Plastic fantastic: Sex robots and/as sexual fantasy

Abstract

This article provides an interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis of sex robots and/as sexual fantasy. I demonstrate that sexual fantasy is a highly complex and salient vector of analysis for any discussion of love and sex with robots. First, I introduce contemporary North American sex robots and offer a brief sketch of their ontology as relates to sex toys and pornography. Next, I provide a short but instructive mapping of sexual fantasy scholarship from across the fields of experimental psychology, media and cultural studies, post-colonial, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer and critical race theory. My goal here is to demonstrate sexual fantasy’s polymorphous and productive nature and its complex relationship to reality. Drawing on the theories of sexual fantasy canvassed herein, I examine the role of fantasy to sex robots’ inception, marketing, and consumption. From here I offer an appraisal of radical feminist, new materialist, and disabled queer and trans feminists’ critiques of sex robots and their users. I argue that theorizing sex robots through the lens(es) of sexual fantasy is necessary given efforts to stigmatize, regulate, and criminalize sexual fantasy and sextech users in the post/digital age. Future scholarship is encouraged to further examine the sex robot/sexual fantasy nexus and to consider whether and how their intersections impede or facilitate the development of alternative “networks of affection” including those that lie between the platonic and romantic or between “carbonsexuality” and technosexuality/digisexuality.

A methodological reckoning for the empirical study of sex doll and sex robot issues

“…Indeed, multiple phrases and terms have been coined by scholars, users, and owners alike, often with the aim of inclusivity and de-stigmatization (Dubé and Anctil (2021); Langcaster-James and Bentley (2018); McArthur and Twist (2017)). As I show in this article, issues related to the contested histories and definitions of "sex dolls and sex robots," as well as those who are attracted to such technology (Karaian (2022); McArthur and Twist (2017)), have resulted in methodological imprecision within the field.…”

Constructing and Marketing Sexual Fantasy: Analyzing the Social Media of Sex Robots

“…Especially given that McMullen does not use or test the dolls himself (McMullen, 2018), he reached out to Brick for product testing and, essentially, marketing (Morris, 2018). By combining the official page of Realbotix and a corporate influencer, the paper expands recent scholarship on RealDoll messaging (Cheok & Zhang, 2019) and discourse around sex robots (Masterson, 2022) while empirically analyzing Karaian's (2022) conceptualization of the sexual fantasy of sex robots. Framed by Klein & Kleinman's (2002) expansion of social construction of technology theory (SCOT), this paper recognizes the impact and influence of mass-mediated discourse on the cyclical process of technological shaping (Johnson, 2015).…”