X Close

The sex coach is killing intimacy Therapists aren't a substitute for relationships

Sylvester Stallone never played it safe. (The Specialist/IMDB)

Sylvester Stallone never played it safe. (The Specialist/IMDB)


August 5, 2023   6 mins

There’s a scene in the movie Demolition Man where two characters have sex — or rather, what passes for sex in the futuristic utopia where the film takes place. The act itself has been replaced by a cybernetic facsimile thereof: now, sex is done fully clothed, from opposite sides of the room, while wearing giant virtual reality helmets that conduct the “digitised transference of sexual energies”. This is when one of the characters, a time-travelling visitor from the unenlightened past played by Sylvester Stallone, takes off his helmet and wryly suggests doing it the old-fashioned way.

His date (Sandra Bullock) recoils: “Ew! Disgusting! You mean…” — she can barely say it without gagging — “…fluid transfer?!”

This scene isn’t exactly pivotal to the movie, but with time it’s come to seem significant. “Rampant exchange of bodily fluids was one of the major reasons for the downfall of society,” Sandra Bullock says, explaining that the practice — which includes not only sex but kissing — has been outlawed in the name of safety. In our future, human touch has been deemed a luxury no enlightened society can afford.

Obviously, our own attempts at social engineering haven’t reached the point of outlawing physical contact, although the height of the Covid pandemic brought us remarkably and sometimes hilariously close. Remember when a Canadian Center for Disease Control recommended that couples have sex through glory holes to avoid breathing on each other? And yet, that instinct towards safetyism is one to which human beings have always been susceptible — and one that’s visible today in our ongoing attempts to streamline, organise, automate and make frictionless all the parts of life that used to be messy.

The vacuum left by the decline of old-fashioned dating and relationshipping, the kind that involved meeting someone in person and experiencing the exciting chemical process known as “hitting it off”, has been filled by a fair amount of explicitly anti-social behaviour as people eschew, or even fear, the possibility of making a connection without the intermediary of a screen. Meanwhile, the lure of the online world and its peculiar system of rewards has upended the etiquette surrounding romantic entanglements, particularly when it comes to being gracious with and about rejection. It is not frowned upon, for instance, to publicly share and mock the awkward messages men send to hopeful matches on dating apps.

The more we delegate to the apps and the algorithms, the more we swipe and tap our screens, the less we ever actually touch anything else, including each other. In lieu of connection, what we increasingly have are services, which offer a safe, controlled facsimile of the real thing. A lot of these are also online: there are the camgirls who perform for a faceless crowd of observers, all competing for their attention through donations. There are the OnlyFans performers who offer the illusion of an intimate online connection in exchange for cash. There are virtual chatbots who will role-play as your girlfriend and talk to you for hours; some of them are even AI clones of real people.

But most interesting, and most controversial, are the services that simulate intimacy face-to-face and skin-to-skin. In the past, a person aching to be touched by another human being would make do with massage or having a stranger shampoo her hair; now, there’s a booming cottage industry of professional cuddlers who will hold you (or just hold your hand) for about $100 per hour. One, recently profiled in the New Yorker, has a menu of 80 different positions to choose from and says that the country is suffering from an epidemic of “skin hunger” in the wake of the pandemic — though he skirts the question of whether said hunger can truly be satisfied by this sort of transactional intimacy. All he knows is, his clients keep coming back.

A professional cuddle is safe and certified, but also explicitly non-sexual. For those who want more, who desire the intimacy but not the risks or vulnerability or self-doubt of a sexual relationship, there’s a whole new category of sex therapist, one who will not only discuss the physical act of love, but actually do it with you — at least sometimes, at least for a while. Their patients are people who struggle with physical intimacy, perhaps due to disability, military injury or gender transition. They call themselves “surrogate partners”.

