Technically Getting Off: On the Hope, Disgust, and Time of Robo-Erotics

1 Introduction

As robots evolve from functional machines to potential companions, a new aesthetic of sensuality emerges. The cultural imagination often portrays sex robots in two extremes: as either titillating objects of aesthetic perfection that surpass human beauty or uncanny and disturbing figures that elicit anxious disgust. The contentious ethics surrounding sex robots polarize them as objects of either disgust or arousal, depending on one’s anxiety or hopeful optimism toward technological advancements. Initially created as commodities for a niche market, these robots are envisioned as future technologies that may profoundly influence the daily lives of a broader population, evoking both hope and fear. On one hand, sex robots could be a new means toward experiencing forms of sexual satisfaction, pleasure, and new understandings of sex. However, this potential also could lead to the maintenance of certain normative gender and sexual ideologies in the future. Thus, sex robots highlight the potential for sexuality to surpass current understandings while simultaneously remaining constrained by and navigating through existing norms.

Sex robots are consistently imagined as embodiments of technological progress, with their evolution framed as a linear trajectory aimed at achieving human-like perfection. What begins as unsettling and inanimate will, in this vision, eventually give way to robots so lifelike that they blur the line between human and machine. While the evolution of sex robots symbolizes the advancement of technology, the ethical implications tied to objectification require a deeper, more nuanced exploration. This is particularly relevant when considering the feminist frameworks that critique the reduction of individuals to objects. The desire to humanize is rooted in our desire to more easily desire. Sexualized robots flip this around, turning objects into something human-like so that our desire for them feels more natural, while still enabling us to exert power over these humanized objects. Sex robots symbolize both utopian aspirations and dystopian fears. They represent the future possibilities of human intimacy and technology. Popular culture often emphasizes the potential for technological advances to either solve or complicate societal issues. This article explores the ethical implications of sex robots, focusing on their connection to power, objectification, and gender dynamics.

Although mainstream feminism tends to view objectification as inherently negative, this article will argue that objectification, in the context of sex robots, requires a more nuanced and contextualized understanding.^[1] Ann Cahill’s conceptual tool of derivatization as an alternative to sexual objectification can provide a valuable import into speculative discussions of the ethical impact that sex robots will have in the future.^[2] The concept of derivatization in human sexual agency differs fundamentally from the objectification of individual bodies. Sex robots may influence or modify sexual performances, but derivatization – an ethical concern unique to interpersonal dynamics – remains distinct to human sexual practices. The ethical implications of derivatization highlight a tension between reinforcing traditional gendered sexualities and imagining new possibilities for intimacy.

This tension also illuminates broader affective and temporal concerns about normalized sexuality. I propose a sexual ethics that embraces this tension, maintaining a balance between the hope for radically new forms of “inhumanly hotter” sex, enabled by technology, and the anxiety or disgust toward the monotonous repetition of today’s normative sexual scripts. This emotional ambivalence lays the foundation for a queer utopianism, situating the meaning of sex within a progressive temporal framework, where technological advancements push sexual possibilities beyond our current cultural understanding. While sex robots symbolize technological advancements, their ethical implications extend beyond their role as mere machines. This shift from technological innovation to ethical contemplation brings us to the broader philosophical concerns surrounding the future of these robots and their impact on human sexuality. By grounding sex in this affective tension – oscillating between hope and fear – the future of sexuality is envisioned as transcending the limitations of contemporary norms, leaving its ultimate meaning just beyond the horizon of what we can presently imagine. As we delve deeper into the cultural and ethical implications of these emerging technologies, it becomes essential to examine how sex robots are consistently framed as symbols of technological progress, often idealized or feared for their potential to transform human intimacy.

