IMPACT COMMUNICATION
AND INNOVATION
AND INNOVATION
In a previous piece, I addressed the issue of sex robots, specifically the overwhelming presence of realistic robots that mimic the female form and reproduce social roles and gender stereotypes in their design. More recently, however, Marina Adshade published an analysis on the Slate website about how sex robots might actually make marriages stronger than ever by "outsourcing" a couple's sexual needs.
Her analysis is based on an article from the book Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications published by MIT Press, in which the researcher points out that it is very difficult to accurately predict social change based on technological developments. As an example, Adshade notes that it is not surprising to think that, with the improvement of birth control technologies, society would become more sexually permissive. On the other hand, could anyone have really predicted that allowing women to have more control over their fertility would also lead to a dramatic increase in women becoming pregnant while single, precisely because moral rules surrounding female sexuality had become more liberal?
Similarly, Adshade points to the curious fact that, although new household appliances may have been intended to make women's domestic lives easier, the creation of the microwave ended up influencing greater acceptance of same-sex marriage. Of course, given the 1970s, this shift also had a lot to do with the cultural and ideological climate of greater freedom and the defense of love as resistance to the context of war. However, Adshade uses this comparison to illustrate how certain technological innovations can lead to unintended consequences that may not even seem related at first glance—and the same should be expected with the arrival of sexbots.
On the other hand, some elements are easier to anticipate, such as the expectation that a larger number of young adults will prefer to remain single as their sexual needs are met by robots—in Japan, for example, there is already a large number of young people under 30 who have never had sex, with a lack of self-confidence being one of the reasons. But because social changes are organic, other adaptations in cultural norms are harder to grasp, even if this topic is not exactly new to researchers.
“New technologies completely transformed sexual behavior and marital norms throughout the second half of the 20th century. Although those predictions were largely based on luck, we have decades of technology-induced social change to guide our predictions for the future of a world confronted with massive access to sex robots.”
For Adshade, the very fact that marriages have always evolved alongside technological developments provides a strong foundation for thinking about this new era populated by sexbots. Between the mid-1700s and the early 2000s, the function of marriage between a man and a woman was predominantly a matter of efficiency: for men, the production of consumer goods and services, and for women, services and products reserved for the domestic sphere.
This designation also relates to the fact that, historically, wages for husbands were always higher than those for wives. However, starting in the late 19th century, the functioning of marriages began to change as electricity adapted to household objects meant that women's work required less time. Added to this was the introduction of more technological objects into the workplace, which helped narrow the wage gap between men and women.
Between 1890 and 1940, the number of women working outside the home tripled, and throughout the last century, this number continued to grow as more technologies began to replace women's labor in their homes. In the early 1970s, the arrival of microwave ovens and frozen foods gave families an alternative for meals, which eased the workload and allowed women to work outside the home, freeing them from that task.
“As an unintended result of these new technologies, marriages stopped being about efficiency in the production of consumer goods and began to be about something else entirely near the turn of the 20th century: companionship, love, and sex. Marriage ceased to be about two people joining together because they were very different from each other in terms of production skills and became about two people joining together because they were very similar to each other. This made it easier for societies to see (albeit very gradually) the irrelevance of rules that prohibited same-sex marriage.”
Given these changes resulting from technologies developed throughout history, Adshade speculates that the arrival of sexbots could eliminate the association between sexual intimacy and marriage, but in a way that makes the quality of marriages much better overall. For the researcher, there are those who argue that men only "accept the burden of marriage" because it is an easier way to have sex. However, if these men have easy access to sex elsewhere, then there would be no reason to marry.
This is where the arguments surrounding sex robots fit in, much like what was said about the condom, invented in 1912, and the IUD, in 1909. However, although these objects helped with birth control and thus provided greater sexual freedom, the side effect was a crisis of sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis.
“The magazine Cosmopolitan published a piece at the time written by John B. Watson that questioned whether men would still be getting married 50 years later. Watson's answer was a big no, writing that 'we don't want helpers anymore, we want playmates.' Social commentators pointed to the fact that birth control technologies could destroy marriage by removing the incentives for women to remain chaste and encouraging them to flood the market with non-marital sex. Men would have no incentive to marry, and women, whose value was tied only to their sexuality, would be cast aside.”
But between the 1920s and 1930s, these concerns proved unfounded because people continued to want to get married—in reality, there were even more marriages than in previous decades. At that time, Adshade points out, the discussion was about the fact that contraceptives were changing the nature of marriage itself. If, in the past, women only succumbed to their husbands' sexual needs for the purpose of having children, the arrival of contraceptives decoupled these two factors and "forced" women to embrace the pleasure of intimate relations with their partners. This was also pointed out by social commentator Walter Lippman in his text Preface to Morals (1929): “From the inevitable process of adopting contraceptives, husbands and wives began to have the conviction that they do not need to be ashamed of their desire for one another.”
“This technological shift—from the first contraceptives—altered the way society viewed marriage and, more importantly, female sexuality. New and better contraceptives in the second half of the century only helped to solidify society's understanding that women are sexual beings and have as much right to receive sexual gratification as men do in their relationships. This change in behavior led to the conviction that the purpose of marriage was the exchange of access to sex for financial security. For the first time in history, sexual intimacy and marriage were seen as intrinsically connected.
