What's the ethical difference between owning a sex robot and owning a character?

[Annoyingkid]

Writers give their characters names and personality traits. And have complete control over them.


Why is there a tendency toward sadistic behaviour etc here and not when a writer seeks to control a woman through storytelling? Especially visual storytelling? If a sex robot qualifies as a woman in the article, how does a female character not? Why is the effect on a sex robot owner's mind argued to be so damaging when the fact is a character can have sex with you, if you put an avatar of yourself in a story. Does the reality this control is taking place in really make that much of a difference?

 

[Zeppo]

I think the key difference is that the sex robot is mean to be in the place of a real person. The way in that a real person treats this sex robot is more directly related to how he would prefer to treat womon. This is very different to how a storyteller treats their characters.

A writer owns/tortures/victimizes their characters, but does so under the understanding of fantasy/fiction, and generally for the purpose of teaching an underlying lesson. A story without a lesson is generally outright panned as a terrible piece of writing (and perhaps some might attribute mental issues to a writer).

 

[Annoyingkid]

There's an assumption of virtue there with writers where it's assumed that a character, that may look just as sexy as any sex robot, it's not that uncommon in genre fiction like fantasy, will be used only in the context of story designed to be shared, when in actuality characters can be used to also feature in degrading smut that the writer never shares with anyone.

Whereas the view of the sex robot owner is that it'll be used for nothing but degradation. That its inherent degradation.

It just seems like the argument is that when it's restricted to 2 dimensions it's more clearly just a fantasy, but when a third dimension is added suddenly it becomes alot more real. But surely the majority of any dehumanization that occurs happens on a mental level, not conditional on the fact whether it can be physically held or not.

 

[skip.knox]

It makes exactly as much difference as you think it does.

 

[FifthView]

If a sex robot qualifies as a woman in the article, how does a female character not? Why is the effect on a sex robot owner's mind argued to be so damaging when the fact is a character can have sex with you, if you put an avatar of yourself in a story.

Well, there is this part of that linked blog post:

"Sex (although not orgasm) isn’t about having a perfect partner who you do not have to compromise with or pleasure. Sex is a bonding activity, even in the context of an escort activity. Understanding, concern and empathy for your sexual partner is essential to the act."​

As I understand that author's P.O.V., the problem with a real, touchable robot or doll is that this "bonding activity," the empathy, is being removed from the interaction.

Whereas, ideally, having empathy for a female character in fiction—an awareness of that character's mental processes, emotional reactions, and so forth—is the goal of the writer.

Of course, we can see many examples in fiction that don't exhibit this kind of empathy. Flat characters, cardboard characterization, one-note characters, whathaveyou.

There is an interesting psychological problem to the whole question. A passage from one of Auden's essays brought this home to me sometime during my twenties:

Subjectively, my experience of life is one of having to make a series of choices between given alternatives and it is this experience of doubt, indecision, temptation, that seems more important and memorable than the actions I take. Further, if I make a choice which I consider the wrong one, I can never believe, however strong the temptation to make it, that it was inevitable, that I could not and should not have made the opposite choice. But when I look at others, I cannot see them making choices; I can only see what they actually do and, if I know them well, it is rarely that I am surprised, that I could not have predicted, given his character and upbringing, how so-and-so would behave.

Compared with myself, that is, other people seem at once less free and stronger in character. (from Hic et Ille)

Essentially: We only see the behaviors of others, not the internal mental processes that led to their actions. We do not have a direct line to their brains, heh. This reality leads to the possibility of objectification of other people. Another person doing X does X because it's in his nature to do it, we might assume, in the way that a tree's limbs moving about in the wind is a result of the nature of tree limbs. In this latter case, the tree limbs are merely reactive, objects being affected by the wind who cannot choose to act in another way.

The sex doll also has no internal motivation, free decision-making capability. A man (or woman!) who chooses such a partner over a real human partner may be doing so in order to eliminate that capability. The author of that blog post seems to think that this desire will always...er, characterize that same person's sexual interactions with a real human.

BUT, as I said at the outset, the difference between an actual sex doll and a character in fiction is that the "controller" (in this case the author) actually has the option of getting into the mind of that character, seeing the motivations and the decision-making processes, and so forth, of that character.

You could ask whether some deranged individual might imagine such things going on within the doll's "head." Here, however, I think that the objective evidence would prove that person to be somewhat mad, heh; whereas in fiction, there's no other objective reality to the character. [But I'd bet this last line of questioning could lead into interesting directions...]

 

[Steerpike]

What’s the difference between something that exists in the imagination and a tangible, physical thing that can be held in the hands? Is that what’s being asked here?

 

[Reaver]

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