Ah, the medical professional fantasy: pretty mundane fodder for a generation reared on porn, but still immensely popular. Bedding a nurse is the number one fantasy among men, in case you haven't been to a Halloween party in the past 25 years.
Now, some futurists are predicting that robots will have a dual function in our impending utopian society: not only will they care for us when we're sick, but they'll also satisfy our sexual fantasies in the process.
Some feminists have theorised that in the future, advanced technologies will eventually nullify the social concept of gender by freeing women from the biological constraints that have historically placed them lower in social strata than men. Cyborg theorists claim that cyborgs will be gender neutral due to their lack of need for biological sex which connotes a socially constructed gender.
However, I have always disagreed with this, and this post confirms why.
Because gender is a social construction, any technology we create will also be intrinsically gendered, due to the gender order in the world we live in. These predictions of the future in which there will be sexy lady robots everywhere pandering to the whims of every man prompts new questions for gender:
Is it just as bad to objectify a robotic woman? Would it be ethical for real women to benefit from the objectification of robot women?