2 Ethical Concerns of Futurity

Investigating the ethics of sex robots brings sexual ethics into dialogue with several less commonly connected philosophical areas, such as the philosophy of emotions, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, posthumanism, philosophy of disability, and the philosophy of science.^[3] What sets sex robots apart from other sexual aids is their inherent link to futurity, evoking both utopian hopes and dystopian fears – even when discussions remain grounded in present technological practices.^[4]

Often, mainstream references to current technology serve either to contextualize rapidly emerging ethical dilemmas or to ease anxieties about the future by highlighting the gap between sci-fi portrayals and actual technological capabilities.^[5] In some ethical debates, a potential benefit of sex robots is proposed: they might offer individuals with harmful desires – such as pedophilia or incest – a lifelike but nonhuman outlet, potentially reducing harm to others.^[6] Critics, however, argue that such access may normalize harmful desires rather than mitigate them, reinforcing power dynamics and the need to exert control over others.^[7] This critique suggests that sex robots might not alleviate dangerous impulses tied to domination and harm but rather perpetuate them.^[8]

Some theorists suggest that providing more individuals with equal access to sexual pleasure, even through robots, could potentially reduce instances of sexual and gendered violence.^[9] Respondents counter that problematic reproductions of idealized gender norms and deeply entrenched gender dichotomies can occur without individual interactions with robots.^[10] These issues converge around the ethics of representation, considering that sex robots can be seen not only as gendered and sexualized objects but also as entities that perform gender and sex. They exist in a tension between representing particular kinds of subjectivity and being deliberately created for the purpose of being a sex toy or aid.^[11] As we explore the ethical dilemmas tied to futurity, it is crucial to examine how these concerns are embedded in feminist theories of objectification. The concept of objectification, particularly within sexual contexts, plays a pivotal role in understanding the ethical dimensions of sex robots.

3 Objectification and Derivatization

The tension between subjectivity and objectification, as it intersects with sex and gender, can be framed as a form of objectification. Feminist theory as particular schools of thought uses the terminology of “objectification” in a different sense than the term employed within the discipline of material culture. Objectification within mainstream feminism has a connotation of being inherently ethically wrong or pejorative and referring to the reduction of a woman to a sex object for the purpose of masculine sexual desire, but within academia, feminists have argued for a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of objectification as ethically neutral or ambiguous depending on the context.^[12] Regardless of these two stances, objectification within feminist theory is first and foremost a conceptual tool to think about the ethics of one’s embodiment and (usually sexual) interpersonal encounters as embodied beings.

In contrast, material culture draws upon phenomenology to undermine any radical or unidirectional relationship between subject and object. In other words, material culture ascribes a sense of agency to both subjects and objects and emphasizes a mutual relationship in which things in the world (whether conscious subjects or inanimate objects) have agency, shape, constitute, and are constituted by other things in the world. This conception of objectification is not primarily an ethical concept insofar as it is inevitable to objectify and be objectified as embodied subjects in the world. Concerns about sexual objectification intimately tie the status of oneself as an object to the dehumanization of feminine personhood. I argue that ethical insight into the future advancements of sexualized robots is provided by considering sexual objectification backward – rather than dehumanizing feminine subjects, what ethical concerns are there to be had with the “humanizing” of feminine sexual toys?

The concept “objectification” within feminist theory is most readily used with reference to sexual objectification – the experience of one’s value and meaning as a person being reduced to her status as a sexual object for the desires of another. The key component of sexual objectification is a disregard for an individual’s agency, personhood, autonomy, and self-worth through the reduction of a sexual subject to her status as a body. Sexual objectification is ethically ambiguous: it becomes problematic when it reduces a person’s humanity to their physical body, but it can also be neutral or positive if it allows women to express autonomy in contexts of unequal power.

In her text, Overcoming Objectification, Ann Cahill offers the conceptual tool of derivatization as an alternative to the notion of objectification.^[13] Cahill offers this supplement because she argues that the assumed connection between the one’s objectification and one’s dehumanization fails to capture the nuance and complexity of the ethical harm of instances frequently regarded as objectifying. Moreover, objectification fails to account for embodied intersubjectivity as a fundamental aspect of full personhood. Cahill argues that objectification maintains loyalty to certain modernist ideals that privilege autonomy and rationality at the expense of the role of the body. This notion of objectification, especially with its pejorative connotation, positions one’s materiality and embodiment against one’s subjectivity and personhood.

