Sex: Waking Up With a Robot In Your Bed and a Rusty Taste in your Mouth

According to mainstream thinking, in modern developed societies, women are better suited for most types of available employment than men.

Back in the days when the man was the breadwinner, men would willingly "marry down"--marry a woman without a job, or with a lower paying job, in order to form a family. The reverse does not often happen. High wage women will either marry high wage men, or will go without marriage entirely. More unmarried women are opting for the "single mother" approach to beating the biological clock. Men simply do not figure into a woman's plans, unless he is a rare exception in terms of income and desirability.

Now that more men are suddenly finding themselves superfluous, what will they do for sex partners? Technology will generally find a way. If a man can save, beg, borrow, or steal a few thousand dollars, he can often find what he is looking for. Sex dolls are becoming more lifelike, as craftspeople and artisans discover this growing market.

Here are links to a brief introduction to sex dolls from Salon, and a much longer and more detailed discussion of the topic from Meghan Laslocky. Meghan provides a very candid view into the entire phenomenon of sex dolls. The market is much more developed than I had realised. Sex dolls are poised to grasp an ever larger share of the overall market, but will sex dolls soon be obsolete?

Sex robots are even more advanced, if more expensive. Michael Harriman from Nuremberg has invented female robots who breathe harder during sex, and their hearts beat harder--though their feet are cold--"like a real woman." Harriman's robots go for over 4,000 British Pounds, but some men would apparently pay more for a sex doll that could "wiggle her hips and make other suggestive movements"at the push of a remote control.

And then there is the virtual girl, the VirtualFem programmed pet girl. VirtualFem™ lets you interact with a very cute girl, and tell her what to do. A Virtual Girlfriend who lives inside your computer; she will do anything you ask, understands plain English, and speaks to you out loud! Clever usage of high-quality full-motion MPEG video makes VirtualFems come to life! This is an early form of interactive programmed virtual sex, using real models to create the program--a computerised form of "video-phone sex."

Where will sex go from here? Given the incredible profitability of internet pornography and the sex doll industry, let your imagination be your guide. Of course, there is a lot about all this that could easily make someone uneasy.This posting contains a few speculative thoughts, and I will be posting more articles on this topic in the future. Social planners ignore sex at their peril and the peril of their cultures. Change is not for the timid, and changes in something as basic as sex can leave many people lost at sea without a compass.

Lionel Tiger is an anthropologist who has written on the changes that would come in society when sex became divorced from procreation. His popular book, The Decline of Males, has proven to be prescient in that regard. If you have not read the book, check it out.