A New York Times article about the practice is at pains to explain that they are not prostitutes, but nor are they just therapists. What they offer is something like psychology with a dash of sex work, with elements of self-improvement and skill-building. To me, they seem like a sort of sexual sensei, the equivalent of a fencing coach who has to spar with his client to help them improve their game. But also the word, surrogate, means substitute or replacement, and a central tenet of these relationships is that they’ll eventually end — that the surrogate partner will be replaced by a real one.

Here, there seems to be something of a catch-22: how well do the teachings of a paid sexual sensei translate in real-world relationships? By the time you’ve hired one of these therapists to teach you how to have a normal sex life, don’t you sort of definitionally not have one? When you find a real partner, do you tell them about the sex therapy you’ve had, as you might discuss your sexual history — or keep it to yourself, as you might the intricacies of your medical one?

But the question of whether surrogate partners are effective is less interesting than the question of how they came to exist, what societal void they’re filling. Obviously, there’s always been a market for people who are willing to trade sex for money — but again, these are not prostitutes. (As one of the profiled therapists notes, sex workers do not generally require you to attend months of therapy before sleeping with you.) Their appeal, their purpose, must be something else. Maybe it’s this: they make formal and transactional what is, by nature, unpredictable and messy.

A surrogate partner will never ghost you, never blindside you with an “it’s not you it’s me” breakup; “sessions,” the New York Times notes, “are typically held weekly, in one to two-hour meetings until all three” — that is, the client, referring therapist, and surrogate —”agree that the therapy is complete.”

In this way, surrogate partners seem to be a product of a broad cultural desire to organise every emotionally risky endeavour into a rules-based framework that makes it safe — from refereeing the conflicts of children during their parent-organised playdates to making spontaneous flirtation taboo (“I didn’t consent to being asked out!”). We’re not quite at the point of finding the unbridled human experience revolting, or trying to make it illegal, but there does seem to be an emerging consensus that fumbling around in the sexual realm, be it literally or figuratively, is dangerous.

The controlled, controllable, bought-and-paid-for version of intimacy offered by professional cuddlers and surrogate partners is arguably one example of mitigating that danger. Another, perhaps, is the incursion into ordinary relationships of therapy-speak, which simultaneously obscures and exacerbates whatever actual conflicts a couple might have. A scroll through TikTok or Instagram reveals that normal dating and relationships have been all but pathologised, the conversation surrounding them rife with “red flags” and “triggers” and “boundaries” — the latter often used to describe things that might have once been called “preferences”.

In one recent and remarkable example, the actor Jonah Hill was accused of “coercive control” (note: still more therapy-speak) after his ex leaked a years-old text message in which he described his desire for her not to post bikini pictures on Instagram as one of his “boundaries”. On the one hand, the whole incident was just a piece of not-particularly-salacious celebrity gossip; on the other, it does reveal the mechanisms by which we try to protect ourselves from our own human messiness. To speak of boundaries in this context implies a sort of moral righteousness — the kind associated with the phrase “doing the work” — even as you seek to exert undue control over another person’s choices. It also implies that this is a high-stakes conflict in which the very integrity of one’s person is at risk. Yet scratch the surface of Hill’s so-called boundaries, and what do you find? Jealousy, plain and simple.

Of course, it’s not hard to figure out why someone would prefer to frame this as a conversation about boundaries instead of one about jealousy. Boundaries are enlightened, elevated, therapeutic. Jealousy is ugly, and unpleasant, and ordinary.

And so is loneliness.

Here is where, I think, the worlds of therapy-speak and surrogate partners and professional cuddlers collide: people don’t want to feel bad. They especially don’t want to feel bad about themselves. And channeling our feelings of humiliation or loneliness or jealousy through a different framework, be it therapeutic or transactional, allows us to pretend that they’re something other than what they really are. To hold them at a clinical distance. To experience them as an inoffensive copy of a copy of a copy of the real thing.