Cahill offers derivatization as a supplement to add nuance and complexity to embodied sexual ethics and point to the unethical experiences that objectification aimed to address. The grammar of derivatization follows the same logic as objectification.^[14] Derivatization captures instances of approaching, portraying, rendering, or understanding another being’s identity, desires, feelings, complexity solely or primarily as the reflection, projection, or expression of a derivatizer’s limited and reduced attention. To derivatize is to render as derivative in the same sense that to objectify is to render as an object. Any aspects or potential for aspects of the derivative subjectivity to extend beyond this limited perspective are ignored, undervalued, or disregarded. Furthermore, the resistance of a derivativized subject through attempts to demonstrate aspects beyond this reduced status, she may be met with counter-resistance or perceived as arrogant, treasonous, or dangerously rebellious. In some situations, a derivatized subject can willingly take up and reflect the derivatizer’s desires as well as possible for a multitude of different reasons, but there are also situations in which derivatizer’s orientation toward the derivatized is so limited, biased, and arrogant that they are incapable of seeing and attending to the realities of the derivatized as a complex and agential subject.

The tool of derivatization illustrates a difference between rendering one a nonperson and rendering one, as Cahill articulates, “not quite a non-person.”^[15] In cases of sexual derivatization, this concept highlights complexity of privileging one’s own desire while simultaneously recognizing the other’s personhood and capacity for going over and above such a limited viewpoint. In other words, sometimes being regarded as a particular kind of subject (though subject nonetheless) can be quite harmful, and sometimes being regarded as a sex object can be quite rewarding. To derivatize an individual is to reduce an individual solely or primarily to the aspects of her subjectivity that reflect or express the desires of the derivatizing influence.^[16] Rather than regarding the individual as an object or merely their body, the individual is regarded as a reflection of the perceiver’s desires and without regard to the individual’s ontological distinctiveness or the entirety of her particularity as a complex individual in a constant state of becoming. Cahill explains, “The sexually derivatized subject…may express desires, emotions, and preferences; she may articulate consent or the lack thereof (especially when the lack of consent only heightens the erotic nature of the [sexual] encounter; she may even play a role of alleged dominance in relation to the derivatizer.”^[17]

Cahill uses the example of a dominatrix, in which case the dominatrix may take up a clear authoritarian role, defined by her power, but simultaneously this role is entirely reducible to the desires and interests of a submissive derivatizing subject. It would not make sense to talk about the dominatrix as an object, because her active performance within the limited role afforded demands her expression and embodiment of the particular subjectivity of a dominatrix. The derivatized subject embodies and performs a muted and stunted subjectivity, but it is important to recognize that this is a subjectivity nonetheless. In other words, the exploitation of derivatization is not best articulated as an exploitation of the body-as-thing, but rather the exploitation of the vulnerability of the body-as-subject. The distinction between one exploiting the body-as-thing and the body of the person-as-subject is crucial when considering the ethics humanizing of feminine objects such as sex robots. If a derivatized subject, for example, a prostitute, is to be rendered attractive, she must act within the bounds of the derivatized subjectivity; if a prostitute were to express personalities or interests that do not align with the desires of the derivatizer, then she would not be successful in fulfilling her role as a prostitute.^[18] The prostitute’s willingness and success at being able to express herself within these derivative bounds are part of the appeal or distinction between a prostitute and engaging with a sex doll. The sex doll as an object does not have the autonomy required to perform the desires of the derivatizer in the same way as a derivatized sexual partner, prostitute, or even person represented in media or pornography. The confusion between instances of sexual objectification and instances of sexual derivatization eclipses this distinction.

Even the greatest advancements in artificial intelligence and a material composition to the point of becoming indistinguishable from humans, sex robots will lack the particular ethical problem that comes about with the reduction of a person-as-subject. Notably, this reduction simultaneously illustrates the intentions and motivations that underlie the demand for sex robots to encompass a particular subjectivity rather than merely illustrate an object that appears, feels, smells, tastes, and sounds like a person in a multitude of ways. Approaching another person sexually is essentially distinct from approaching a material simulation of a person. Building upon the critique of objectification and derivatization, it is essential to analyze how these dynamics manifest in the technological embodiment of gender. Sex robots not only reflect gender norms but also reinforce societal expectations through their design and interaction.

