Gynoid
Encyclopedia
A gynoid is anything which resembles or pertains to the female human form. It is also used in American English medical terminology as a shortening of the term Gynecoid (Gynaecoid in British English).
Gynoid has now gained popular usage to refer specifically to female robots as the term android is used almost universally to refer to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender. Android is perceived as implying a male-styled robot according to some cultural readings however.
designed to more accurately look like a human female with much more realism than normal androids, or of those with a sexual connotation.
The term gynoid was used by Gwyneth Jones
in her 1985 novel Divine Endurance to describe a robot slave character in a futuristic China, that is judged by her beauty.
The tongue-in-cheek portmanteau fembot (female robot) was used in the Austin Powers
films, a cultural play on the fembots originating in the TV series The Bionic Woman
. Robotess is the oldest gender-specific term, originating in 1921 from the same source
as robot
.
The reaction of people to robots that appeared female to different degrees has been studied. The reaction of people to such robots has been attributed in part to gender stereotypes. This research has been used to elucidate gender cues, clarifying which behaviors and aesthetics elicit a stronger gender-induced response.
, Paul McAuley
's novel Fairyland (1995), and Lester del Rey
's short story "Helen O'Loy" (1938), and sometimes as warriors, killers, or laborers.
, in which all three of the important female characters are gynoids, two of whom use their sexuality to attempt to manipulate or kill the protagonist Rick Deckard, often using sexualised imagery, such as when Pris attempts to strangle him between her thighs. Daniel Dinello writes that the violence with which the gynoids are treated represents Deckard's hatred of women. The third gynoid, Rachel, acts as a submissive female, even after Deckard "virtually rapes her". Thomas Foster writes, about the novel Dead Girls
by Richard Calder
, that the technological bodies of gynoids depict sexism in an unnatural context, highlighting its negative impact. They also show that stereotypes and societal attitudes will not necessarily be altered through technological progress.
Japanese anime
and manga
both have a long tradition of female robot characters. The artist Hajime Sorayama
is particularly influential, with his "sexy robot" images, found in his collection The Gynoids (1993). These pieces depict primarily females with metallic skin, and have been regarded as comments on gender and sexual conventions, and race, by highlighting the "whiteness" of the traditional pin-up girl. The sexualised images of gynoids have also been interpreted as fetishisation of the female body, racial differences, and technology.
in feminist discourse, as part of cyborg feminism, representing female physical strength and freedom from the expectation to reproduce.
in the Iliad
who created female servants of metal and Ilmarinen
in the Kalevala
who created an artificial wife. Probably most famous, however, is Pygmalion
, one of the earliest conceptualizations of constructions similar to gynoids in literary history, from Ovid
's account of Pygmalion. In this myth a female statue is sculpted that is so beautiful that the creator falls in love with it, and after praying to Venus
, the goddess takes pity on him and converts the statue into a real woman with whom Pygmalion has children.
The first gynoid in film, the maschinenmensch
("machine-human"), also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator", in Fritz Lang
's Metropolis
is also an example: a femininely shaped robot is given skin so that she is not known to be a robot and successfully impersonates the imprisoned Maria and works convincingly as an exotic dancer
.
Such gynoids are designed according to patriarchal stereotypes of a perfect women, being "sexy, dumb, and obedient", and reflect the emotional frustration of their creators. Fictional gynoids are often unique products made to fit a particular man's desire, as seen in the novel Tomorrow's Eve
and films The Benumbed Woman, The Stepford Wives
, Mannequin
and Weird Science
, and the creators are often male "mad scientists" such as the characters Rotwang
in Metropolis, Tyrell in Blade Runner, and the husbands in The Stepford Wives. Gynoids have been described as the "ultimate geek fantasy: a metal-and-plastic woman of your own".
The Bionic Woman
television series coined the word fembot. These fembots were a line of powerful life-like gynoids with the faces of protagonist Jaime Sommers
's best friends. They fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" and "Fembots in Las Vegas", and despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent
, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. The term "fembot" was also used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (referring to a robot duplicate of the title character, a.k.a. the Buffybot) and Futurama
.
