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Monday, October 19, 2015

Who's Sweating the Sexbots?

By Julie Beck
The Atlantic
Originally published September 30, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Katherine Koster, the communications director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, says that the comparison shows a misunderstanding of the sex trade. “That power relationship that they're assuming exists within the sex trade may or may not exist,” she says. “Sex workers are repeatedly saying that's not always what it looks like.”

Levy writes that the rise of sexbots will mean the decline of the sex industry, but Richardson is less convinced. She believes the introduction of sex robots will somehow further the exploitation of sex workers.

“It became more and more apparent that women in prostitution were already dehumanized, and this was the same model that they then wanted to put into these machines they’re developing,” Richardson says. “When we encourage a kind of scenario in the real world that encourages that mode of operation,we’re basically saying it’s okay for humans to not recognize other people as human subjects.” She says she plans to reach out to sex-work abolition groups around the world as part of the Campaign Against Sex Robots.

The entire article is here.