It’s an understandable impulse, not to want to wade around in the mess. And maybe for some people, the ones who might never otherwise experience intimacy at all, the ones who fear losing control too much to ever allow themselves to be vulnerable, these risk-free relationships — or the illusion thereof — are as good as it gets. But it’s hard not to notice that, like the VR sex helmets in Demolition Man, the safe and transactional version of intimacy has a way of making everything a little bit less human — including ourselves.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

katrosenfield

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

100 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago

The problem is viewing sex and relationships as an end in itself.
Whereas, whether for to biological or cultural reasons, and despite all the new fangled “casual sex” stuff, most men and women still view relationships as a starting point to a family and settled life.

And that’s the big problem.
On women’s side, for all the fancy talk about equality, ultimately a man’s earnings are the key criteria and as women earn more, the pool of eligible men declines.
On the male side, for the majority, what’s the point of trying to engage if the chances are low, the process painful given how entitled women are, and you have a 50% chance of losing your house and kids anyway for no fault of yours.

The destruction of long term relationship and marriage is what has filtered back and damaged the process of dating and human connections.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Perhaps another way of putting it is asking the question – what % of the opposite sex are now really long term relationship material (in the eyes of the other sex). And that before you even get to individual questions of compatibility. Scarily low I would say.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Scarily low, but in high education, liberal (in the actual sense, not the political) societies that treat women fairly or better.

Meanwhile, societies that treat women like trash invariably still have TFRs above 3.

The world’s going to be rather interesting – and, ironically, nastier – in a couple of generations.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

..if we manage to get to that point!

John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I think not. The two are not mutually exclusive. Our problem is that modern feminists convince women that their careers and incomes are more important than relationships and family. They are not, and never were for men or for women. This severe overshoot on Women’s Liberation is manifesting itself as women aging out biologically, only find their careers unrewarding regardless of accomplishments — just as men discovered in the long term. High status women and low status men are, statistically, the odd man out. That’s okay, they’ll have deep fakes to fill the void!

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

Polygamous societies have this same dynamic: the losers are high status women and low status men – the latter because they don’t get to reproduce and the former because they do, but have to share resources with other women. The winners, of course, are high status men (always) but also low status women, who can end up raising children with greater resources and advantages than they could in monogamous societies.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

Polygamous societies have this same dynamic: the losers are high status women and low status men – the latter because they don’t get to reproduce and the former because they do, but have to share resources with other women. The winners, of course, are high status men (always) but also low status women, who can end up raising children with greater resources and advantages than they could in monogamous societies.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

In places where the life expectancy, standard of living, social mobility and education level are very low, fertility and marriage rates are also much higher. So perhaps you’d advocate a traditional, stable, intergenerational privation like that of Bangladesh. (And it’s true that some of the poor and unschooled are quite happy, at least compared to us).
Is treating women like trash only correlated to or causally connected to better fertility?
*comment self-moderated

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

‘places where the life expectancy, standard of living, social mobility and education level are very low, fertility and marriage rates are also much higher. ”
Yes, pretty much

“Is treating women like trash only correlated to or causally connected to better fertility?”
They happen to be correlated, yes.

“So perhaps you’d advocate a traditional, stable, intergenerational privation like that of Bangladesh.”
Not really, no. I am not advocating it, just pointing out the outcome of the correlation between treating women like trash and high TFRs. As I suggested, the outcome will be pretty nasty irrespective of gender.

Last edited 1 year ago by Samir Iker
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Fair enough. Thanks for the itemized clarification (being sincere now).

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

No, I didn’t consider your comment to be insincere. I realised that the initial comment suggested that I was being gleeful at the prospect, but imho it would be genuinely a serious issue as less liberal and less educated parts of human society start to, in rather crude terms, “outbreed” the more developed ones where women have more rights

It would seem for instance to be a problem already in parts of Asia, where more westernised, educated classes who support their daughters are getting outnumbered population wise – because they , typically have just one kid (and couldn’t care less if happens to be a daughter)

