IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 51

for robots, rather workers are. The Robot character in the
play R.U.R was not a machine [44, p. 26]. In R.U.R. the
robot is made up of human biological parts but assembled on a production line. It was other artists in the
ˇ apek's robot and turned it into a
1920s who took Karel C
machine. The first machines were not slaves, nor are
slaves mechanical machines, and robots were not initially machines [44, p. 26].

The Price for a Human of Being an Object
Survivor of prostitution, Brenda Myers-Powell, entered
prostitution at the age of 14. She recalls her life in
Chicago as one of poverty and deprivation, seeing
women as prostitutes in her neighborhood and needing to provide an income for her two children and
grandmother, she logically felt this was an option for
her to try. She describes her first experience of paid
sex. She was 14 and cried through the experience,
but the buyer still continued to have sex with her - he
still continued to have sexual intercourse despite
this. What makes a human being turn away from the
suffering of another that is right before their eyes?
Does the sex trade make this kind of exchange an
exception or a rule?
In many countries of the world there are vigorous
debates about decriminalizing prostitution, or criminalizing the buying of sex (sometimes known as the Nordic
model). The Nordic model takes into account the power
differences between males and females, and targets the
law at those with the most power, not the least, and
also provides exit strategies for women and those prostituted [48]. But what about the arguments for decriminalization of prostitution? Germany in 2002, The
Netherlands in 2003, and New Zealand in 2003 all
introduced laws that decriminalized prostitution [26],
[38]. The pro decriminalization lobby argues that paid
sexual access to human bodies should be redefined as
"sex-work" and part of the "service" industry. It is this
"acceptable" side of prostitution that has been the
foundation for promoting sex robots as viable sexual
partners. But evidence suggests that the buyers of sex
are more likely to commit violent crimes against women
[17]. Decriminalization of prostitution is proving to have
the opposite effect, and rather than protecting women,
it is making prostitution and its corollary activities such
as sex trafficking more prolific. Though prostitution is
presented as different from sex trafficking, researchers
[12] found increased sex trafficking in countries where
prostitution was decriminalized. Moreover, brutal
human practices can coexist with periods of change
and radical reform, even justified as a necessary part of
the path to progress [57, p. 2]. With Gonzo porn (a violent depiction of sexual acts against women by one or
many men) now commonplace in pornography, it and
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prostitution provide legitimate "commercial" outlets to
exercise violence against women [14], [59], [60]. Pornography is not too far removed from prostitution - they
were once both the same: "in ancient Greece was the
brothel slut available to all male citizens. [She] was the
cheapest (in the literal sense), least regarded, least protected of all women, including slaves" [61, p. 200]. Pornography developed as a term in the mid-19th century:
from the Greek pornographos "writing about whores"
[61, pp. 199-200].

Sex robots are inspired by
inherently non-empathetic
human practices.

Pornography and prostitution cannot be disentangled
from the role that women occupy as sexual objects to
(some) males, in much the same way that slavery cannot
be disentangled from a vision of a slave (an animate
tool) that is connected to a citizen male. Might we also
still retain this vision of a citizen male who has power
and uses this power coercively, particularly in the area of
sexual gratification from women? What makes a human
being feel able to ignore the suffering of others and continue anyway? The answer in part is a system that
enables people to relate to some as objects. Objects,
things, and commodities do not possess full subjectivity;
they are in Aristotle's view "animate tools," or as he
explained "the deliberative faculty in the soul is not present at all in a slave" [2, p. 95, 1259b 32]. Is the promotion of a robot alternative to a prostituted person
inspired by motives that view people as different from
things? Or is it underscored by a non-reciprocal, nonempathetic relationship based on power? Let us consider again what Aristotle thought about relations between
slave and master, which are characterized as primarily
non-relational:
A piece of property is spoken of in the same way
as a part is; for a part is not only part of something
but belongs to it tout court; and so too does a
piece of property. So a slave is not only his master's slave but belongs to him tout court, while
the master is his slave's master but does not
belong to him. These considerations will have
shown what the nature and functions of the slave
are; any human being that by nature belongs not
to himself but to another is by nature a slave; and

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