In 2017, Sam Treadwell is in love with his android Cherry 2000. When he accidentally damages her, he unsuccessfully tried to find another Cherry 2000 to input her chip with her basic memories.
There you go! That’s what wifi and cloud backup are for!
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A Scottish soldier marches into a pharmacy.
Very carefully he opens his sporran and pulls out a neatly folded cotton bandana, which he unfolds to reveal a condom with two patches and a small rip.
“How much to repair this?” the soldier asks. “Thirty cents” says the pharmacist, “but you know, for only fifty cents you can get a brand new one.”
The Scot thinks for a moment, then carefully folds the condom into the bandana, replaces it carefully in his sporran, and marches out.
Two hours later the soldier returns, unwraps the condom, and slaps it on the counter.
“The regiment has decided,” he says, “to have it repaired.”
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In the movie, it’s the hardware that has failed.
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I don’t think you can discuss this without acknowledging centuries of control and shame around sex, as well as religious attitudes and conditioning. So while straight men’s sexuality is now framed as a an uncontrollable given, Women are still shamed for open expression of sexuality pretty much around the globe. FGM is still happening to huge numbers of women.
I just read an article about a chinese soap opera in which the protagonist’s boyfriend broke up with her after he learned she wasn’t a virgin. It caused a big stir.
Expecting women who are raised with the understanding that sex isn’t for them, or that engaging in it makes you less worthy of a partner, or worse that it’s dangerous is insane.
Additionally, the idea of altrustic sex for the greater good raises the spectre of rape, as many women have been forced into it in exactly that way.
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I liked your comment, before you changed it to add the last part. I agree with those prior points, and liberating people from neurotic restrictions and shame was very much my motivation for what I proposed in that post.
Quite the contrary, I think. Rape is a fundamentally selfish act, saying that the agency of one person is more meaningful than that of the other. While “the greater good” would refer to society in general, the average person. So when I say that social frameworks for open sexuality should exist, that is not to mean that all (or indeed any) sex should be compulsory. An analogy might be the controversy of automating labor, while countless people go unemployed. So why force anybody into sex if there are countless other horny lonely people already? As a commodity with a manipulated market of supply/demand there are all kinds of problems with it, and I suspect that the closed/hidden/selfish model of sexual norms contributes to rape. Just like it would with any other kind of labor, art, etc.
There was a topic I started maybe a year ago about alternative systems of sexual organization, and many raised the same concerns as you. I was baffled as to how an actual lottery to randomly pair people (for example) would contribute rape when neither were exploiting the other, but we never made it so far into those details. In any case the notion that altruism == rape is an equivocation that I find troubling for quite a few reasons.
Fair enough, but a society like the one you describe would have to be free of all of the other things I listed in my post which are now a part of humaity’s sex as a commodity culture. Compulsory “greater good sex” is every bit as much a part as the other things I listed- from biblical and royal concubines compelled to produce heirs, to marital rape and “duty sex”, and the idea that “it’s no fun if the homies can’t have some.”
I can’t imagine that an actual lottery of willing partners living in the imaginary society we are discussing could be rape except in cases of exploitation or lack of consent for specific acts. However, the society we are currently living in definitely has used altruism as a justification for rape.
Edit: free range letters
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I think it’s also worth noting that this paper has a date 1989, and is therefore obselete.
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That I think illustrates why it is more civilized for a modern society to keep attitudes about sex and reproduction more or less separate. In a patriarchal system, women are exploited because that system depends upon men using women mostly for male heirs. But contemporary economies with readily available birth control are distinctly different when concerning sexual activity for personal/community health, versus reproductive matters of inheritance, custody, etc.
Those are still examples of sex-as-commodity. What I was getting at is that when social structures are in place which allow people to coordinate volunteering to help with sex, sex-as-commodity becomes unsustainable. And as a consequence rape becomes far less common.
I am sure that some societies have done. But it seems absurd to dispense with the notion of altruism altogether, as if selfishness will be defeated by yet more selfishness. Even with helpful projects like charities, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc there are at times bad actors, but because many people recognize the necessity of providing the basics of life, and it usually turns out well.
Frank Zappa’s jaunty take on a pneumo-lover doing what he …does… best… sort of:
The system depends not only on using women for male heirs, but for male pleasure and comfort. It’s not really “sex” that’s been commodified, but women’s bodies. Sex exists in myriad forms and combinations, but what is generally being sold are actual women’s bodies (yes, sometimes children and men), pictures and films of womens’ bodies, and reproductive function.
Different, but still not at all removed from those issues, in my opinion.
I don’t disagree with that, I specifically mentioned that they are a part of current culture and one of the things preventing sexual altruism.
It doesn’t seem absurd given pretty much the human history. It also seems absurd to not make birth control available freely to anyone that wants it, but here we are.
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Ever been to a thrift store?
shudders
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The service might have been a success if people would just put the dolls back on the racks when they are done.
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Yep; I was hip long before Macklemore was thing.
Just cuz someone’s selling something, doesn’t mean I’m buying.
Underwear is one of those purchases that must be unused prior to sale, no exceptions.
It’s difficult enough finding a brothel in Beijing, let alone expecting the police or government to let that business flourish.
They should have named it “Goo Goo Dolls.”
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