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I’ve come to respect your bluntness and intelligence over time. In future, I will try to extend you more benefit of the doubt, not get so quickly upset at your perceived “tone”, and pick my moments better. After all, my post sometimes have “tonal issues” too.
It would be nice to find a middle (or somewhere-in-the-middle) ground between these extremes: 1) barely replacement rate fertility in most developed or majority white nations 2) robust population growth in the poorest places with the least rights for women, such as Afghanistan or Guatemala. So this outbreeding situation is already underway isn’t it.
Maybe marriage, with children, can become more of the default norm in the West again, but without the type of social compulsion or boots pressing down on women found in the worst places for female freedom.
I think we can agree that so far we haven’t found any good balance. Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Good God are you two having a civil disagreement, showing respect and courtesy? That’s quite enough of that!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

“What’s all this then? Move it along.”

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

“What’s all this then? Move it along.”

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Good God are you two having a civil disagreement, showing respect and courtesy? That’s quite enough of that!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I’ve come to respect your bluntness and intelligence over time. In future, I will try to extend you more benefit of the doubt, not get so quickly upset at your perceived “tone”, and pick my moments better. After all, my post sometimes have “tonal issues” too.
It would be nice to find a middle (or somewhere-in-the-middle) ground between these extremes: 1) barely replacement rate fertility in most developed or majority white nations 2) robust population growth in the poorest places with the least rights for women, such as Afghanistan or Guatemala. So this outbreeding situation is already underway isn’t it.
Maybe marriage, with children, can become more of the default norm in the West again, but without the type of social compulsion or boots pressing down on women found in the worst places for female freedom.
I think we can agree that so far we haven’t found any good balance. Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

No, I didn’t consider your comment to be insincere. I realised that the initial comment suggested that I was being gleeful at the prospect, but imho it would be genuinely a serious issue as less liberal and less educated parts of human society start to, in rather crude terms, “outbreed” the more developed ones where women have more rights

It would seem for instance to be a problem already in parts of Asia, where more westernised, educated classes who support their daughters are getting outnumbered population wise – because they , typically have just one kid (and couldn’t care less if happens to be a daughter)

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Fair enough. Thanks for the itemized clarification (being sincere now).

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

‘places where the life expectancy, standard of living, social mobility and education level are very low, fertility and marriage rates are also much higher. ”
Yes, pretty much

“Is treating women like trash only correlated to or causally connected to better fertility?”
They happen to be correlated, yes.

“So perhaps you’d advocate a traditional, stable, intergenerational privation like that of Bangladesh.”
Not really, no. I am not advocating it, just pointing out the outcome of the correlation between treating women like trash and high TFRs. As I suggested, the outcome will be pretty nasty irrespective of gender.

Last edited 1 year ago by Samir Iker
Luke Piggott
Luke Piggott
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

What do you mean by “actual not political”? I don’t understand how they are exclusive to one another.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

..if we manage to get to that point!

John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

I think not. The two are not mutually exclusive. Our problem is that modern feminists convince women that their careers and incomes are more important than relationships and family. They are not, and never were for men or for women. This severe overshoot on Women’s Liberation is manifesting itself as women aging out biologically, only find their careers unrewarding regardless of accomplishments — just as men discovered in the long term. High status women and low status men are, statistically, the odd man out. That’s okay, they’ll have deep fakes to fill the void!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

In places where the life expectancy, standard of living, social mobility and education level are very low, fertility and marriage rates are also much higher. So perhaps you’d advocate a traditional, stable, intergenerational privation like that of Bangladesh. (And it’s true that some of the poor and unschooled are quite happy, at least compared to us).
Is treating women like trash only correlated to or causally connected to better fertility?
*comment self-moderated

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Luke Piggott
Luke Piggott
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

What do you mean by “actual not political”? I don’t understand how they are exclusive to one another.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Scarily low, but in high education, liberal (in the actual sense, not the political) societies that treat women fairly or better.

Meanwhile, societies that treat women like trash invariably still have TFRs above 3.

