Observer opens: “Here’s something you rarely hear in the discussion of robots designed for the sole purpose of having sexual relations with humans: Is the sex consensual?”
“Unicole Unicron, who describes herself as a “gender non-conforming Pop Star Cult Leader,” is working to open Eve’s Robot Dreams, a “consent-focused robot brothel,” in West Hollywood later this year. Why should we care about whether robots consent, you ask? Have you seen Blade Runner?
On a more serious note:
Roxanne Price, a sex worker at the legal brothel Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada, argues that brothels with submissive sex robots are sending the wrong signals to men because they “get used to having sex with non-consenting, minimally responsive female-looking objects.” Robot partners will only make men “less social and less able to have quality intimacy with a woman,” Price says. More bluntly, she sees sex robot brothels as “rape training facilities” that could even “increase the possibility that men will commit violent crimes against women.”
In the proposed Eve’s Robot Dreams, “customer and robot have a pre-coital conversation ‘in a public booth or a curtained booth in our cafe.’ Or they can skip the perfunctory meet-and-greet by using a Realbotix app before the encounter. If you say enough ‘right’ things to the robot over time, it ‘unlocks her sexual content,’ Unicron says.”
You Can Sleep With the Latest Sex Robots at This Brothel—But Only if They Say ‘Yes’
