"The Future of Intimacy and Sextech: Gendered Modalities of Posthuman Technologies in Sexual Commerce"

这个项目试图通过对Lovotics、遗产主义和女权主义思想相遇的未被探索的知识节点的调查，来探索人工女性身体的不同表现如何有助于创建性技术在情感上的亲密互动。同时，这项研究将调查为什么通过性技术和性爱机器人来寻找亲密关系，或“有限的真实”(Bernstein，2007)，以及当这些关系被转移到这一性技术领域时会发生什么。关于性爱机器人的讨论的盛行表明，人们对HRI的焦虑与日俱增(Scheutz&Arnold，2016)，而“Lovotics”这一新兴领域试图探寻人类与机器人之间浪漫互动的可能性(Levy，Cheok&Devlin，2016)。这一研究领域正在共生和指数级增长，因为性技术行业爆炸式增长，成为一个价值300亿美元的市场(Davis，2018)。将技术创新融入到性满足设备中的一整套产品，包括性爱机器人、化身、聊天机器人、人工智能性爱玩具和远程医疗等。这些表现可以分为两类：一类是试图人工复制人体的，另一类是不这样做的。女权主义理论长期以来一直试图质疑身体的物质意义，重新审视其在我们死后世界的政治意义--最具代表性的例子是唐娜·哈拉韦(Donna Haraway)的机器人，她努力消除身份的简化分类法(2010)。然而，Rosi Braidotti对新自由主义市场操纵死后人类的积极潜力的批评表明，哈拉韦的半机械人已经进化成我们今天(2013年)看到的当代女性机器人。随着性别划分的女性科技机构渗入性商业领域，新的女权主义焦虑已经出现。在社会学领域，伊丽莎白·伯恩斯坦注意到了当前性交易的蓬勃发展趋势，消费者寻求“有限的真实性……买卖真实的情感和身体联系”(2007，p.192)。爱情学家还热衷于探索如何在HRI中体验亲密关系，并将大量重点放在这种亲密关系固有的各种可能性和潜力上。对于一些机器人专家来说，这一领域的性别拟人化推动了对人造女性身体的批判性反思(Shaw-Garlock，2014)，以询问旨在模仿人类身体而设计的技术身体代表了什么。虽然Lovotics未能审问性别化身体的象征意义和意义，但它密切关注“人类和机器人之间的亲密关系”(Levy&Cheok，2018)。爱情学家和社会学家都对人权倡议感兴趣，因为学术社会学的焦点是热衷于探索亲密关系在我们的社会历史背景下的表现以及它如何在技术上转化(Jamieson，2011)。随着社会环境的变化，人们开始质疑资本主义市场是如何导致亲密关系商业化的。技术对商品化过程的影响提出了一些关键问题，即哪些亲密行为在这个市场上蓬勃发展。这如何影响“性别(自我)表征和性主观性”，以及这些亲密关系是如何通过不同的技术媒介表现出来的？(Attwood等人，2017，第249页)。为了探索这些焦点，以下研究问题指导了调查：在性技术发展的背景下，人造女性身体的政治意义是什么，这与女权主义理论和性别研究中更广泛的关切有什么关系？我们是否可以将人造女性身体视为性技术领域中亲密关系的渠道，并在全球化的性商业中探索这一趋势？考虑到西方社会领域的死后发展，性别研究必须在多大程度上纳入对身体的修改？

This project seeks to explore how different manifestations of artificial female bodies serve to create emotionally intimate interactions with sex-tech, through an investigation of the unexplored nodes of knowledge where Lovotics, posthumanism, and feminist thinking meet. Simultaneously, this research will investigate why intimate relationships, or "bounded authenticity" (Bernstein, 2007) are sought via sex-tech and sex robots, and what happens when these relationships are transposed into this field of sex-tech. The prevalence of discussions regarding sex robots shows a growing anxiety around HRI (Scheutz & Arnold, 2016), while the emergent field of "Lovotics" seeks to interrogate the possibilities of romantic interaction between humans and robots (Levy, Cheok & Devlin, 2016). This field of study is growing both symbiotically and exponentially as the sex-tech industry explodes into a 30 billion-dollar market (Davis, 2018). The panoply of products that incorporate technological innovation into devices for sexual satisfaction, includes, inter alia, sex-robots, avatars, chatbots, AI sex toys, and teledildonics. These manifestations can be divided into two categories: those that seek to artificially replicate the human body, and those that do not. Feminist theory has long sought to interrogate the materiality of the body, revisiting its political significance in our posthuman world- the most iconic example being Donna Haraway's cyborg that strives to dissolve reductive taxonomies of identity (2010). However, Rosi Braidotti's critique of the neoliberal market's manipulation of the positive potential of the posthuman has shown Haraway's cyborg to have evolved into the contemporary gynoids we see today (2013). With gendered-female technological bodies permeating the field of sexual commerce, new feminist anxieties have arisen. In the field of sociology, Elizabeth Bernstein has noted a burgeoning trend in current sexual commerce, where consumers seek "bounded authenticity... the sale and purchase of authentic emotional and physical connection" (2007, p.192). Lovoticists are also keen to explore how intimacy can be experienced in HRI, with a great deal of focus centred on the variety of possibilities and potentialities inherent to this intimacy. For some roboticists, gendered anthropomorphism in this field has created the impetus for critical reflection on the artificial female body (Shaw-Garlock, 2014), to interrogate what technological bodies designed with the intention of emulating human ones represent. Whilst Lovotics fails to interrogate the symbolism and significance of the gendered body, it pays close attention to "intimacy between humans and robots" (Levy & Cheok, 2018). Lovoticists and sociologists share this interest in HRI, as academic sociological focus is keen to explore manifestations of intimacy in our socio-historical context and how it translates technologically (Jamieson, 2011). As the social-scape changes, questions have arisen regarding the way in which capitalist markets have led to the commercialisation of intimacy. Technology's influence on the commodification process raises key questions regarding which intimacies thrive in this market. How does this affect "gendered (self) representations and sexual subjectivities" and how are these intimacies manifested through different technological mediums? (Attwood et al., 2017, p. 249). To explore these focus points, the following research questions direct the investigation: What is the political significance of the artificial female body in the context of developments in sex-tech, and how does this relate to wider concerns within feminist theory and gender studies?Can we consider the artificial female body as a conduit for intimacy in the field of sex-tech, and explore this trend in relation to globalised sexual commerce? To what extent must Gender Studies incorporate a 'Revision of the Body' given posthuman developments in the Western social-sphere?