This change in the purpose of marriage was also encouraged by a secondary and unintended effect of access to contraceptives—the increase in female financial independence. Armed with the security that they could limit the number of children they would have to support, women in the 70s and 80s increased their investment in higher education and their participation in the labor market. Thanks to birth control, women, for the most part, no longer depended on marriage to obtain financial security.”
Even so, despite all these financial and family issues having been partially resolved by the advent of contraceptive methods, people continue to get married. A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center showed, for example, that 81% of men and 86% of women over 45 have been married at some point in their lives. The number is lower compared to the percentage of married people in the 1960s, but it still doesn't lead us to believe that marriage has truly ceased to be something people seek.
For Adshade, we continue to marry because, beyond the companionship this union offers, marriage remains “the easiest way to organize families in a way that minimizes the costs of domestic production. People can live alone and even have children without a partner's support, but marriage is still a cheaper way to have a family, as it allows for the division of labor and household chores. And today, thanks to this legacy of contraceptive technology, we marry because both partners have relatively easy access to sex.”
But in the face of the arrival of sexbots that will be able to provide sex at low costs and even more easily than sex in marriage, what happens to these unions? The researcher sees that one possibility is a reversal of what happened in the last century, which was responsible for linking marriage to sexual intimacy, with marriage in the future returning to being viewed as a way to obtain a productive domestic unit.
“Those who fear that sexbots will have a negative impact on marriages see this technology as a substitute for access to sex in marriage. If they are right, the drop in the price of access to sex outside of marriage will decrease the demand for sexual access within marriage, and marriages will decline. On the other hand, it is very easy to argue that access to sex in marriage and domestic production are complements to consumption—in other words, consumer goods and services are often consumed together, like tea and sugar, or mobile phone plans and mobile apps. In that case, then, consumer theory predicts that easier access to sexbots will increase the demand for complements in consumption, just as the drop in the price of mobile phone plans would likely have its demand diminished by the preference for online calls. Furthermore, if access to sex through sexbot technology is a complement to domestic efficiency, then we may observe an increase in the quality of marriages that, as a result, would lead to a decrease in the divorce rate.”
Adshade recalls an economic principle named after the French chemist Henry Louis Le Châtelier, which states that whenever an impasse in individual decision-making is removed, the result of that decision may not be worse than the result that would have been obtained with that impasse. For the researcher, the need to find someone with whom one is sexually compatible creates an impasse in the decision of whether or not to marry. However, by removing this impasse, then, according to Le Châtelier's principle, marrying would not become a less favorable decision, but in reality, it could promote higher-quality unions.
“Access to sexbot technology will not change people's biological imperative to want to share their lives and have children with other human beings, but it could make it possible for people to choose human partners based on characteristics beyond sexual desire—thereby breaking the association of sexual intimacy with family life. For example, it is not hard to imagine two heterosexual women seeing value in forming a domestic environment and having children together as a couple, but their needs for sexual companionship would be met through sexbot technology. It is also not hard to imagine a gay man seeing value in forming a home and having children with a woman, provided that this union could mean a reduction in costs associated with reproductive technology. By breaking this association between sexual intimacy and marriage, marriage may cease to be what we know today. But new forms of marriage could be an improved social agreement in the sense that it could encourage the formation of more efficient households and, as a result, marriages that are more likely to last.”
As we reach this scenario, Adshade comments, we may also at the same time end up getting rid of barriers that prevent married people from having other extramarital relationships, whether with robots or humans. For the researcher, this logic of monogamy also has a lot to do with economic efficiency: men will invest more in their children if they are not being cared for by other men, just as if husbands were faithful, then single women would not have to raise children of married men who do not commit to those children. However, once again, because of contraceptives, the issue of marital fidelity has also changed, and the norms surrounding monogamy have begun to be questioned.
“If access to sexbot technology encourages the creation of marriages without the impasse of mutual sexual intimacy and the focus shifts to creating an efficient home (and perhaps providing non-sexual companionship), then any concern that these marriages might produce children with little human capital will be unfounded. In fact, such marriages could provide better environments for children, and as a result, we can expect that these unions will eventually find social approval. Just as improvements in birth control technology had both direct and indirect effects on sexual behavior and marital norms, so too will sexbot technology likely generate direct and indirect effects on sexuality outside of marriage.”
But despite all the positive points raised by Adshade when discussing sexbots, the researcher still sees some problems that may occur with the arrival of the technology: “As was the case with other technological advances, sexbots will certainly be less accessible to groups with less socioeconomic access—and, likewise, these groups will likely derive fewer benefits from any changes in social norms as a result of the introduction of these new technologies.” Beyond that, Adshade sees that for these changes to truly occur, sexbots must be advanced, accessible, and, above all, popular, the latter being a very difficult element to predict.
In the meantime, however, Marina Adshade already sees some changes in marriage, even though sexbots are still an expensive and specialized technology. The researcher can already see that a small group of people is leading a greater acceptance of non-monogamy in marriage and, more broadly, there is also an abandonment of the universal concept of marriage. Access to sexbots, therefore, may not transform society on its own, but it may encourage greater acceptance of these attitudes. For Adshade, even those who believe in traditional marriage may find in sexbots a way to overcome the most difficult moments.
