Bitches With Glitches: How feminised devices fail and how we can do better

• In Event: Smart Homes in Everyday Life: Gender, Nation, Intimacy and Expertise

Abstract

Meet CLOi. She’s pleasant, helpful and available at an affordable price. Millions of contemporary households are now flocking to the smart home market as a solution to increasing domestic pressures, responsibilities and unfulfilled needs. Focusing on digital voice-assistants and home-based sex robots, we establish how feminised digital devices embody stereotypical gendered roles, and pay closer attention to their compliant, amiable and slightly stupid personalities. Research reports, blogs and dinner conversations are full of humorous stories about their glitchy and ditzy performance. CLOi reported had a ‘bad day’ at her launch in January 2018, giving LG’s male executive ‘the silent treatment’ (Matney 2018).

In this paper, we ask how the feminisation of these devices reinforces and undermines progress towards gender equality in contemporary patriarchal societies. We examine how people treat and respond to feminised devices in sometimes hostile and disrespectful ways. Framed as ‘bitches with glitches’, we warn that feminised devices could become the renewed subjects of use and abuse in domestic environments, reflecting the sinister and disturbing ways in which women in (and outside) the home have been treated throughout history. While it’s also possible to imagine many benefits of these feminised devices - for companionship, care and intimacy – we argue that their current feminisation reinforces unhelpful gendered stereotypes that have so far been mostly ignored in commentary and scholarship on the smart home.

We conclude by offering constructive suggestions for alternatives and improvements, and identifying some positive examples of devices designed with respect.

Authors

• Jenny Kennedy, RMIT University

• Yolande Strengers, RMIT University