4 Technological Embodiments of Gender

Not only is there a particular difference in a problematic reduction of a human to a different kind of human, but additionally the way that one approaches a sexualized object will be fundamentally different than the approach of a sexual object. There is a fundamental difference between one’s reduction of an individual-as-object to the derivatization of a subject-as-person, but furthermore the ethics of approaching an object involves the orientation of a person to objects. Inquiries within material culture maintain the phenomenological understanding of a dual relationship of interacting agencies between a person and objects as well as the object toward the person. At present, sex robots offer limited possibilities for individuality, as they are confined to binary body types – male and female – and allow only superficial customizations such as hair color, skin tone, eye color, and pre-set personality traits. Furthermore, the market’s demand for “female” sex dolls greatly outnumbers that for “male” alternatives (if there are any from that company), and there are concerns about how dolls in themselves depict problematic notions of femininity as closer to nature or the material, passive, for the purpose of men, etc. There is clear reason to fear that such little representation of different ways of being in the world in such a sexualized role will further entrench antifeminist social norms. At the same time, as an ethical system of social critique and negotiation with imbalanced power structures, feminism cannot forget the potential for sex robots to be otherwise and be taken up as a catalyst for social critique in themselves.

Despite their lack of financial accessibility and the limited options currently available, the fantasy of sex robots permeates daily life through visual media and the widespread presence of feminized artificial intelligence tools like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. While sexualized robotics and artificial intelligence are often critiqued for perpetuating sexist norms, they also present potential tools for subversion. The performance of gender and sex norms by these toys have “disidentificatory” potential as given by José Muñoz in his text Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Muñoz is more specifically addressing drag and other forms of queer performance and theatre, but his notion of disidentifications articulates the possibility of this performance of normative scripts as a means of caricature. Muñoz demonstrates disidentification as an alternative way of resistance for an individual by engaging with and taking up a dominant ideology from a marginalized position.

Rather than simply conceptualizing resistance in terms of dissent and refusal, the normative script becomes a play-thing in itself with which the marginalized can create fissures in normative logic and poke fun at the fragility and maintenance of the assumed normal, and Muñoz articulates the disidentificatory mode of navigating dominant ideologies:

Instead of buckling under the pressures of dominant ideology (identification, assimilation) or attempting to break free of its inescapable sphere (counteridentification, utopianism), this ‘working on and against’ is a strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change while at the same time valuing the importance of local or everyday struggles of resistance.^[19]

Disidentification is an alternative to an individual assimilating to or identifying with this dominant ideology and acting in such a way that can be understood as perpetuating and complying with the ideology. It is also an alternative to counteridentifying with the ideology completely as one could understand the anti-sex position as taking or utopianism that would demand a theorizing of the subject outside of the cultural construct to articulate otherwise. Disidentification allows one to envision alternative constructs while valuing and calling attention to the agency and acts of resistance on the part of the individual navigating systems of oppression, within the construct, and inside ideology. Muñoz is careful, however, to note that this is not merely a “picking and choosing” of aspects of ideology with which to identify oneself; instead, it is a reworking of the aspects of the ideology that are experienced as “harmful” or contradictory to the identity of the individual. More so than an “interpretive turn” or “psychic maneuver,” he argues, disidentification is a survival strategy. Modalities of desire are self-compromising, and they are reconstituted. Muñoz writes of the reconstitution of queer desire, desire that can be self-negating, “We desire it, but desire it with a difference.”^[20] It is a means of recycling and rethinking meaning that is encoded within dominant ideology. He elaborates, “Thus disidentifications is a step further than cracking open the code of the majority, it proceeds to use this code as raw material for representing a disempowered politics or positionality that has been rendered unthinkable by dominant culture.”^[21]

Sex robots need not even be on the market or come to fruition in order for us to recognize that sex dolls and sex robots are included in the cultural, social, and political imaginary of many contemporary individuals in the United States. The assumptions of sex robots existing as further perfections of beauty standards that are socially mediated and geographically, historically, and socially contingent dominate both assumed appearances of these robots (as advancements of the current appearance of hyperrealistic sex dolls) and the current sex dolls available on the market. This script provides powerful tools that can be taken, caricatured as undesirable and uncanny, and played with to point to the closed and limited collective imaginary of sex practices, desire, and attraction that is being projected as the only available script in the present and into the future. While current sex robots embody deeply entrenched gender norms, their speculative future offers the potential for both subversion and reinforcement of these norms. By imagining how sex robots might evolve, we can explore their broader social and ethical implications. As we consider the present limitations of sex robots, we must also explore their speculative futures and ethical implications.

