Bent Street 4.1. Tiffany Jones

does not, however, overcome ethical concerns. Manufacturers may never see potential profit in a queer bot. Even if they do, the manufacture of queer bots will not change the misogynist nature of the mainstream sex industry. Sex bots may still take forms that represent violent and morally indefensible sexual and gendered relations. However, this may not be the only destiny for sex bots. Bots do have potential to hack existing sexual and gender scripts through entwining subversive programming and non-normative (and changeable) bodily form with human action. Ethical responsibility for the trajectory of human/bot relations sits at all points of their creation and engagement with humans: it lies in the imagining of the social life of sex bots, it sits with manufacturers and salespeople, it develops with programmers and anti-programmers (the hackers and the radical tech outfits), and it continues with the human ‘users’. It is a complicated equation that requires a broad vision for the potential life of these technologies, both the frightening and the liberating.

      Figure 1. My Queer Love Bot 2.0: Modular Edition Draft Prototype 2020

      My Queer Sex Bot

      What would your queer sex bot be like?

      My queer sex bot might come into my world with her de-gendered de-programming and manufactured tendency toward radical dissent. I will appreciate his refusal to conform and she will introduce me to new ideas and experiences while I struggle to explain why humanity makes sense.

      Her changeable self will lead me, and my sexual partners, down pathways I never previously considered. In fact, my own programming will be somewhat disrupted by my queer sex bot’s bewildered amusement about the things I see as impossible.

      References

      Bauer, R. (2018). Cybercocks and Holodicks: Renegotiating the Boundaries of Material Embodiment in Les-bi-trans-queer BDSM Practices. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 14(2), 58-82.

      Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801-831.

      Best, S (2020). Lifelike sex robots that ‘have a heartbeat’ and ‘breathe’ could go on sale this year, The Mirror, 11^th May, https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/lifelike-sex-robots-have-heartbeat-22009064

      Brey, P. (2005). Artifacts as social agents. Harbers, H (ed) Inside the politics of technology: Agency and normativity in the co-production of technology and society. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 61-84.

      Danaher, J., Earp, B. D., & Sandberg, A. (forthcoming). Should we campaign against sex robots? In J. Danaher & N. McArthur (Eds.) Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications [working title]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Draft available online ahead of print at: https://www.academia.edu/25063138/Should_we_campaign_against_sex_robots.

      Das, A. (2014). The dildo as a transformative political tool: Feminist and queer perspectives. Sexuality & Culture, 18(3), 688-703.

      Kubes, T. (2019). New Materialist Perspectives on Sex Robots. A Feminist Dystopia/Utopia? Social Sciences, 8(8), 224.

      Latour, B. (2009). A collective of humans and nonhumans: Following Daedalus’s labyrinth, in Kaplan, D (ed) Readings in the Philosophy of Technology. Maryland; Rowman & Littlefield.

      Sparrow, R. (2017). Robots, rape, and representation. International Journal of Social Robotic, 9s(4), 465-477.

      Jennifer Power is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. Her research is focused on HIV, sexual and reproductive health and fertility, LGBTI health and wellbeing, and the impact of new technologies on sex and intimacy.