The world’s going to be rather interesting – and, ironically, nastier – in a couple of generations.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

That seems to make a great deal of sense.. it’s just not worth the risk anymore.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Perhaps another way of putting it is asking the question – what % of the opposite sex are now really long term relationship material (in the eyes of the other sex). And that before you even get to individual questions of compatibility. Scarily low I would say.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

That seems to make a great deal of sense.. it’s just not worth the risk anymore.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago

The problem is viewing sex and relationships as an end in itself.
Whereas, whether for to biological or cultural reasons, and despite all the new fangled “casual sex” stuff, most men and women still view relationships as a starting point to a family and settled life.

And that’s the big problem.
On women’s side, for all the fancy talk about equality, ultimately a man’s earnings are the key criteria and as women earn more, the pool of eligible men declines.
On the male side, for the majority, what’s the point of trying to engage if the chances are low, the process painful given how entitled women are, and you have a 50% chance of losing your house and kids anyway for no fault of yours.

The destruction of long term relationship and marriage is what has filtered back and damaged the process of dating and human connections.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

I don’t want to mock someone who needs a safety conscious therapeutic professional to shed their incel status or whatever, though I’m tempted to, but by the time you’ve retreated into the purely virtual or transactional side of physical experience you might as well just succumb to some dystopian nightmare world of easy comfort and protected surrender. Let ’em implant the corporate-sponsored microchip in your brain, or become a full-time soma eater.
Rosenfield makes an important point about the swipe-left /swipe-right nature of much online dating (and other current “social” interactions): Overwrought attempts to keep everything distant and free of humiliation–and let’s face it, lucrative for the tech companies and addictively convenient for the users–have led to a culture and dating scene that is, on balance, meaner and less “emotionally safe” than it was in the Analog Age. Seems many of us (especially the dang kids these days!) want to insulate ourselves from nearly all interpersonal risk while still anticipating the same level of reward.
You can’t banish social risk nor animal grossness and animal gladness from human relationships, and efforts to completely sanitize our interactions in a real and figurative way throw out the good stuff along with the “icky fluids”. Great essay.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Given the author’s feminist leanings I can’t help wondering why she might care about any of this.
Perhaps it was just something to write about that might get published.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

“Leanings” is accurate; she’s not a hardliner and she has a good sense of humor. I doubt that this specific subject matter effects her own life much, but it has some level of significance in the wider culture, among the rising/shrinking younger generations anyway. And mightn’t even a militant feminist care about changing dating habits and sexual practices? I think Rosenfield softened her tone a little here (for the “weekend reader”)? I prefer Full Rosenfield, but I enjoyed this piece.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I did wonder if it’s because men are now talking about red flags, and which kinds of female behaviour are acceptable in relationships. Women have always done this.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

That’s a good point.
The women who are not quite so anti-male may care.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

That’s a good point.
The women who are not quite so anti-male may care.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

You seem disappointed to agree with her. You need to move on from ad hominem bubbles, mate.

Karen Jemmett
Karen Jemmett
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Your reply suggests a limited understanding of the wider sociological issues at play here. Have you considered that, as a feminist, the author may well be drawing on her experiences at the hands of ‘old-fashioned’ patriarchal influences? Most of the social alienation that leads people to seeking alternative forms of comfort is ‘socially constructed’, don’t forget. Indeed, the very need for sexual intimacy is a ‘social construct’, if you think about it logically. Indeed, it’s the sheer, unadulterated expectation of it all that leads to so much unhappiness and clinically treated disappointment. Just because post-modern representations of what makes a good society are breaking down and marginalising increasing numbers of people doesn’t mean we should seek refuge in a ‘lost world’ of primitive intransience. The painful truth for many people is that most forms of 20th century scientific materialism and the unflinching faith in the power of state institutions to find convincing solutions to the age-old trials of natural selection have left us all in a bewildering state of delusion over time.
The problems with so-called ‘incels’ is merely a reflection of age-old social constructions that deemed a proportion of people as being unfit to reproduce. But why should childlessness still be regarded as socially disadvantageous in an age of diminishing natural resources and employment opportunities? It’s illogical… Clearly, there are advantages in discouraging those with psychopathic disorders from adding to the chaotic gene pool. But problems have evolved as a result of some 20th Century ‘disabling policies’ since the war that have complicated things irreparably and it’s difficult to see how confidence in clinicians is going to be restored any time soon. Whether this was reflected in the historic diagnoses of religious or political minorities with psychiatric or genetic disorders they didn’t have – and the backlash this has inevitably caused against the offspring of more favoured folk – or the international repercussions of colonialism that are now beginning to filter through in institutional circles to some degree.
Of course, Mr Shaw is likely to dismiss all this as the ramblings of a feminist who shouldn’t care about these things and just wants to get published… and he may well be right, lol.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