5 Sexbots of Speculative and/or Utopian Futures

It is important to note that much of the literature on sexual robots places the emphasis of ethical concerns on projected advancements in artificial intelligence and speculation on resulting problems. However, the current technology behind sexbots is limited and indeterminate. Inquiries about prospective ethical issues assume sexbots as becoming increasingly hyper-realistic with the aim of either maintaining a full illusion as human or at the very least demonstrating an immediate but limited illusion of being human. The assumption that sex robots will inevitably become more human-like is not only questionable but may also misrepresent their actual design goals.

Many of the current advancements in the technology are focused on making robots that seem increasingly realistic, but not all engineers aim toward fully or immediately concealing the mechanical and nature of these robots as other-than-human. Journalist Eric Spitznagel writing in Men’s Health argues that RealDolls currently lead the sex robot market; an interview with RealDolls creator Matt McMullen articulates the complicated relationship between mimicry and difference that these advancements create.^[22] McMullen is clearly interested in recreating and simulating the feminine form through sex robots, and he focuses intensely on recreating realistic eye and facial movements and artificial intelligence that simulates emotions such as love. However, McMullen also maintains a distinction between the aesthetics of sex-bots and the aesthetics of humans. To support the necessity behind this distinction, McMullen cites Masahiro Mori’s theory of the Uncanny Valley, which argues that inanimate objects that briefly fool individuals into thinking they are human before the illusion is broken creates discomfort or even disgust for the perceiver. Spitznagel summarizes McMullen’s intentions with human mimicry,

The Realbotix robot head is probably the most advanced technology in the United States today in the field of aesthetically pleasing humanoid robots that will fuck you. …And yet, if you glance at a Realbotix robot head from across the room there is really only one possible reaction…there won’t be even a second where you’re briefly fooled into thinking you’re looking at a human woman. That’s not a production flaw. Making a sex robot that’s both beautiful and obviously not human is exactly what McMullen’s robot artisans set out to do.^[23]

In this sense, the aim when creating the Realbotix robot is not to deceive the user into believing the robot is a real person, but instead to be an object onto which one can project sexual fantasies in a different way. Indeed, deceiving users would undermine the sexual pleasure that McMullen prioritizes in his designs. McMullen makes a closer connection between the sex robot as similar to sex toys like dildos and vibrators, and he maintains that although the sex robot can be beautiful and sexy that does not mean that it aims to fully emulate a human form.

Despite the cultivation of differences between the created sex robots and the humans which inspire the intentions of their creators, these robots are made to be immediately recognizable as representative of human and furthermore commonly reflect an idealized version of a (feminine) human body. Even if these robots do not aim to replace interpersonal sexual encounters with humans, sex robots demonstrate the gendering of objects and the performance of gender through technology. These robots maintain the gender dichotomy, and the options for feminine robots greatly outnumber masculine robots.^[24] In addition, sex robots are understood as a progression of less-animated sex dolls furthered by advancements in technology and artificial intelligence. As Helen Heath contextualizes in the article, “Using/Abusing Fembots: Dolls and Fetishisation,” humans have an extensive history dating back to myths of ancient China, Greece, and Egypt of fetishizing dolls as almost-human, passive objects onto which people can do anything.^[25] More recently, science fiction cinema demarcated “two gynoid tropes” that dichotomize autonomous dolls as good or bad: good dolls behaving according to expectations of the men who created them and bad dolls as powerful evil seductresses and cyborgs and simultaneously attractive and feared.^[26] The ways in which sex robots represent humans are complicated by the fact that new technological development is heavily male dominated, and accessibility reasons such as cost, space, and social stigma compound so that the aspects of humans that are mimicked and valued speak to a highly particular consumer base. In order for robots to present as sexually attractive or even human, they must perform different social behavioral and appearance cues related to gender, race, and class. Heath clarifies, “There is a feedback loop from our environment in response to our performed gender, and these experiences will complicate and shape humans and cyborgs alike. Technology is not apolitical: it is a cultural artefact.”^[27] Currently, according to Heath, male fantasies, such as control, objectification, hyper-femininity, and female compliance, ground both how women are represented as robots and dolls and also what society regards to be acceptable behavior toward robots.

