It feels as though I’m supposed to be enraged about sex robots, sex-bots, robosexuals, whatever, as viewed on the recent Channel 4 The Sex Robots Are Coming documentary. That I should be unnerved about the likes of new improved prototype Harmony and her promise of brushed-plastic erotica. Not that I judge Harmony – what human woman hasn’t shown off to a man in a bar about her gifts for “internal heating” and “self-lubrication”? Hey ladeez, we all use what we’ve got, right? Nor is it Harmony’s fault that she exists. In fact, perhaps there are other women like me, who (whisper it) almost feel sorry for her.

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It makes sense that women especially might be disturbed by sex-bots. There are vastly more of the female variety and it’s all a bit Stepford Men’s Association: femme machines drafted in to replace the “faulty” (assertive, rebellious, breathing) real versions. In a certain vision of male utopia, instead of real women and their buzzkill notions about equality and self-will, men would return home to find chick-bots such as Harmony clattering around the kitchen, in the manner of an eroticised C-3PO.

Perchance Harmony would proffer a chicken ready-meal, purring electronically: “You must maintain energy so that, later, you are able to sexually satisfy me with your unusually large phallus.” And if Harmony accidentally ingested a splash of gravy, her face melted and her breasts started rotating anti-clockwise, then she could always be sent back to the workshop for an upgrade. Or a service man could pop around and fix the boiler at the same time.

However, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves – that’s the glorious AI/porn crossover future. Right now, the sex robots that were born out of pornography seem doomed to reflect their source in all the usual derogatory, dehumanising, misogynistic ways, while adding a few more for good measure.

Maybe they will be programmed to say, 'Take me big boy … and also take the bins out'

It’s telling that these robots only endeavour to be “realistic” when it comes to their techno-squelchy sexual parts, while remaining unrealistic in terms of female beauty and everyday relationship interaction. Or maybe I’m wrong and they’ll be programmed to say: “Take me, big boy… and also take the bins out.” It’s also tragic to think of humans having sex, not with each other, but with something that has more in common with an interactive (albeit very turned-on) Furby. Couldn’t humankind, even at its loneliest, and most damaged, do a bit better than that?

Some might say, what about those women who buy realistic baby dolls – isn’t that also satisfying a basic human need? And what about women who buy vibrators? However, from the looks of it, women who buy baby dolls don’t feel angry or controlling towards real babies, nor rejected by them. Nor is anyone claiming that vibrators replace the whole man.

This may be the core difficulty with sex-bots – not that they replicate sex, but that they represent how some men want to replace and improve upon real women and not just physically. That they appeal to men who are only interested in almost silent, but always compliant, sexually available “women”, for whom self-will is always a microchip away.

Then again (silver lining!), what woman would want to have sex with the kind of men who would buy eroto-bots anyway? This mentality has long existed in some shape or form and, if now these men are going to be busy playing with sex-bots, and no longer bothering, boring, or unnerving real women… well, hallelujah for that!

This is why, far from bridling at being replaced, some women may just feel bizarrely, irrationally sorry for Harmony and her porno-bot sisters. We know what’s coming, so to speak. Indeed, considering the types of men who would buy sex-bots, it doesn’t seem too much of a loss for womankind; if anything, it borders on a boon. A case of: “Great, replace us, go ahead!”