Of dolls and men: Anticipating sexual intimacy with robots

Norman Makoto Su; Amanda Lazar; Jeffrey Bardzell; Shaowen Bardzell

doi:10.1145/3301422

Of dolls and men: Anticipating sexual intimacy with robots

Norman Makoto Su
, Amanda Lazar
, Jeffrey Bardzell
, Shaowen Bardzell

College of Information Sciences and Technology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

60 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sex and intimate technologies are important in people's everyday lives. A class of technologies that is becoming increasingly more prominent in discussions of the future are sex robots. In this article, we present a qualitative analysis of posts from a forum where people describe their interactions with sex dolls and their motivations for using them through text and photographs. Forum users use dolls as a content authoring interface, imbue them with agency, and construct meaningful sexual relationships with them. Implications for the design of future robots and autonomous agents in humans' everyday lives are discussed. We highlight that sex dolls are used for more than just sex; they provide fertile ground for embodied fictions and care of the self. Future, customizable technologies for sexual intimacy and wellness should account for this use.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	13
Journal	ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Volume	26
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3301422
State	Published - May 2019

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Human-Computer Interaction

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10.1145/3301422

Cite this

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abstract = "Sex and intimate technologies are important in people's everyday lives. A class of technologies that is becoming increasingly more prominent in discussions of the future are sex robots. In this article, we present a qualitative analysis of posts from a forum where people describe their interactions with sex dolls and their motivations for using them through text and photographs. Forum users use dolls as a content authoring interface, imbue them with agency, and construct meaningful sexual relationships with them. Implications for the design of future robots and autonomous agents in humans' everyday lives are discussed. We highlight that sex dolls are used for more than just sex; they provide fertile ground for embodied fictions and care of the self. Future, customizable technologies for sexual intimacy and wellness should account for this use.",

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AB - Sex and intimate technologies are important in people's everyday lives. A class of technologies that is becoming increasingly more prominent in discussions of the future are sex robots. In this article, we present a qualitative analysis of posts from a forum where people describe their interactions with sex dolls and their motivations for using them through text and photographs. Forum users use dolls as a content authoring interface, imbue them with agency, and construct meaningful sexual relationships with them. Implications for the design of future robots and autonomous agents in humans' everyday lives are discussed. We highlight that sex dolls are used for more than just sex; they provide fertile ground for embodied fictions and care of the self. Future, customizable technologies for sexual intimacy and wellness should account for this use.

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Of dolls and men: Anticipating sexual intimacy with robots

Abstract

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

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