Have you read Ancillary Justice yet? The main character is an AI in a human body, and because “her” native language make zero distinctions between genders, she uses feminine pronouns almost exclusively. It was actually quite difficult to read at first, because even knowing that about the book I couldn’t shake the…

If you watch anime, the robots are definitely skewed in the female gender direction

Even robots that aren’t very humanoid will be gendered, it’s a bit odd. But I guess if a robot character is going to behave as a person, people are gonna be uncomfortable with calling it “it”, and since we don’t really have any gender neutral pronouns, people give it a gender.

Can we not say the same thing of every Other we encounter in fiction? We have sexualized ‘The Other’ for as long as we have had stories, practically. From vamperism (which is as much about disease as it is about incest thanks to Stoker) to the very nature of Gods (the Greek and Roman gods cover bestiality to every…

I wasn’t referring to the man. I was referring to the way she treated the other prisoners

Because women have always represented mystery (at least to men), and mystery is often construed as either threatening, or potentially threatening.

I think that unfortunately assigning gender to AI often is based on what they do. If what they do we perceive as stereotypically male behaviour - violence, war - it’s male and if it’s role is to help and take care of someone - it’s female. Even robot house stuff is gendered like in Bicentennial Man the robot is a…

I think it’s odd, since her response was decidedly sociopathic. She has no empathy, not even for her own kind. She never gets lonely, does not love, and is utterly calculating. That does not describe most women.

Warning: Some spoilers for Ex Machina below

The only male sex robot I could think of was Jude Law in A.I.

When there’s a male robot/android, the story is usually about pure violence, or else a repressed/innocent “boy” learning to understand human emotions.

Not just robots either. In a lot of movies and media, the bio-engineered creation or alien visitor assuming human form (usually to do evil) is typically female as well, which is something I hadn’t really thought about until I read this article. Nice read!

Think you’ve kind of answered your own question there. Because having a man attracted to a MALE sex-bot AI is totally gay, and we can’t have that now. Now I’ve got to go re-read Robert Silverberg’s ‘Good News from the Vatican’ where, if my memory serves, where an AI cardinal doesn’t look particularly human at all...…

[Apologies ahead of time, but if I was reading the article and thought I might come across an Ex-Machina spoiler, I skimmed to miss it] I’ve always thought about this question you’ve brought up, but then I thought that maybe I was falling into the trap of thinking of more masculine robots as being default, which is…

Pretty much was going to say the same thing. “Hey, you there sir! How would you like a female human being tailored to your desire with no inner life that you can program to do whatever you want, and she’s also classified as an appliance by law so you can do whatever you want with her?”

Because most of the writers are men who are trying to appeal to males. I think men are afraid of women at some level, truly (yes, I’m generalizing). When Root refers to the Machine as “she,” it’s because Root recognizes the power of women. When male writers make robots/AIs female, it feels like it’s because they’re…

Philosophical question: is “robot” a gender unto itself?

And a rape culture. Don’t forget we live in a rape culture where one in two woman are sexual assaulted every year.

My thoughts exactly. I can recognize it’s just an extension of women objectification and the still existing desire to control women through alternate forms.