The 1987 science fiction cult movie Cherry 2000
also portrayed a gynoid character which was described by the male protagonist as his "perfect partner". The 1964 TV series My Living Doll
features a robot, portrayed by Julie Newmar
, who is similarly described.
. However, she still has some stereotypically feminine qualities, such as a matronly shape and a predisposition to cry.
The stereotypical role of wifedom has also been explored through use of gynoids. In The Stepford Wives
, husbands are shown as desiring to restrict the independence of their wives, and obedient and stereotypical spouses are preferred. The husbands' technological method of obtaining this "perfect wife" is through the murder of their human wives and replacement with gynoid substitutes that are compliant and housework obsessed, resulting in a "picture-postcard" perfect suburban society. This has been seen as an allegory of male chauvinism of the period, by representing marriage as a master-slave relationship, and an attempt at raising feminist consciousness during the era of second wave feminism.
In a parody of the fembots from The Bionic Woman, attractive fembots in fuzzy see-through night-gowns were used as a lure for the fictional agent Austin Powers in the movie Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
. The film's sequels had cameo appearance
s of characters revealed as fembots.
Judith Halberstam
writes that these gynoids inform the viewer that femaleness does not indicate naturalness, and their exaggerated femininity and sexuality is used in a similar way to the title character's exaggerated masculinity, lampooning stereotypes.
Feminist critic Patricia Melzer writes in Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought that gynoids in Richard Calder's Dead Girls are inextricably linked to men's lust, and are mainly designed as sex-objects, having no use beyond "pleasing men's violent sexual desires".
The gynoid character Eve from the film Eve of Destruction
has been described as "a literal sex bomb", with her subservience to patriarchal authority and a bomb in place of reproductive organs. In the film The Perfect Women, the titular robot Olga is described as having "no sex", but Steve Chibnall writes in his essay "Alien Women" in British Science Fiction Cinema that it is clear from her fetishistic underwear that she is produced as a toy for men, with an "implicit fantasy of a fully compliant sex machine". In the film West World, female robots actually engaged in intercourse with human men as part of the make-believe vacation world human customers paid to attend.
Sex with gynoids has been compared to necrophilia. Sexual interest in gynoids and fembots has been attributed to fetishisation of technology, and compared to Sadomasochism in that it reorganizes the social risk of sex. The depiction of female robots minimizes the threat felt by men from female sexuality and allow the "erasure of any social interference in the spectator's erotic enjoyment of the image". Gynoid fantasies are produced and collected by online communities centered around chat rooms and web-site galleries.
Isaac Asimov writes that his robots were generally sexually neutral and that giving the majority masculine names was not an attempt to comment on gender. He first wrote about female-appearing robots at the request of editor Judy-Lynn del Rey
. Asimov's short story "Feminine Intuition" (1969) is an early example that showed gynoids as being as capable and versatile as male robots, with no sexual connotations. Early models in "Feminine Intuition" were "female caricatures", used to highlight their human creators' reactions to the idea of female robots. Later models lost obviously feminine features, but retained "an air of femininity".
were worried about German troops contracting venereal diseases from French prostitutes. They came up with a plan for soldiers to carry in their packs small, blow-up, blonde and blue-eyed dolls called gynoids, for use as sex 'comforters.' Fifty such dolls were ordered as a trial, but the troops were apparently too embarrassed to carry them and the idea died. The factory and prototypes were destroyed in the Dresden firebombing.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13dowd.html?src=recg
In 1983, a busty female robot named "Sweetheart" was removed from a display at Berkeley college after a petition was presented claiming it was insulting to women. The robot's creator, Clayton Bailey, a professor of art at California State University, East Bay
called this "censorship" and "next to book burning."
Female robots as sexual devices have also appeared, with early constructions being crude. The first was produced by Sex Objects Ltd, a British company, for use as a "sex-aid". It was called simply "36C", from her chest measurement, and had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesiser that allowed primitive responses to speech and push button inputs.
