In a modern sexual landscape often characterized by confusion and brokenness, one expert is welcoming the wildly controversial dawn of sex robots as being beneficial to married couples and their families.
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Canadian professor and economist Marina Adshade claims the life-like masturbatory technology could actually “improve” marriages by allowing husbands and wives to focus on parenting instead of sexual compatibility.
“I predict their availability will give couples greater opportunity to define their own types of marriages,” Adshade explained, as reported by the Daily Mail. “One example might be that more couples could choose ‘companionship marriages’ that do not involve sex, but focus solely on the creation of a family.”
“I don’t see sex robots as substitutes for human companionship but rather as complements to human companionship,” she noted.
As sex robots become more common, Adshade believes they will contribute to “higher quality” marriages. From a theoretical economic standpoint, the professor argues that the robots could free up couples to focus their energies on productive household duties.
“Just because we might enjoy the company of robots doesn’t mean that we cannot also enjoy the company of humans, or that having robots won’t enhance our relationships with humans,” she said. “…Moreover, if sexual access through sexbot technology is a complement to household production, then we could observe an increase in the quality of marriages and, as a result, a reduction in rates of divorce.”
She notes that though sexbots will not erase the “biological imperative” of wanting to share one’s life with another individual (or individuals) and raise children, “it would make it possible for individuals to choose that human being based on characteristics other than mutual sexual desire—to disentangle the association of sexual intimacy and life as a family.”
When sexual compatibility is eliminated as an obstacle to choosing one’s spouse, Adshade acknowledges that the family unit will take on countless new forms. She offered the example of two heterosexual women forming a household together, with their sexual demands being met by sex robots, or a homosexual man raising children with a straight woman.
This could lead to an increase in polygamous relationships, as the standards for “socially acceptable” promiscuity shift. According to Adshade, though, it could also lead to “superior environments for children,” since married partners would be free to focus more on nonsexual companionship, which she claims would result in a more pleasant and secure household atmosphere.
Many people of faith will likely object to Adshade’s reasoning, which rejects the view that sexual intercourse ought to be an exclusive and comprehensive act between husband and wife within which unity, pleasure and procreativity are essentially linked. According to this perspective, sex cannot be compartmentalized or delegated to outside parties (be they inanimate robots or other human beings).
If emotional and spiritual intimacy have no place within the marital bond (which becomes more like a business partnership), and the “quality” of a marriage is judged by quantifiable factors like economic productivity and personal pleasure, then Adshade’s pragmatic argument makes sense. The problem is, in this case, the cost of sexual efficiency is marriage itself.
For Adshade, the dissolution of traditional marriage is an inevitable and welcomed change that will “drive the widespread adoption of sexbot technology.”
“We can already see a small-scale revolution brought on by people demanding the acceptance of nonmonogamy in marriage and, more broadly, the abandonment of a universal concept of marriage,” she said.
According to Adshade’s own controversial claims, sex robots will do more to threaten the institution of marriage than to safeguard it.