I agree that sex robots are gendered objects that perform gender in a loose sense and that any performance of gender norms is going to reproduce gender norms insofar as they align with the afforded script. However, there is also always the potential for these objects to produce alternative or less constrained social meanings of gender through these gendered and sexualized objects. Heath’s skepticism about the relationship between current sex robots on the market and femininity is grounded not only in the particularities of what traits and characteristics of femininity are represented as sexy, but additionally that dolls and robots reproduce a harmful mythologized notion of women insofar as robots and dolls are necessarily objectified, passive, and ever-consenting to the desires of masculine subjects.

Heath’s understanding of objectification as associated with femininity highlights a complexity with the current power relations and the recognition and value of feminine agency contrasted with masculine agency. If we build from the position that sex robots are the more technologically advanced version of sex dolls, then it becomes clear that there is a movement away from objectification and rendering one completely passive. The intentions behind engineering sex robots as an “advancement” upon past technologies of inanimate sex dolls lie specifically in the illusion of agency. This agency could either be represented through artificial intelligence software that pushes to mimic learning the user’s interests, simulating emotional reactions, or the mechanics of eye contact, but it is a form of agency nonetheless as a form of humanizing feminine objects. As Cahill allows us to see though, the humanization and attribution of agency to sex robots is indicative of derivatization. It is not that the goal of these robots is to get to a point of consciousness, sentience, or moral status, because the passivity and willingness to consent is still a diminished form of agency in comparison to the human subject. However, the sex robot allows the human to more readily succumb to the fantasy that the robot-as-agent naturally and perfectly reflects what the user wants it to be. It is a derivative of human subjectivity, but it is indicative of the desire for a derivativized, reduced subject to the point of creating a robot with the specific robo-subjectivity of their fantasies. The temporality of these advancements hinges on progress toward increasingly sophisticated technology without relying on or presupposing a claim that the results will be ethically or socially superior to the past.

6 Cruising Ahead

Sex robots exist in the present materially but also with a futurity and promise for further development. One potential implication of this morally ambiguous, forward-looking trajectory is that it allows us to undermine scripts of gender and sex through disidentification. Sex robots’ ethical concerns, while speculative and future-oriented, provide a platform for ongoing negotiation of sexual ethics without capitulating to relativism or heteronormative timelines. Furthermore, we can draw attention to the limitations of these scripts as a queer practice for a utopian future without closing off the imagination of how that future should look.

In his text, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Muñoz argues that a utopian futurity is necessary and implicit for the practical performance of queerness and ideological meaning of queer. Queerness is definitively open for Muñoz, as queerness is primarily through the anti-normative or dissent from the social norms. In this sense, queerness refers not to individuals with certain identities and desires, but rather to performative practices of being that are counter to present normative expectations. Muñoz’s notion of queerness as a performative modality positions queerness within an economy of desire and desiring – there is always an element of utopianism because desire is always directed toward what is not yet here. This perspective brings forth an epistemology that calls into question what is statically and definitively “there” and instead promotes highly ephemeral ontological field in which one can be “doing in futurity.”^[28] Queerness is a rejection or stepping out of straight time, which is an epistemological prison hold of perpetuating the here and now, a present that is toxic for queer individuals. Straight time is defined through heteronormative life stages, such as birth, childhood, adulthood, marriage, childbirth, retirement, etc., and he emphasizes that these stages are grounded in the only available futurity of the here and now of one’s everyday life.^[29] Straight time enforces a tyranny of both heteronormativity and homonormativity, structuring futurity as a repetition of normative sameness rather than an opening to difference.