Gynoids may be "eroticized", and some examples such as Aiko include sensitivity sensors in their breasts and genitals to facilitate sexual response. The fetishization of gynoids in real life has been attributed to male desires for custom-made passive women, and has been compared to life-size sex doll
s.
Later examples include:
Gynoid has now gained popular usage to refer specifically to female robots as the term android is used almost universally to refer to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender. Android is perceived as implying a male-styled robot according to some cultural readings however.
Female robot
The term has more recently been applied to a humanoid robotHumanoid robot
A humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...
designed to more accurately look like a human female with much more realism than normal androids, or of those with a sexual connotation.
The term gynoid was used by Gwyneth Jones
Gwyneth Jones (novelist)
Gwyneth Jones is an English science fiction and fantasy writer and critic, and a young adult/children's writer under the name Ann Halam.-Biography and writing career:...
in her 1985 novel Divine Endurance to describe a robot slave character in a futuristic China, that is judged by her beauty.
The tongue-in-cheek portmanteau fembot (female robot) was used in the Austin Powers
Austin Powers (film series)
The Austin Powers series is a series of action-comedy films written by and starring Mike Myers as the title character, directed by Jay Roach and distributed by New Line Cinema...
films, a cultural play on the fembots originating in the TV series The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydiving accident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman ...
. Robotess is the oldest gender-specific term, originating in 1921 from the same source
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.The...
as robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
.
In fiction
Artificial women have been a common trope in fiction and mythology since the writings of the ancient Greeks. This has continued with modern fiction, particularly in the genre of science fiction. In science fiction, female-appearing robots are often produced for use as domestic servants and sexual slaves, as seen in the film WestworldWestworld
Westworld is a 1973 science fiction-thriller film written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton and produced by Paul Lazarus III. It stars Yul Brynner as a lifelike robot in a futuristic Western-themed amusement park, and Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as guests of the park.Westworld was the...
, Paul McAuley
Paul McAuley
Paul J. McAuley , a British botanist and award-winning author.A biologist by training, UK science fiction author McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction, dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternate history/alternate reality, and space travel.McAuley began with far-future space opera...
's novel Fairyland (1995), and Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey was the author of many of the Winston Science Fiction juvenile SF series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.-Birth...
's short story "Helen O'Loy" (1938), and sometimes as warriors, killers, or laborers.
Misogyny
The treatment of gynoids in fiction has been seen as a metaphor for misogyny, as in the film Blade RunnerBlade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
, in which all three of the important female characters are gynoids, two of whom use their sexuality to attempt to manipulate or kill the protagonist Rick Deckard, often using sexualised imagery, such as when Pris attempts to strangle him between her thighs. Daniel Dinello writes that the violence with which the gynoids are treated represents Deckard's hatred of women. The third gynoid, Rachel, acts as a submissive female, even after Deckard "virtually rapes her". Thomas Foster writes, about the novel Dead Girls
Dead Girls
Dead Girls is the début novel by British science fiction author Richard Calder, and was first published in the UK in 1992 and 1995 in the US ....
by Richard Calder
Richard Calder (writer)
Richard Calder is a notable British science fiction writer who lives and works in the East End of London, but who spent over a decade in Thailand and the Philippines ....
, that the technological bodies of gynoids depict sexism in an unnatural context, highlighting its negative impact. They also show that stereotypes and societal attitudes will not necessarily be altered through technological progress.
Japanese anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
and manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
both have a long tradition of female robot characters. The artist Hajime Sorayama
Hajime Sorayama
is a Japanese illustrator, known for his precisely detailed, erotic airbrush portrayals of women and feminine robots.-Biography:Hajime Sorayama was born in 1947 in Imabari, Ehime prefecture, Japan. He received his basic education at Imabari Kita High School. In 1965 he was admitted to the Shikoku...
is particularly influential, with his "sexy robot" images, found in his collection The Gynoids (1993). These pieces depict primarily females with metallic skin, and have been regarded as comments on gender and sexual conventions, and race, by highlighting the "whiteness" of the traditional pin-up girl. The sexualised images of gynoids have also been interpreted as fetishisation of the female body, racial differences, and technology.
