British computer scientist and AI expert, Dr. Kate Devlin, discusses ICCJ professor, Dr. Lara Karaian’s paper, “Sextech, Fantasy and Law: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(shell)” for WeRobot 2020, hosted by the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, University of Ottawa, Sept. 22-25, 2020.
Papers from We Robot 2020 (Virtual Edition) are available here: http://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot/papers
Updated program and forthcoming video links available here: https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot/virtual
In her paper, Dr. Karaian draws on an array of scholarship and theories—including sex radical, post-colonial, psychoanalytic, queer-of-colour, media studies, experimental psychology, science and technology, and legal theory—to offer a defence of sex robots from an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. She argues that legal responses to sex robots in the global north do not adequately consider sexbots as the externalization and materialization of sexual fantasy, nor do they acknowledge the relevance and value of sexual fantasy, pleasure, and play for adults’ sexual fulfillment and self-actualization. The paper begins by clarifying what sex robots are and what little we know about who uses them and why. It then outlines the sexual and legal anxieties and affordances they engender. From here it provides an eclectic and interdisciplinary analysis of sexual fantasy. Dr. Karaian argues that despite their seemingly heteronormative form, function, and client base, varying perspectives on sexual fantasy may help complicate and even undermine claims that they reproduce hegemonic systems of domination and repression. Lastly, she provides a brief description of sexual fantasy’s explicit treatment in criminal law since the development of the Internet. She concludes by suggesting that where sex robots and their users are stigmatized, censored, and criminalized, a “fantasy defence” be made available.