The world of future sex looks bleak – and terrifying

We are entering a world that’s accelerating the erasure of women; the erasure of a human female body that is too demanding, messy, hairy, needy, imperfect, challenging, noisy.

One truly horrifying aspect of the word we are entering: men are requesting sex robots be silent. Picture: istock

When does touch, tenderness, gentleness, human connection become an act of courage? Or has it always been thus? I ask as we enter the age of future sex – the soulless, ugly, demeaning abomination of it – as the hegemony of AI tightens its net around us all. This is a world that’s accelerating the erasure of women; the erasure of a human female body that is too demanding, messy, hairy, needy, imperfect, challenging, noisy. Because there’s something else on offer now. Something much more accessible, easy, compliant. And silent.

It’s a terrifying prospect, this strange new world of future sex. And it’s already with us, aided by the anti-gods of our planet, the tech bros. English writer Laura Bates has taken a deep dive into the world of online porn, AI and cyber brothels in her book The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny. She argues that the technological acceleration is shifting the power dynamic between men and women to ever further extremes, and it’s the females who are losing out. She warns that humanity is standing on a precipice, because AI, robotics and virtual reality are creating “a new age of misogyny”.

English writer Laura Bates has taken a deep dive into the world of online porn.

Bates looks at the cyber brothels springing up all over the world. She visited one in Berlin and was assigned a robot called Kokeshi – “A silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner.” Bates requested the robot be delivered with ripped clothes; it arrived with its labia torn off. “Perhaps bitten off?” the author speculated. “I feel sick.”

She’s a one-time target of sexualized deepfake images, so to reclaim the power and write about it she paid a website to mash up her photo into online porn. The result, a demonstration of just how easy it is to do it. “Fake pornography is a new form of abuse,” she writes, “but its underlying power dynamics are very, very old.” Dynamics of assault that are playing out in our society, in high schools and university colleges. Bates also clicked on the metaverse, a “virtual reality social world” that houses clubs, stadiums and shops. When she entered this fantasy space as a woman she was confronted by a gun; it’s also common for females to be virtually groped and raped in it.

Then there are sex robots that can be bought online. Some models have back-and-forth head movements which Bates describes as like pecking chickens; others have mechanically moving necks to replicate a woman orgasming. The result, Bates argues, is an erasure of human females as they’re replaced with technical simulations. And one truly horrifying aspect of this world: men are requesting these robots be silent, despite them being equipped with vocal interaction devices. The voice crashes into the fantasy, so the men want their robots muted.

What are they afraid of? What fear of an actual living, breathing woman demands this? What insecurity prefers their female rendered voiceless? Those on the side of these new false realities argue that sexual simulations satisfy a very real need; they help reduce actual crimes against women. Yet Bates points out that since the advent of this dispiriting new sexual frontier there’s been an increase in male sex crime. She’s calling for improved regulation of this murky world, and in her sights are tech bros like Zuckerberg, Musk and Pichai, who are in charge of the algorithms and search engines delivering these fresh horrors.

The possible result, in the long term, is an incredibly lonely future world. An existence where the sexes are schismed further and further apart. Where gentle human touch, tenderness, volcanic connection and the bonds of family gradually morph into radical forms of courage. As opposed to being normalised, in this fragile old world of ours, in a way that is worth venerating – and preserving.