Female freedom
Gynoids have also been used as a metaphorMetaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
in feminist discourse, as part of cyborg feminism, representing female physical strength and freedom from the expectation to reproduce.
The perfect woman
A long tradition exists in fiction, of men attempting to create the stereotypical ideal woman, and fictional gynoids have been seen as an extension of this theme. Examples include HephaestusHephaestus
Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan. He is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of the Gods - or else, according to some accounts, of Hera alone. He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes...
in the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
who created female servants of metal and Ilmarinen
Ilmarinen
Seppo Ilmarinen, the Eternal Hammerer, blacksmith and inventor in the Kalevala, is an archetypal artificer from Finnish mythology. Immortal, he is capable of creating practically anything, but is portrayed as unlucky in love...
in the Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
who created an artificial wife. Probably most famous, however, is Pygmalion
Pygmalion (mythology)
Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.-In Ovid:In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a...
, one of the earliest conceptualizations of constructions similar to gynoids in literary history, from Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's account of Pygmalion. In this myth a female statue is sculpted that is so beautiful that the creator falls in love with it, and after praying to Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
, the goddess takes pity on him and converts the statue into a real woman with whom Pygmalion has children.
The first gynoid in film, the maschinenmensch
Maschinenmensch
The Maschinenmensch from Metropolis, is a gynoid played by German actress Brigitte Helm in both her robotic and human incarnations...
("machine-human"), also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator", in Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
is also an example: a femininely shaped robot is given skin so that she is not known to be a robot and successfully impersonates the imprisoned Maria and works convincingly as an exotic dancer
Exotic dancer
The terms exotic dancer and exotic dance can have different meanings in different parts of the world and depending on context. In the erotic sense, "exotic dance" is a often used to refer to practitioners of striptease...
.
Such gynoids are designed according to patriarchal stereotypes of a perfect women, being "sexy, dumb, and obedient", and reflect the emotional frustration of their creators. Fictional gynoids are often unique products made to fit a particular man's desire, as seen in the novel Tomorrow's Eve
The Future Eve
The Future Eve is a Symbolist science fiction novel by the French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam...
and films The Benumbed Woman, The Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands.Two films of...
, Mannequin
Mannequin (1987 film)
Mannequin is a 1987 romantic comedy film, starring Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Meshach Taylor, James Spader, G. W. Bailey, and Estelle Getty...
and Weird Science
Weird Science (film)
Weird Science is a 1985 American teen comedy film written and directed by John Hughes and starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Kelly LeBrock...
, and the creators are often male "mad scientists" such as the characters Rotwang
Rotwang
C. A. Rotwang is a fictional character in Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction film Metropolis. Rotwang was played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge.- Character overview :...
in Metropolis, Tyrell in Blade Runner, and the husbands in The Stepford Wives. Gynoids have been described as the "ultimate geek fantasy: a metal-and-plastic woman of your own".
The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydiving accident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman ...
television series coined the word fembot. These fembots were a line of powerful life-like gynoids with the faces of protagonist Jaime Sommers
Jaime Sommers (Bionic Woman)
Jaime Wells Sommers is a fictional character portrayed by Michelle Ryan in Bionic Woman, a remake of the original 1970s series The Bionic Woman in which Lindsay Wagner portrayed Jaime Sommers...
's best friends. They fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" and "Fembots in Las Vegas", and despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. The term "fembot" was also used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (referring to a robot duplicate of the title character, a.k.a. the Buffybot) and Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
.
The 1987 science fiction cult movie Cherry 2000
Cherry 2000
Cherry 2000 is a 1987 science fiction cult film starring Melanie Griffith and David Andrews.-Plot :In the year 2017, robotic technology has made tremendous developments. Business executive Sam Treadwell's "Cherry 2000" android , short circuits during a make out session on the wet kitchen floor...
also portrayed a gynoid character which was described by the male protagonist as his "perfect partner". The 1964 TV series My Living Doll
My Living Doll
My Living Doll is an American science fiction sitcom that aired for 26 episodes on CBS from September 27, 1964 to September 8, 1965. This series was produced by Jack Chertok and was filmed at Desilu studios by Jack Chertok Television, Inc., in association with the CBS Television Network...
features a robot, portrayed by Julie Newmar
Julie Newmar
Julie Newmar is an American actress, dancer and singer. Her most famous role is Catwoman in the Batman television series.-Early life:...
, who is similarly described.
Gender
Fiction about gynoids or female cyborgs reinforce essentialist ideas of femininity, according to Magret Grebowicz. Such essentialist ideas may present as sexual or gender stereotypes. Among the few non-eroticized fictional gynoids include Rosie the Robot Maid from The JetsonsThe Jetsons
The Jetsons is a animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing in prime-time from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987...
. However, she still has some stereotypically feminine qualities, such as a matronly shape and a predisposition to cry.
The Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands.Two films of...
, husbands are shown as desiring to restrict the independence of their wives, and obedient and stereotypical spouses are preferred. The husbands' technological method of obtaining this "perfect wife" is through the murder of their human wives and replacement with gynoid substitutes that are compliant and housework obsessed, resulting in a "picture-postcard" perfect suburban society. This has been seen as an allegory of male chauvinism of the period, by representing marriage as a master-slave relationship, and an attempt at raising feminist consciousness during the era of second wave feminism.
In a parody of the fembots from The Bionic Woman, attractive fembots in fuzzy see-through night-gowns were used as a lure for the fictional agent Austin Powers in the movie Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery is a 1997 American science fiction/action-comedy film and the first film of the Austin Powers series. It was directed by Jay Roach and written by Mike Myers who also stars in the title role. Myers also plays Dr. Evil, Austin Powers' arch-enemy...
. The film's sequels had cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s of characters revealed as fembots.
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam
Judith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...
writes that these gynoids inform the viewer that femaleness does not indicate naturalness, and their exaggerated femininity and sexuality is used in a similar way to the title character's exaggerated masculinity, lampooning stereotypes.
Sex objects
Some argue that gynoids have often been portrayed as sexual objects. Female cyborgs have been similarly used in fiction, in which natural bodies are modified to become objects of fantasy. The female robot in visual media has been described as "the most visible linkage of technology and sex" by Steven Heller.Feminist critic Patricia Melzer writes in Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought that gynoids in Richard Calder's Dead Girls are inextricably linked to men's lust, and are mainly designed as sex-objects, having no use beyond "pleasing men's violent sexual desires".
The gynoid character Eve from the film Eve of Destruction
Eve of Destruction (film)
Eve of Destruction is a 1991 science fiction film about a cyborg named Eve, designed in secret by the United States military for undercover operations. The film stars Gregory Hines as Colonel Jim McQuade and Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk with the dual roles as the cyborg's creator Dr...
has been described as "a literal sex bomb", with her subservience to patriarchal authority and a bomb in place of reproductive organs. In the film The Perfect Women, the titular robot Olga is described as having "no sex", but Steve Chibnall writes in his essay "Alien Women" in British Science Fiction Cinema that it is clear from her fetishistic underwear that she is produced as a toy for men, with an "implicit fantasy of a fully compliant sex machine". In the film West World, female robots actually engaged in intercourse with human men as part of the make-believe vacation world human customers paid to attend.
Sex with gynoids has been compared to necrophilia. Sexual interest in gynoids and fembots has been attributed to fetishisation of technology, and compared to Sadomasochism in that it reorganizes the social risk of sex. The depiction of female robots minimizes the threat felt by men from female sexuality and allow the "erasure of any social interference in the spectator's erotic enjoyment of the image". Gynoid fantasies are produced and collected by online communities centered around chat rooms and web-site galleries.
Isaac Asimov writes that his robots were generally sexually neutral and that giving the majority masculine names was not an attempt to comment on gender. He first wrote about female-appearing robots at the request of editor Judy-Lynn del Rey
Judy-Lynn del Rey
Judy-Lynn del Rey née Benjamin was a science fiction editor.Born with dwarfism, she was a fan and regular attendee at science fiction conventions and worked her way up the publishing ladder, starting with work at the science fiction magazine Galaxy.Judy-Lynn was friends with Lester del Rey and...
