The 9th annual Love and Sex with Robots (LSR) conference took place last weekend in Montreal, Canada. It’s a yearly get together of interested academics and some invited individuals inovlved in the sex tech industry. Originally set up by David Levy, author of the seminal ‘Love and Sex with Robots‘ book, it’s taken some misteps over the years. Such as the time it was run out of the Conservative Muslim country of Malaysia, to nobody’s surpise except the organizers.
Menstrual Cycles In Montreal
Like the world of even predominantly male sex tech, as the field of sex robots most certainly is, the conference organizers have realized that to be acceptable, there is a need to show how ‘inclusive’ and ‘feminist’ it is. Thus attendees in Montreal were treated to a talk on the ‘effects of the menstrual cycle on the personalization of sexual stimulus’ by a feminist PHD student. Given that feminists are striving to ban sex robots, and no doubt criminalize any man who does manage to have sex with one as a sex offender deviant, I do wonder if it’s either wise or tasteful to cater for menstrual cycles over the right of a man to have sex with an inanimate object that involves no harm to any human being.
I guess it could be compared to the trans community embracing feminism whilst objecting to the kind of radical feminists they have termed ‘TERFs’ (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). Perhaps, but then again the analogy is not perfect. To my knowledge, TERFs don’t want to ban or criminalize trans women all-together. They may want to limit their rights, for example to compete in women’s sports, or to use female restrooms, but not to ban trans identity itself. And I’m not sure that feminist opposition to sex robots, and increasingly AI girlfriends, is simply a hardcore, radical minority of feminists, as TERFs are.
The New Academic Field Of ‘Erobotics’
Whilst the first LSR conferences focused on sex robots, they now officially encompass a more broader sex tech spectrum that includes Metaverse dating, AI companions, and sex toys. This is hardly surprising, as sex robots are still not here (although getting closer), while AI sex chatbots and remote sex toys have exploded. Given that this is primarily an academic conference to discuss such things, a new word has been coined to collectively cover research into these rapidly advancing fields – ‘erobotics’.
The term erobotics was coined by two researchers — Simon Dubé, an associate professor in the UQAM department of sexology, and Dave Anctil, a professor of philosophy and artificial intelligence at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf: It refers to the field of research studying the interaction and erotic co-evolution between humans and machines.
The term encompasses, among other things, sex toys, dating sites augmented with virtual reality and chatbots. Dubé has been interested in the field since 2017, but says in the past few years it has “exploded.”
“We are really somewhere else,” he said, “so much so that the most stereotypical representations of this sexuality of the future no longer reflect the range of possibilities now on the market.”
Presentation On Rubjoy Robot Sex Machine
Whilst humanoid robots are making great progress, there is still a lack of sex robots that appear close to becoming available to buy. This is unlike the situation a few years ago, when we were promised sex robots such as ‘Samantha‘, designed by Sergei Santos, who appears to have been all talk and no substance. So in the absence of any sex robots, the ‘sex machine’ industry was represented by ‘Rubjoy‘, which is a blowjob machine. What distinguishes it from other automatic blowjob toys is that it has a greater range of motion than others, which invariably only suck up and down. So the ‘blowjob’ is far more realistic. A presentation was given by Steven Beith, sharing how the Rubjoy “blossomed from idea to fully-fledged product, and… the value of collaboration within community driven, open-source sextech projects”.
LSR conferences are open to the public. If you want to stay tuned and perhaps attend next year’s event, the organizers have an X account at lovewithrobots, a YouTube channel, and a website.
