Realism, Empathy

Thanks to Broadsheet for turning me onto this little oddity: a woman in England has started a business selling "reborn" babies.

The babies, much like the "Real Doll" sold to men to have sex with (which I wrote about HERE), are made of molded silicone for a fleshy feel, and are then painted to look terrifyingly "life-like" and realistic.

If you would like an eyeful, this video advertises the wares:



There is something very fishy about the name "reborn": it implies some things that are too sad for a good saleslady to say outright: these "dolls" are replacements for babies who have either grown up, died, or moved away to New Zealand, as in the case featured in this British "coffee talk" style chat about it:

The psychologist hired-on for this chat insists that this is just women stoking their oxytocin fires and giving themselves a high. And he seems to think that makes it okay. And maybe that does: taboos are made to be broken, I suppose...

And dolls are a pretty deeply-ingrained cultural phenom, something we take for granted. But a step back and a moment's thought tells us that little girls cuddling baby-dolls is creepy: it puts them in a too-mature and implicitly sexual role before their time. Yet most of us accept it, and even regard it as "normal" and/or "cute." So why is a grown woman cuddling a baby-doll so creepy? Why isn't this "normal" and "cute"?  

How would we react if this were a phenomenon of women buying old-fashioned Betsy-Wetsy dolls, dolls that are obviously fake, obviously dolls, and then spending time cooing over them and cuddling them? The women would seem both insane and mentally retarded: the former for giving love to a lump of plastic, the latter for not realizing the difference between a baby and lump of plastic.

The dolls take that last step into ultra-realism, though, and suddenly the women aren't insane and mentally retarded. The appearance of the baby tricks our brains too, in part: the emotions are set off, but we still know what we're seeing is fake. And so what they're doing strikes us as incredibly "wrong" and "creepy."

The same change applies to men and sex dolls: when a man has sex with a blow-up sex doll, it's sad and pathetic, or campy and ridiculous, but it's not scary. When those dolls become super-realistic, though, the guys who "love" their "Real Dolls" are genuinely frightening.

In that second video, when the woman's husband sees the "reborn," he says that he doesn't like it because it looks like something off a mortuary slab, and I think most of us relate to that. I think most of us relate better to that than to the woman cooing to and petting a lifeless, if impressively shaped and painted, wad of silicone.

And I wonder if maybe the "creepy" feeling we get observing both women cuddling silicone babies and men caressing silicone women comes from their resembling corpses. The emotion-logic disconnect is not dissimilar to seeing a loved one dead: your emotions scream out, "this is the person I love!" but your brain knows it is only a body, the person you loved is gone.

And there is definitely a cultural taboo against sex with dead women and cuddling dead babies.

I think it is interesting that when realistic silicone people became available, the market formed around these two niches: grown women for men to have sex with, and babies for women to cuddle. I think that says a little something about whom and how the human beast objectifies. I also think it's interesting that in both cases, it is an extremely niche, but still extremely profitable, market, and that in both cases, the general public objects.

Just as I predicted with the "Real Dolls," I predict these "Reborns" will soon find themselves filled with sensors and servos, and frankly I think that will make them less objectionable. Once they go from being fake dead babies and fake dead women to being fake live babies and fake live women (the difference being their ability to move, gesture, react, and so on), the taboo will evaporate, and people will find them much more acceptable. (Although probably not entirely acceptable: they will still be "soulless" non-persons without volition.)

Still, at that point, we can expect fake (live) people and animals to become much more common. How common?

How would you feel about purchasing a set of three realistic silicone babies programmed to crawl around the floor picking up dust and dirt all day? You empty the pan by changing its diaper. And anytime you feel like a cuddle, you just scoop one up off the floor and give it a squeeze, and it will giggle and kiss you.

Yeah, that's still pretty creepy.

For now.

My Robot, or The History of Electronic Girls, Part Two

It's no secret that I am interested in robots: I'm a spaz for my roomba and I'm writing a novel about an electronic girl. Hell, I've even got a soft spot for the shower cleaner hanging in the bathroom. The more robots they build to come into my house and spare me from the chores of life, the more robots I will buy.

But I just bought a robot that doesn't clean or sweep or do anything to help around the house at all. It's called a "Pleo," and it was invented by the same dude who invented the Furbee. It's much more advanced than a Furbee, but its function is more or less the same: it is a robot designed to elicit empathy from a human being.

It is in the shape of a cute baby dinosaur: a good choice since it is impossible to own an extinct animal, and while the robot is fun and engaging, it doesn't compare to interacting with a live animal. Had they built it in the shape of a dog, people would inevitably compare it to playing with a dog, and it would come up wanting. But since it allows us to have as a pet something we could not otherwise know, it works really well. My dinobot is friendly and cute, loves to be pet, and rewards attention with flirty glances, coos, purrs, foot stomping, tail wagging, and "singing" (if he gets really "happy," he vocalizes melodiously).

