Why Should That Be True?

Feminists in Sweden want a ban on sex robots, although the language they're using suggests to me that it would be a much bigger ban than that practically.

They're demanding legislation targeting technology that "reproduces ideas about exploiting women's bodies".

Three Swedish feminist organisations, Sweden's Women's Lobby, the National Organisation for Women's Shelters and Young Women's Shelters (Roks) as well as the empowerment organisation Unizon have published a joint appeal in the newspaper Expressen, in which they demand a state ban on "dangerous" sex robots for men.

The debaters noted that today's sex robots often have the "appearances and attributes typical of the objectifying, sexualised and degrading attitude to women found in today's mainstream pornography".

"Why are men willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a robot that obeys their smallest command?" the feminists asked rhetorically. "A female robot cannot say no to something that the man wants, if she is not programmed to do so", the feminists complained.

"Technology that reproduces ideas" is not just "robots." That's properly speaking a ban on the printing press, for example; the internet, especially given its role in forwarding pornography; television, movies, etc.

However, what strikes me immediately is that the thing might go the other way. They seem to think that people (well, "men") won't be able or willing to make a distinction between women and robots that look like women. It may very well be that people do make the distinction, though, just as they make the distinction between reality and make-believe. In learning what you can do to a robot that you can't do to a real person, the distinction that women are real people who can't be mistreated is reinforced.

Japan seems to do something like this with its manga cartoons, which are hideously violent. Japan's real life, however, is not hideously violent at all. It's stressful and competitive, and these intense violent fantasies manifestly do arise in that context. But they put them in the make believe space, and the society remains mostly peaceful (though suicide is an issue).

I'm not advocating the reading of manga, and I suspect many people will reject the idea of sexbots as disgusting (as, frankly, is the manga). However, I do think that pushing the bad stuff into the world of make believe can be a stopgap measure during times when whatever is producing 'the bad stuff' can't be fixed. Japan also has Buddhist monasteries where you can go and leave the stressful society behind you, but if you aren't ready to do that -- if you feel compelled by the pressures of family and society to keep up the rat race -- pushing the anger and such into the make believe space may be better for everyone than acting it out on real people.

Of course, I don't know that it would work that way -- but neither do these Swedish women know it'd work out the other way. The idea that we should ban something in the absence of any demonstrated actual harm should be rejected, even if we find the conduct disgusting. Let people be free, even if they do things you may not like.

There remain other ethical issues, of course; obviously unless these things are made to be able to reproduce, they'd be indefensible according to Catholic theology (and likely even then, though I haven't worked that argument out in my head).

UPDATE:

Locating your violent fantasies in make believe isn't just for men! From FB: