Sex Machine Ready To Reload: Sexualization of AI in Fiction
Originally published in ASPEC Journal: History and Mythology Edition, 2022
Let’s set the scene: I’m sitting on my couch reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I have totally fallen in love with the cyberpunk aesthetic and I’m eating up some juicy 90s cyberpunk until we get to our sword-slinging-hero’s ex-girlfriend, which really gets me thinking. Her purpose in the novel is to be smart and sexy and make our protagonist want to get back with her, which of course, he does, after heroically saving her life. I was sorely disappointed, because if it weren’t for the treatment of women in this book, I could really have gotten into it. But no, even the fifteen-year old skater girl ends up being sexualized repeatedly, and involved in agratuitous sex scene with an adult man. It leaves me wondering: why? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read enough books by cashew white men to know that objectifying women is just something that they do, but it just seems so prominent in sci-fi and dystopia, especially when there’s technology in the mix. It’s like these writers get their lust for machines and their lust for women confused, and think what ends up coming out is poetry.
This is the trend I would like to examine in this article. Why does this keep happening? And why should we care?
I started my exploration with this crucial question: Have the residents of the ivory tower given any thought to this phenomenon, and if so, what wisdom do they deign to bestow on us? Don’t worry, I did the JSTOR digging so you don’t have to.
When it comes to researching AI in fiction, all paths point to one author: Isaac Asimov. Asimov’s “Laws of Robotics” are so ubiquitous that many people know them without knowing their sci-fi origin. Asimov is even referenced in the video game Portal. Zeng even cites Asimov as the basis of current legal thought surrounding AI ethics. His seminal speculative fiction novel about the future of AI, I Robot, has inspired generations of creators. The novel follows an interview with robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin, who tells a series of stories about her encounters with AI. I, Robot does not contain any of the sexulization elements that I’m discussing here. Nice job, Asimov. You don’t get sent to horny jail. However, the idea that machines could masquerade as people lit up the imaginations of countless writers. And some of those writers do need to be sent to horny jail.
There’s another weird element about the erotic fascinaition with AIs, and that’s our tendency to treat robots the same way we treat the divine. Theologian Rudolph Otto once described the divine in terms of “mysterium tremendum” and “fascinans,” i.e. the fear of and a fascination with God respectively. Over half a century later, Anne Foerst stated something very similar about the human response to Artificial Intelligence, after being faced with “Cog,” an AI from the MIT AI Laboratory. Theologians fumed at this, saying that was a false equivalence, but Geraci’s article lists various examples in science fiction that prove Foerst’s point. Geraci brings up the example of Neuromancer by William Gibson, — yet another excellent cyberpunk book that I was thoroughly enjoying until objectification of women came along and ruined the fun — a novel about two dueling Artificial Intelligences that use humans as their pawns. Neuromancer emotionally manipulates the protagonist, Case, by repeatedly showing him images of his dead love interest (can someone say “fridged?). The two robots have a god-like power over the humans involved in their schemes. Just like the characters of Susan Calvin’s stories attempt to understand the unknowable minds of robots, the humans in Neuromancer attempt to understand the will of the AIs that control them, but are always one step behind. This is highlighted by the end of the novel; when Neuromancer is defeated, Case goes back to his normal life, having gained no power and no reward. He was just a tool in the game of gods. There’s a sexy robot in this book too, but we’ll talk about that in a second.
So why do so many science fiction novels from the late twentieth century, Neuromancer included, find a way to sneak in moments when robot women are sexualized and sexually abused. Geraci often conflates the idea of intellectual allure with the idea of sexual allure. There is certainly something to be explored about the role of robot women in male-created sci-fi worlds. Geraci uses examples of Metropolis and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, better known for its film adaptation Blade Runner. In Metropolis, the protagonist is seduced by a robot that appears in the form of his love interest. In Blade Runner, the protagonist is seduced by the “replicant” Rachel that he was supposed to hunt down. Geraci equates the sexual allure of these characters with the allure of the divine that he mentions earlier in the article.
Even though Geraci doesn’t go this route, I would argue that these are two distinctly different types of attraction. The sexual fascination depicted by straight male authors is a fetishization of the fantasy of AI, not a representation of the divinity. In these cases, the AIs are much like sirens: not gods, but divine trickster creatures. Robots make men believe that they can possess them sexually because they are objects that can be possessed. I believe this has more to do with a straight male power fantasy and less to do with the universal fascination with AI that Geraci discusses.
It’s not always a cut-and-dry robot that seems to get hetero men horny. Sometimes it’s a character trope I have dubbed the “sexy cyborg,” a woman who has made technology so crucial to her body or her function in the world that it has become a part of her. I first became aware of this trend reading Neuromancer. Here, the woman is a leather-clad badass named Molly who serves as a side-kick to our hero (sound familiar?) and whose defining feature (other than an ass that gets mentioned way too much) is two circular mirrors welded over her eyes like reflective sunglasses. Throughout the novel, Molly gets various other upgrades, to the point where she has more machine parts than personality traits. As you may be able to guess, Molly’s sex life has a far greater role in a sci fi heist novel than it has any right to. I extend this idea of the “sexy cyborg” to any woman in sci-fi who is more defined by her mechanical function than her character. Thus programming-wiz Juanita and skater-girl Y.T. from Snowcrash fall under this category as well.
According to Geraci and Foerst, fascination with AI is inherent. Therefore, so is sexuliazation. Perhaps an allo person would read this and think it checks out, but to my little ace nose, this felt amiss. That implies sexual attraction is something universal, akin to folklore and spirituality. But we’re all susceptible to the thrill of fairy tales, or to the allure of religion. The same is not true of sexuality. As I’m sure you, reader of the ASPEC Journal, are aware, a non-negligible portion of the population is not allosexual. Therefore, this theory, as academic as it sounds, simply isn’t watertight.
But is that really why Gibson, Stephenson, Dick, and countless others are doing this? Because their near-religious fascination is confused with eroticism? I thought yes, but I knew I would be remiss if I didn’t go straight to the source: I needed to talk to a straight man. Luckily, I happen to be related to one. When I chatted with my father about the concept of my article and the nature of my research, he laughed — not out of derision, but of fondness. He told me that my approach was too academic.
“I think those writers imagine women as robots because that’s more manageable for them. They can’t get with a real woman. This is just their fantasy.”
Huh.
Now you may be asking yourself, what is the point of all this? Okay, yes, there’s a lot of sexy robots out there, but I just threw a lot of academic jargon at you only to conclude that the reason robots are sexy is because some sci-fi writers are incels who like the idea of a woman who is a literal object and can’t say no to their sexual advances. So what’s the deal with all that mythology-and-religion nonsense? Why bring up scholars if it turns out they didn’t consider the horny angle? Well, I do think they have a point. I do think there is something achingly natural about the way that we revere and fear the prospect of artificial intelligence. Just because I think the connection between sexualization and fascination is a false equivalency doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s a point. I simply think we need to decouple those two things.
Here’s my proposal for you, dear reader of ASPEC Journal: be critical of the media you are consuming. Look out for the sexy cyborg, and understand why she exists. But more importantly, if you are a creator, be aware of these tropes and where they come from. Be empowered not only to put asexual characters in sci-fi, but simply to create AI stories that do not have a sexual element to them. I think we could use more of those. Sci-fi at its core is about striking feelings that are universal: fascination; reverence; fear; spirituality; the sublime. Sexual attraction is not one of those things, and I am simply asking that we stop treating it like one. And that change, dear reader of ASPEC Journal, starts with you.
Basically it boils down to this.
Writers in horny jail:
Neal Stephenson
Phillip K. Dick
William Gibson
Whoever wrote Metropolis (not worth googling)
Writers not in horny jail:
Isaac Asimov
Mary Shelley
Whoever wrote Portal (on thin ice)
You?
Bibliography:
Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. New York, Gnome Press, 1950.
Geraci, Robert M. “Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence.” Zygon® 42, no. 4 (December 2007): 961–980.
Gibson, Willam. Neuromancer. New York, Ace Books, 1984.
Heffernan, Teresa. “A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Science, Fiction and Fairy Tales.” English Studies in Africa 61, no. 1 (January 2, 2018): 10–15. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00138398.2018.1512192.
Zeng, Daniel. “AI Ethics: Science Fiction Meets Technological Reality.” IEEE Intelligent Systems 30, no. 3 (May 2015): 2–5.
Also my dad