Where does it exceed a live pet? Leave it alone and it falls "asleep." Wake it and it's ready to play. Go on vacation, come home, turn it on, and it never knew you were gone, never needed a feeding. In other words, it is convenient. But part of pet ownership is putting yourself out for another living creature whose needs cannot be put off according to your whims or convenience. So for those of us who enjoy the "bond of sacrifice" that comes with pet ownership (or any relationship), the robot falls short; for those for whom pet ownership would be good if not for the annoying "burdens," the robot is deliverance.

The distinction is instructive: most advanced robots these days are being built in the shape of women. The terrifyingly popular woman-without-brain known as the Real Doll (see this fabulous BBC documentary "Guys and Dolls" for some insight into this phenomenon) will inevitably be combined with this empathy-eliciting AI tech to create a more convincing "girlfriend substitute": a "girlfriend" that never needs food, love, entertainment, stimulation, or a life of her own, who will react to your touch with coos, giggles, ass-wagging, and (if you touch the sensors in just the right way) artificial orgasms.

Where the technology will fall short is exactly where the Pleo falls short of a real pet: the relationship, the bonding that comes from sacrifice, from having to put off your own whims, convenience, and even your own needs, for another living person. They try to build some of this into the robot: the Pleo needs to be "fed," for example (by putting a little rubber leaf with sensors on it into the robot's mouth). The "creature" must have needs or it is not convincing: if it requires no sacrifice at all, then no "relationship" can be built.

So the future sex-gynoids, the AI-enhanced "Real Dolls" of the future, will undoubtedly have demands too. If you want to have convincing play, if you want to feel a bond, you can indulge these demands. If you don't, you can just switch her off.

The experience will of course fall short of interacting with a real human being, but like owning a dino instead of dog, these robots will give their owners an experience they can't otherwise have. Sure, they can have sex with a "dog" of a woman (offensive word choice intentional), but these robots will have an exotic appearance, and will be so sexy, with a level of Manga-like "perfection" no human woman, even with years of plastic surgery, could come close to, that people will be less likely to compare the experience to intercourse with an actual person. "Real Dolls" are already sold in odd skin colors, like blue and green. Someone out there is pretending he's Captain Kirk banging the green chick.

I am sure most readers are appalled and insulted by what the future holds in the way of sex with robots: fortunately, iPhones aside, the future is not now. It'll be another decade or so before the first case of a man taking his gynoid to the movies comes to court. But the pieces are already coming together to create robotic humanoid companions, and these will predominantly come in the shape of women. Women, who sadly don't spend much time in the world of AI and robotics, should take note, because the future may not be now, but it is coming.

The History of Electronic Girls, Part 1

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Sex is natural, sex is fun, sex is best when it's...

Salon reviews a new book by Dagmar Herzog called "Sex in Crisis" which argues that liberals had better start doing a better job of defending sex, because the religious right has co-opted the language of liberalism in order to defend and glorify such practices as denying third world sex workers access to condoms:

As recently as 2003, for example, a certain public figure was arguing that voluntary prostitution was "despicable" because it "demeans the value of women" and promotes "the severe degradation and exploitation of women, the literal rape of countless women around the globe." Was it Andrea Dworkin? Catharine MacKinnon? The correct answer: pro-life Rep. Smith, R-N.J., whose distinctly illiberal purpose was to limit AIDS outreach efforts to prostitutes and sex workers in developing nations.

...making "wives" into 24-hour sex-marts (but only for their "husbands"):

A Christian wife, if she wants to keep her husband's mind off porn and his hand off his own penis (onanism is still a big no-no), will have to be a 24/7 tootsie. She is advised to wear sexy lingerie and to keep her legs shaved and her nether region douched at all times. ("Wives," as Jack Jones once crooned, "should always be lovers, too.") And she has to give it up whenever her man comes calling. The example of a woman named "Ellen" is approvingly cited. "[My husband's] purity is extremely important to me, so I try to meet his needs so that he goes out each day with his cup full. During the earlier years, with much energy going into childcare and with my monthly cycle, it was a lot more difficult for me to do that. There weren't too many 'ideal times' when everything was just right. But that's life, and I did it anyway."

...and "converting" gay people into "heterosexuals in Christ."

"No matter how deep your homosexual feelings are, deeper still lies your heterosexuality, buried under a thousand fears." Preying on those fears, Exodus has mushroomed to more than 100 chapters across the United States, and zealots like Dr. Joseph Nicolosi have undertaken "conversion therapy" on boys as young as 3.

The author of the book is passionate, but the reviewer isn't so sure that liberals taking a few conservative opinions (especially "for the children") is such a bad thing:

When my 8-year-old son asks me why Jamie Lynn Spears, the star of one of his favorite shows, is having a baby at 16, I'm genuinely torn in how to respond -- not wanting to condemn and not wanting to endorse, either. It's the same discomfort many parents felt at seeing the topless pictures of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair. How do we accommodate our children's sexuality? And how far?

