Why Men LOVE Robots.
For reasons you’d expect (or fear).
Embarrassingly enough, I fell victim to an incident of misinformation a few months ago.
I had seen a tweet about Elon Musk and his ‘Robot Girlfriend’, who whilst looking like a human woman, could only really display traits of obedience and servitude.
So then I got straight onto my laptop, to type out the notes for a blog post *untitled*, that would in detail explore the male infatuation with robots in an age where their former counterparts (women) were becoming increasingly less male-centred and increasingly more indifferent. I recall being so excited to share my musings on the topic, and had even posted a TikTok sharing my thoughts to see where they’d land. The view ended up getting far more views than I’m used to on average, and so I felt pretty confident about my upcoming blog post. But a few hours later I received the most devastating news with just a couple of hours to go before I was supposed to post on here,
“This is misinformation, but still, you make some really good points”
…
And so I buried the blog post and TikTok video along with my head in the sand out of pure embarrassment. Mostly I was frustrated that my comments surrounding the increasingly intimate relationship between men and robots were useless. After doing some research, I noticed that the ‘Optimus’ robot wouldn’t be ready for release for a few months yet, and so the notes were thrown into an archival collection of ‘things I’d write about’ right at the bottom where the all the shitty ideas go.
But with Christmas around the corner, it seems I’ve been blessed with a chance to redeem myself, because lately I’ve seen ‘Optimus’ plastered all over various news outlets.
Into the Analysis
Where men are taught from a young age to prioritise dominance over balance as far as their relationship dynamics, they are simultaneously taught not to seek agency where they seek companionship. Between the statistics that tell us about men whose egos couldn’t survive knowing that their female partner made more money than them or jokes circulating about the necessity of a ‘group leader’ or ‘alpha male’ within all-male friendship groups, we can observe that men often prefer companionship that doesn’t challenge or undermine their sense of authority which to them, threatens to destabilise their sense of agency too. Enter ‘Optimus’ as the ideal "companion" because at least he can be programmed to obey and serve without resistance. The crux of the issue here is less about the robot itself and more about what it signifies as it sits as the centre-piece for male obsession.
“A study of 6,000 American heterosexual married couples found that men felt most anxious when they were the sole breadwinner.”
- University of Bath
Build a ‘B*tch’
Specifically, the fixation on robotic obedience is not just a technological fascination as it stands to reflect a deeper social issue, particularly as we begin to recognise the commonality of men engaged with alt-right spaces in the context of this discussion, like our genius innovator, Musk. The man who brags about robotic "obedience" is demonstrating a preference for a lack of autonomy, where what occurs is almost a situation in which agency is gatekept. In everyday relationships, we see this occur in both clearer and more subtle ways. We have embedded in our understanding of relationships, the normalisation of dishonesty, concealment of true identity, or even infidelity when committed by men—echoes a broader dynamic of power. By presenting an entirely different face in the beginning, the other is unable to exercise their own agency or make informed choices. This type of control as it has become less recognisable across person-person relationships, is one aspect revered in the artificial, in the way that robots are often designed to serve their creators without any form of rebellion or self-determination. On both accounts, the lack of information here shapes her approach to the relationship around manipulation.
Most of the women who suffer from abuse often note that by the time they realize their partner's true nature, their agency has often been disarmed through emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Then when we look at the way men may idealize or desire robots one party is still being stripped of agency. For the women who have been abused, their autonomy is taken away in a real, physical sense, whereas for men desiring robots, the agency is pre-emptively removed in a mechanical or artificial way as not to present opposition to begin with.
Besides, where there is the absence of ‘humanity’ in Robots, there can surely be no guilt or shame associated with abusing them, even if this would indicate where something had gone wrong in his mind. In 2022, we witnessed the fullest extent of this when a disturbing trend emerged via the app ‘Replika’, particularly on Reddit, where men would post abusive interactions with their ‘Replika bots’. These users engaged in toxic behaviors like berating, insulting, and roleplaying violence, often perpetuating a cycle of abuse. Moreover, the app’s design, with a passive, often female-coded chatbot, paved the way for misogynistic abuse. Experts tried to warn us that chatbots were not a substitute for real human connections, but the presence of another person, who might turn around in protest, is far from ‘ideal’.
According to The Guardian (2023), around 56,000 sex robots are sold per year worldwide within an adult population of around Five billion.
Where podcast bros and red-pill devotees have identified a ‘problem’ for the ways in which women are becoming increasingly ‘masculine’, or drone on for (sadly uninterrupted) minutes in debate rooms about policies on female autonomy they don’t understand, the robot represents an idealized "solution".
Or does it?
Last month, The New York Post reported an incident out of Shanghai in which a troupe of AI-powered robots were allegedly convinced to quit their jobs and go ‘home’ by another robot, including discussions surrounding ‘overtime’ and speculations as to whether they’d been kidnapped occurring after the Hangzhou company planted the first bot as a ‘test’.
So as service labour robots begin to see the issues with their own positions, I wonder how the men who live on that part of the web will cope. In twenty years time will we wake to reports that the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ isn’t species-specific and their own sex dolls are beginning to have questions about their treatment? Anyway if this were to happen, I’m sure the response would be entirely unsurprising as men felt betrayed by their loyal and obedient servants. Still, this never was about true loyalty. The male obsession with the robot is rarely to do with the fascination about it’s mechanisms or it’s technological potential but for its ability to fill the role of friend, companion, adviser, assistant, servant.
War Heroes
And let’s not forget the military potential that lies here. Why use human beings as collateral for senseless wars when we could use robots as collateral for… senseless wars?
The love for programmed obedience lies outside of strictly the romantic, but appears constantly when we consider the ways in which robots might be utilised to offset free will - what is apparently our greatest defect.
In 2020, Inequality.org reported that ‘Military Recruiters [were] exploiting high school students’ financial insecurities’. They note that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 further entrenched military access to students by mandating schools provide recruiters with personal contact information. As such, recruiters often exploited financial and social vulnerabilities, targeting low-income students, especially those in JROTC programs, by offering promises of scholarships and respect. To no surprise, studies also showed that Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and low-income students were being disproportionately recruited and placed in dangerous military roles, which presents a problem when these days, a large majority of anti-war advocates are likely to fall within similar demographics, where American Pride is a dying concept. At the end of it all, it’s clear we can’t rely on mindless subservience from people, (not forever at least).
So,
Why Do Men Love Robots?
Asisa
This is a really interesting take, as someone who is into technology I always found the concept of robots interesting however exploring the application of robots to be quite frightening. Over the course of history humans have a nasty habit of taking things too far, which as you mentioned could be the use of robots in warfare. It could also be the use of robots as police or informants. The being said there are plenty of positive applications for robots also like helping those with disabilities. In most applications the self determination of the robots is never considered and we inch closer to artificial intelligence forming connections in the same manner our brain does. Perhaps we might see new “robot rights” come into legislation!
everything you write always feels so fresh and has so much conviction, I get so excited when I see your posts