moving on —
“Officers are roaming bus stops and shopping centers searching for dress-code violations or any women who might laugh or raise their voices.” — the Taliban are as hideously misogynistic as ever.
“If you work, he will find you. He may ask you back and make promises filled with repentance. He may beat you and force you back. But if you do stay away and make a break, he will strike out of nowhere, still beat you, vandalize your home, stalk you. Still, no one stops him. You aren’t his wife anymore, and he still gets to do it.” — a look at abuse, and how long OJ Simpson got away with it before murdering his ex.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders sneers that where she has kids, Kamala Harris doesn’t — because loving step-kids doesn’t count, apparently.
When great men abuse, cheat on or neglect women, what should we make of it?
Why justice for pregnant people has to extend beyond protecting abortion rights.
Fox asshat Greg Gutfeld argues that abortion isn’t a national issue thanks to Trump so women shouldn’t vote based on Dobbs. I’m sure he’d happily lie that birth control isn’t an issue too.
Texas really hates not being able to monitor women who leave the state for abortions. Despite the deaths caused by abortion bans.
To end with some pushback, Going Medieval points out the idea women hate sex is not how medievals saw it (that is not the exact point of her post). And Cheryl Rofer highlights Kamala Harris watching for gender bias in intelligence work. New federal rules this year offer better protection for pregnant workers against workplace discrimination.