. Asimov's short story "Feminine Intuition" (1969) is an early example that showed gynoids as being as capable and versatile as male robots, with no sexual connotations. Early models in "Feminine Intuition" were "female caricatures", used to highlight their human creators' reactions to the idea of female robots. Later models lost obviously feminine features, but retained "an air of femininity".
As sexual devices
Female robots have generated controversy. According to British author Graeme Donald, Hitler and Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
were worried about German troops contracting venereal diseases from French prostitutes. They came up with a plan for soldiers to carry in their packs small, blow-up, blonde and blue-eyed dolls called gynoids, for use as sex 'comforters.' Fifty such dolls were ordered as a trial, but the troops were apparently too embarrassed to carry them and the idea died. The factory and prototypes were destroyed in the Dresden firebombing.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13dowd.html?src=recg
In 1983, a busty female robot named "Sweetheart" was removed from a display at Berkeley college after a petition was presented claiming it was insulting to women. The robot's creator, Clayton Bailey, a professor of art at California State University, East Bay
California State University, East Bay
California State University, East Bay is a public university located in the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The university, as part of the 23-campus California State University system, offers over 100 areas of study...
called this "censorship" and "next to book burning."
Female robots as sexual devices have also appeared, with early constructions being crude. The first was produced by Sex Objects Ltd, a British company, for use as a "sex-aid". It was called simply "36C", from her chest measurement, and had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesiser that allowed primitive responses to speech and push button inputs.
Gynoids may be "eroticized", and some examples such as Aiko include sensitivity sensors in their breasts and genitals to facilitate sexual response. The fetishization of gynoids in real life has been attributed to male desires for custom-made passive women, and has been compared to life-size sex doll
Sex doll
A sex doll is a type of sex toy in the size and shape of a sexual partner for aid in masturbation....
s.
Later examples include:
- Project Aiko, an attempt at producing a realistic-looking female android. It speaks Japanese and English and has been produced for a price of 13000 Euros
- EveR-1EveR-1EveR-1 is a female android, developed by a team of South Korean scientists from the in Korea University of Science and Technology. The project is headed by Baeg Moon-hong and was unveiled to the public at in Seoul on May 4, 2003...
- Actroid, designed by Hiroshi Ishiguro to be "a perfect secretary who smiles and flutters her eyelids"
- HRP-4CHRP-4CThe HRP-4C is a female humanoid robot, created by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology - a Japanese research facility. An in-public demonstration was put on March 16, 2009. It measures 158 centimetres tall, and weighs 43 kilos - including a battery pack...
- Meinü robotMeinü robotA Meinü robot is a Chinese gynoid model which was reported on in Chinese news sources in 2006. In Mandarin, Měinǚ Jīqìrén 美女机器人 literally means "beautiful-woman robot" and is officially translated "beauty robot"...
See also
- CyborgCyborgA cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
- Gender in science fictionGender in science fictionGender has been an important theme explored in speculative fiction. The genres that make up speculative fiction , science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror and related genres , have always offered the opportunity for writers to explore social conventions, including gender, gender roles, and...
- Humanoid robotHumanoid robotA humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...
- Robot fetishismRobot fetishismRobot fetishism is a fetishistic attraction to humanoid robots; also to people acting like robots or people dressed in robot costumes. A less common fantasy involves transformation into a robot...
- RoxxxyRoxxxyRoxxxy, termed a 'sex robot' is a full-size interactive sex doll. The robot is built by the New Jersey-based company TrueCompanion.Its engineer is Douglas Hines, founder and president of the company, who worked as an artificial intelligence engineer at the Bell Labs before he founded...
- My Living DollMy Living DollMy Living Doll is an American science fiction sitcom that aired for 26 episodes on CBS from September 27, 1964 to September 8, 1965. This series was produced by Jack Chertok and was filmed at Desilu studios by Jack Chertok Television, Inc., in association with the CBS Television Network...