In this sense, queerness does not exist within the present, it is not yet here and instead should be understood as a rejection or stepping out of straight time. Muñoz is an epistemological prison of perpetuating the here and now, a present that is toxic for queer individuals. The heteronormative life stages of straight time ground the only available futurity of the here and now of one’s everyday life. Straight time promotes a tyranny of the hetero- and homo-normative in which the only futurity is normative sameness rather than difference, and progression toward a totality rather than perpetual becoming. Muñoz develops and calls to reclaim an understanding of “stages,” in which the stage refers to a present time and place through which queer utopias of difference rupture straight time in their performance. These ruptures are felt and performed as anticipatory illuminations of beyond the here-and-now. His sense of utopia is therefore definitively antinormative and necessarily nonprescriptive insofar as the illuminated potentialities do not exist in the present. Instead, they can be felt and seen through a modality of doing that is necessarily in process, in flux, and unfinished. This utopianism is implicit within the notion of queerness insofar as queerness for Muñoz is an ideality of structuring and a mode of desiring that allows one to see and feel beyond the present. There is an implicit ethics assumed that openness to alternatives is better than the closed political imaginary of (hetero)normativity that would perpetuate itself without rupture by imagining and doing queer. Central to Muñoz’s articulation of utopian performativity is hope, grounded in Ernst Bloch’s “principle of hope.”^[30] Muñoz looks back upon his own stage of engaging with the subculture of punk rock, and by turning back embodies the hope embodied in the rehearsing of his identity in a space where his becoming-as-queer was not toxic. Stages in this sense are spatiotemporal actualities of performing or doing utopia. Though Muñoz states that hope is not the only modality of emotional recognition that structures belonging, he does argue that hope is the emotional modality par excellence of permitting us access to the future.

Hope, as an affective modality within queer performativity, highlights the value of maintaining skepticism, weariness, and even disgust toward the gendering and sexualization of sex robots. The Uncanny Valley that creates discomfort is not the unsettled feeling in which the nonhuman feels eerily human or causes momentary illusion, instead there is disgust in the face of advancing technologies of the future manifesting as closed off, reproductions of the toxic present. This disgust that I am pointing to is a complementary affective modality of queer performativity to the sustained hope in the face of disgust – they cyclically feed into one another as ephemeral gesture. Hope allows for queer attachment to sex robots and the ability to project desires that were not imagined in the creation of such robots and to predict futures in which sex robots lead to furthered pleasure for pleasure’s sake, alternative forms of kinship, and alternative or expanded understanding of what constitutes sex.

There is a reason to have hope that advancing technologies of sex robots will bring about new avenues toward sexual pleasure, but the present hope is coupled with simultaneous disgust and aversion for the perpetuation of the same. Sex robots as objects in the midst of humanization provide a valuable resource for understanding the limits of our collective imaginary of sex with a dynamic meaning through time. Neither of these two affective modalities toward the future should be emphasized over the other, and instead both cyclically motivate a feminist and queer approach to the future of ethical sex. The ebb and flow of these affects linger in our awareness as we make sense of technological progression as a linear temporality that fails to predict or understand any linear progression of the meaning of sex. This productive tension between hope and disgust grounds a queer utopianism that places the meaning of sex on the assumed progressive temporal trajectory of technological advancements as a means of leaving the meaning of sex beyond the horizon of our contemporary cultural scripts and imagination.

7 Conclusion

Sex robots occupy a strange and complicated space in our cultural imagination, balancing between hope and disgust, progress and repetition. The ethical questions surrounding their development are not just about whether they will change how we experience sex but whether they will force us to confront the limitations of our current norms. In imagining a future where these technologies exist, we are also imagining the future of gender, power, and sexual politics.

What’s particularly fascinating – and troubling – is the tension between objectification and derivatization. As these robots become more lifelike, they don’t just challenge the boundaries between humans and objects; they reveal how deeply rooted our desires are in power dynamics. The humanization of sex robots, while seemingly progressive, risks reinforcing the same restrictive scripts we claim to resist. But this isn’t just a dystopian story. There’s also room for hope. These technologies could be an opportunity to break from conventional scripts, to reimagine what desire, pleasure, and intimacy could look like beyond the human. The key challenge lies in resisting the urge to view technological progress as linear or inherently beneficial, instead embracing the messy and unpredictable possibilities sex robots create.

In the end, sex robots reflect our current anxieties and aspirations, revealing both the boundaries and possibilities of our collective imagination. As we move forward, we must keep grappling with the ethical, social, and political dimensions of these technologies, never losing sight of the tension between where we are and where we could be. It is in that tension – between hope and disgust – that the future of sex will be written.