I appreciate and agree with some of your reflections. But I find this all-encompassing use of “social construct” to be questionable. Language and music develop in a social context (some tunes may have been “appropriated” from the social habits of birds) but I don’t think they are constructs in the sense of mere artifice or superimposition. They mightn’t be coeval with our original primate nature (that’s debatable too) but language and music–like in-group/out-group tribalism and uneven success in mating or attracting partners–deserve to be called parts of our natural selves.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

the very need for sexual intimacy is a ‘social construct’, if you think about it logically

Are you seriously saying there is nothing innate about the need for sexual intimacy?

John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It seems that Karen (oxymoron!) fits everything into her twisted, post modernist model. I watched a previous generation check out 60 years ago because they, too, thought they lived in an “age of diminishing natural resources and employment opportunities.” They stood by and watched their peers transform humanity with innovations like the personal computer, Internet, cell phones, social media, and smart devices. Now they complain about unequal economic outcomes. Ocean levels are no higher than they were 60 years ago, and third world countries no longer go hungry. Those who rise above this social contagion will do just fine — socially, economically, and with loving, lifelong partners.

Julian Karst
Julian Karst
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

Uh what? I can’t tell if you are trying to be funny.
“Ocean levels are no higher than they were 60 years ago”
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-level
“third world countries no longer go hungry”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-affected-by-hunger-in-the-world-according-to-world-hunger-index/
I don’t see Western Europe on that list.

Julian Karst
Julian Karst
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

Uh what? I can’t tell if you are trying to be funny.
“Ocean levels are no higher than they were 60 years ago”
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-level
“third world countries no longer go hungry”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269924/countries-most-affected-by-hunger-in-the-world-according-to-world-hunger-index/
I don’t see Western Europe on that list.

John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It seems that Karen (oxymoron!) fits everything into her twisted, post modernist model. I watched a previous generation check out 60 years ago because they, too, thought they lived in an “age of diminishing natural resources and employment opportunities.” They stood by and watched their peers transform humanity with innovations like the personal computer, Internet, cell phones, social media, and smart devices. Now they complain about unequal economic outcomes. Ocean levels are no higher than they were 60 years ago, and third world countries no longer go hungry. Those who rise above this social contagion will do just fine — socially, economically, and with loving, lifelong partners.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

It’s probably a waste of time trying to reason with someone who believes sexual intimacy is a social construct so I won’t try.
I would say though that your comment regarding Incels fails to recognise that until quite recently brothels were wide spread and legal.
Having one’s hair washed by another may be adequate for the female species but it doesn’t come close to providing an answer for men.
The reintroduction of legal brothels would remedy many of the concerns relating to disaffected and socially isolated men, making society a safer place for everyone.
Sexbots will solve this problem eventually but for now, legalised prostitution provides a solution.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

I appreciate and agree with some of your reflections. But I find this all-encompassing use of “social construct” to be questionable. Language and music develop in a social context (some tunes may have been “appropriated” from the social habits of birds) but I don’t think they are constructs in the sense of mere artifice or superimposition. They mightn’t be coeval with our original primate nature (that’s debatable too) but language and music–like in-group/out-group tribalism and uneven success in mating or attracting partners–deserve to be called parts of our natural selves.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

the very need for sexual intimacy is a ‘social construct’, if you think about it logically

Are you seriously saying there is nothing innate about the need for sexual intimacy?

