Are Robots the Future of Prostitution?

by Amanda Kloer · 2009-08-20 14:00:00 UTC
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A creative new solution has been proposed to the problem of tourists demanding commercial sex in areas where women are unwilling to supply it: let them do robots.  Tourism futurologist Ian Yeoman has pointed out that the possibility of robots in service roles such as waiters is very real in the next 40 years, so why not robots as prostitutes?

Supposedly, these robo-women would not pass along diseases such as HIV and other STDs, and wouldn't pose the serious questions of ethics that prostitution with real women and girls involves.  Unless, of course, you have concerns about paying for sex with an inanimate object, which is a whole other issue.  In a way, robots would be the perfect prostitutes.  They have no shame, feel no pain, and have no emotional or physical fall-out from the trauma which prostitution often causes.  As machines, they can't be victims of human trafficking.  It would certainly end the prostitution/human trafficking debate.  But despite all the arguments I can think of for this being a good idea, I've gotta admit it creeps me out a little bit.  Have we devalued sex so much that is doesn't even matter if what we have sex with isn't human?  Has the commercial sex industry made sex so mechanical that it will inevitably become.... mechanical?

Maybe robo-prostitutes are just a concept developed by a "tourism futurologist," whatever that is.  But maybe they're also a bit of a methaphor for how we expect women in prostitution to be today; we already see them as robots.  Pimps and traffickers see them as money-making machines. Johns see them as instruments of pleasure.  No one cares how they got into prostitution or why they stay- force, choice, deception, desperation.  What matters is that once in prostitution, the industry treats women like non-humans.   The commercial sex industry is not about individual women as people, it's about the revenue they generate.  It's about their output.  And the fact that they do feel shame and pain and trauma takes a backseat to their ability to make money or pleasure.

Maybe the future's not as far away as we think.  Maybe it's already here. 

Image from canalred.com

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
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