Which seems to be the reviewer proving the author's point: have liberals so lost the plot on sex that those are actually considered reasonable questions? Let's stop and talk about this for a second: first, give me a buck naked Miley Cyrus and I'll hand her a volleyball and suggest SPF 30. There is nothing "dirty" about being naked. Second, yeah, you better let your kids know that it's fully possible to get preggers at 16. If you don't, they might well end up that way. And 16 is far too young to have kids. It's a bit old to engage in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," but it's probably right on time for some petting-grade explorations with peers.

In other words, sex is healthy and natural: it's healthy and natural from the time a 4 year old girl sleeps with her hands down her pants (although she should be warned off from doing that in school) to the time two grown men consent to hurt each other a little because sometimes that's fantastic fun. It's also healthy and natural when a man and woman decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together (although that's a pretty ambitious goal, and one without great odds for success).

I haven't read Herzog's "Sex in Crisis," but if part of the cure is getting more liberals to talk about how sex is great and to reclaim the language of liberation for liberating ends, then sign me up. I find the religious right's version of sex repulsive and degrading, but the sex I choose to have is a slip-sliding sensation-fest full of fun and giggles and lust and love. The most important word in that last sentence? "Choose."

What are your thoughts on sex?

Why Are Europeans Having So Few Babies?

As this NYTimes Magazine long (but great!) story points out, there is not one answer to this question, but the right-wing canard about uppity working women who refuse their "duty" to bear the seed is exposed as bullshit:

They found that a greater percentage of Dutch women than Italian women are in the work force but that, at the same time, the fertility rate in the Netherlands is significantly higher (1.73 compared to 1.33). In both countries, people tend to have traditional views about gender roles, but Italian society is considerably more conservative in this regard, and this seems to be a decisive difference. The hypothesis the sociologists set out to test was borne out by the data: women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load.

Read more!

The Continuing Disappointment that is Battlestar Galactica

I will not rehash my full displeasure with the recent episodes of Battlestar Galactica, but since the half-season just ended, and I am, as I've pointed out before, committed to watching this thing to the end despite the plummeting quality of its plot and dialog, I'd just like to throw a few questions out into the universe:

How did Diana know that the 5th of the final 5 was not in the fleet? Did she do a full census? If so, that's amazing, because the colonial leaders were never even able to do that -- hence all them hidden cylons, even after their model was "known." Yet her full knowledge of who the final 5 were was supposed to come from seeing their faces in the vision. So does the 5th of the final five not even appear human? Does s/he look like a Talaxian or something? Or is a character who was "famous" and who was "killed"? Or was it that the 5th was "part of the fleet but currently standing on the base ship," in which case that line goes down as the most BS dialog in BSG for all time.

Why are they playing Admiral Adama for a sobbing emotional wreck? It doesn't feel real in the slightest. Nor does Roslyn's feeling bad for Baltar after he admits to being the cause of death of the majority of the human race. Also, since when is bandage or not-bandage a life or death decision? I mean, that bandage was leaking anyway -- but taking it off will cause his death? And even if we did believe that, how does he get away with thanking her for "not murdering me" as opposed to "not letting me die"?

I'm getting so sick of exposition in the dialog that I can hardly watch a scene without my eyes rolling out of my head: does everyone have to say exactly what "strategery" is going into every move before they make it? Can't we follow action instead of explanation? And can't situations flow organically from one to the next instead of a character jumping up and going "this story needs conflict! Therefore I will totally do something wild and crazy just to give us a few cliff-hanger scenes along the trajectory of a situation that will be neatly resolved -- with little to no effect on the rest of the story -- in less than an episode!" (eg: the hostage situation; the counter-hostage situation; the happy-fun-friends make-up session in front of the mystery viper). The speed with which the 4 known members of the "final five" are accepted into the colonial family ("I've granted them amnesty!" Lee Adama's dialog helpfully explicates) makes a mockery not just of Callie's death, but of the suspense built-in since the last episode of season 3, and felt by all we gullible viewers who were hoping for that good, good story from seasons 1 & 2 to continue.

The fact that they got the fleet to "Earth" gives a lot of people the out to stop watching (although it could, of course, not be Earth, and it definitely seems as though it won't be their final destination). The fact that "Earth" was blistering in the gray of a nuclear winter was very "Planet of the Apes" -- at least a twisted Lady Liberty at the end there would have given us a laugh (and it's only 1/100th as dumb as ending a season on "All Along the Watchtower" -- oh, there's a thought: Bob Dylan is the final cylon), and that was probably the best turn of the whole season. That and Sol Tigh asking to be blown out an airlock -- now that's a true-to-character, real plot moment (one that they of course wasted as quick as they could, much like they wasted the previous episode's initially-cool "Roslyn speaks to dead people during the jump" sequence, by quickly beating it to death).

Oh BSG writers, get your shit together. I so desperately want to enjoy this show I can't even tell you. You gotta stop slopping it up!