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Karen Jemmett

It’s probably a waste of time trying to reason with someone who believes sexual intimacy is a social construct so I won’t try.
I would say though that your comment regarding Incels fails to recognise that until quite recently brothels were wide spread and legal.
Having one’s hair washed by another may be adequate for the female species but it doesn’t come close to providing an answer for men.
The reintroduction of legal brothels would remedy many of the concerns relating to disaffected and socially isolated men, making society a safer place for everyone.
Sexbots will solve this problem eventually but for now, legalised prostitution provides a solution.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The first sentence was your opinion. The second sentence was gratuitously unpleasant. Why?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

“Leanings” is accurate; she’s not a hardliner and she has a good sense of humor. I doubt that this specific subject matter effects her own life much, but it has some level of significance in the wider culture, among the rising/shrinking younger generations anyway. And mightn’t even a militant feminist care about changing dating habits and sexual practices? I think Rosenfield softened her tone a little here (for the “weekend reader”)? I prefer Full Rosenfield, but I enjoyed this piece.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I did wonder if it’s because men are now talking about red flags, and which kinds of female behaviour are acceptable in relationships. Women have always done this.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

You seem disappointed to agree with her. You need to move on from ad hominem bubbles, mate.

Karen Jemmett
Karen Jemmett
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Your reply suggests a limited understanding of the wider sociological issues at play here. Have you considered that, as a feminist, the author may well be drawing on her experiences at the hands of ‘old-fashioned’ patriarchal influences? Most of the social alienation that leads people to seeking alternative forms of comfort is ‘socially constructed’, don’t forget. Indeed, the very need for sexual intimacy is a ‘social construct’, if you think about it logically. Indeed, it’s the sheer, unadulterated expectation of it all that leads to so much unhappiness and clinically treated disappointment. Just because post-modern representations of what makes a good society are breaking down and marginalising increasing numbers of people doesn’t mean we should seek refuge in a ‘lost world’ of primitive intransience. The painful truth for many people is that most forms of 20th century scientific materialism and the unflinching faith in the power of state institutions to find convincing solutions to the age-old trials of natural selection have left us all in a bewildering state of delusion over time.
The problems with so-called ‘incels’ is merely a reflection of age-old social constructions that deemed a proportion of people as being unfit to reproduce. But why should childlessness still be regarded as socially disadvantageous in an age of diminishing natural resources and employment opportunities? It’s illogical… Clearly, there are advantages in discouraging those with psychopathic disorders from adding to the chaotic gene pool. But problems have evolved as a result of some 20th Century ‘disabling policies’ since the war that have complicated things irreparably and it’s difficult to see how confidence in clinicians is going to be restored any time soon. Whether this was reflected in the historic diagnoses of religious or political minorities with psychiatric or genetic disorders they didn’t have – and the backlash this has inevitably caused against the offspring of more favoured folk – or the international repercussions of colonialism that are now beginning to filter through in institutional circles to some degree.
Of course, Mr Shaw is likely to dismiss all this as the ramblings of a feminist who shouldn’t care about these things and just wants to get published… and he may well be right, lol.

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The first sentence was your opinion. The second sentence was gratuitously unpleasant. Why?

