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Designed by men, for men: Why sex with robots does not have appeal among women
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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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What about for people who struggle to have emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy throughout their lives because of medical issues or mental health issues?
My ex has a brother who is now pushing 40 and has never even held a woman's hand. He has severe mental disabilities and will never live life on his own without some kind of caretaker. We know he looked at porn, partially because he refused to ever let people fix up his computer, usually out of fear of people seeing his porn.
Does he not deserve emotional and sexual intimacy? There is a high likelihood he will never have it otherwise.
What about, like in the situation I just described, when that hole will otherwise go a lifetime of being unfulfilled? Is that fair to them for being born a way they didn't choose?
Different filler for different holes.
A sex bot is fine if you keep expectations in check. For the rest, friendship can go a long way. Help them find a hobby they can share with others (regardless of gender) and keep that platonic. That gives them social connection, and the sex bot gives physical release.
It's not as good as a complete relationship, but at least there's less risk of the sex bot creating more problems by trying to have it do human things.
That's exactly the wrong take.
Provide something that isn't what they need in order to fill a need they have.
That's like giving someone drugs instead to masque symptoms of working in the problem and addressing it.
But that's not right either. If providing sexual encounters was real and done appropriately then there this situation might still exists. If it's the physical space and intimacy that are triggering, then a robot is a very good choice if it provides some of the missing human experiences that missing out on when desired make for more broken people
What they need is emotional intimacy, but they can't get that because of crippling anxiety. You're not going to get emotional intimacy from a robot, and if you try, you run the very real risk of really adverse effects, like this or this.
That's why I suggested separating concerns. Keep the bot physical, and encourage real personal relationships in a low risk environment. There's always a chance a personal relationship develops into something more, whereas there's a lot of risk expecting a bot to fill that gap.