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Gender, Bodies, and Robots in Everyday Life

Wed, September 4, 8:00 to 9:30am, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Four, Oak Alley

Abstract

After the advent of the robot Pepper, humanoid robots are now living with us in everyday life. Compared with smart home devices, i.e., Alexa and Google Home, the fully embodied robots are directly registered in society-wise discussion about gender, race and sexuality in the new technoscience. For instance, Pepper wearing a suit in a bank presents a professional bank agent, and skin colors of the sex robot Roxxxy can be customized to cater customer’s preferences. Meanwhile, the bodies of the humanoid robots are shaping discourses of sexuality. For example, the Campaign against Sex Robots in the UK thinks sex robots reinforce male domination and sexual exploitation of women and children, while the sex-robot supporter Dr. David Levy asserts that sex robots can satisfy human’s sexual and emotional needs without hurting real people. In this academic controversy, discourses regarding sex robots’ sexuality are shaping our perception of the normality and abnormality of human’s sexuality. Hence, the bodies of the robots are gendered and racial.

Although the problematic robotic bodies may serve the gender stereotype, they also have the potential to penetrate heteronormativity. These bodies are replaceable and interchangeable, hence deconstructing our normal assumptions about holistic bodies, that is, a whole organic flesh. The bodies of the humanoid robots queer body norms and thus have the potential to reconceptualize heteronormative norms. Therefore, the bodies of the humanoid robots are both hope and despair.

This panel is calling papers discussing gender, bodies, and robots. We hope to evoke sophisticated conversations in order to review and rethink the politics around the bodies of robots.

Individual Presentations

Session Organizers