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Given the author’s feminist leanings I can’t help wondering why she might care about any of this.
Perhaps it was just something to write about that might get published.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago

I don’t want to mock someone who needs a safety conscious therapeutic professional to shed their incel status or whatever, though I’m tempted to, but by the time you’ve retreated into the purely virtual or transactional side of physical experience you might as well just succumb to some dystopian nightmare world of easy comfort and protected surrender. Let ’em implant the corporate-sponsored microchip in your brain, or become a full-time soma eater.
Rosenfield makes an important point about the swipe-left /swipe-right nature of much online dating (and other current “social” interactions): Overwrought attempts to keep everything distant and free of humiliation–and let’s face it, lucrative for the tech companies and addictively convenient for the users–have led to a culture and dating scene that is, on balance, meaner and less “emotionally safe” than it was in the Analog Age. Seems many of us (especially the dang kids these days!) want to insulate ourselves from nearly all interpersonal risk while still anticipating the same level of reward.
You can’t banish social risk nor animal grossness and animal gladness from human relationships, and efforts to completely sanitize our interactions in a real and figurative way throw out the good stuff along with the “icky fluids”. Great essay.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Michelle Johnston
Michelle Johnston
1 year ago

This article is circling two key moves in the human experience.
1) Kat describes the screen as the conduit, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion it’s the gatekeeper. Watching her online she unconsciously accepts that. it is no coincidence that as the relationship has changed from it being another source of information to being the dominant power broker in our behaviour something called influencers has emerged.
2) Because it has become our gatekeeper and has no emotional narrative itself it makes us more and more risk averse. Corporately it collects information (to protect the corporate) to such a high degree it kills of our desire to act. It places itself between us and others offering endless cautionary tales as outlined in this article. When I tell people I hike alone they say “But isn’t it dangerous.” The irony is I use an information app which tells me exactly where I am, it is a case of where the screen is liberating.
Life is to be lived not avoided and hey at the end of it, we die. The moral panic in responding to the outbreak of a new virus where no one calibrated the risk of death against the consequences of interventions is the perfect example of our modern reaction to risk.
The machines are already driving away what it means to be human. I have made so many mistakes in my life and any small amount of wisdom and peace I have now is entirely due to those experiences. If we avoid everything we too will end up machines.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

Yep, you’re so right.. as a now retired risk management consultant I can tell you that in any group* risk averse grows but as individuals we readily accept risk!
* includes a group of two! ..except of course where the two genuinely merge into a single unit, ie a genuinely loving couple, a rare species these days.

Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago

Me too

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

Yep, you’re so right.. as a now retired risk management consultant I can tell you that in any group* risk averse grows but as individuals we readily accept risk!
* includes a group of two! ..except of course where the two genuinely merge into a single unit, ie a genuinely loving couple, a rare species these days.

Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago

Me too

Michelle Johnston
Michelle Johnston
1 year ago

This article is circling two key moves in the human experience.
1) Kat describes the screen as the conduit, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion it’s the gatekeeper. Watching her online she unconsciously accepts that. it is no coincidence that as the relationship has changed from it being another source of information to being the dominant power broker in our behaviour something called influencers has emerged.
2) Because it has become our gatekeeper and has no emotional narrative itself it makes us more and more risk averse. Corporately it collects information (to protect the corporate) to such a high degree it kills of our desire to act. It places itself between us and others offering endless cautionary tales as outlined in this article. When I tell people I hike alone they say “But isn’t it dangerous.” The irony is I use an information app which tells me exactly where I am, it is a case of where the screen is liberating.
Life is to be lived not avoided and hey at the end of it, we die. The moral panic in responding to the outbreak of a new virus where no one calibrated the risk of death against the consequences of interventions is the perfect example of our modern reaction to risk.
The machines are already driving away what it means to be human. I have made so many mistakes in my life and any small amount of wisdom and peace I have now is entirely due to those experiences. If we avoid everything we too will end up machines.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

In this way, surrogate partners seem to be a product of a broad cultural desire to organise every emotionally risky endeavour into a rules-based framework that makes it safe

Perhaps, of course, those “emotionally risky endeavours” have become more risky as society has become more narcissistic, self centred and transactional.

If you feel that someone will jump ship at the first sign of trouble instead of trying to work through things perhaps it’s easier just not to get started. And if the relationship motto is – I should be free to do whatever I want, whatever hurt it causes the other person – well maybe that’s not a relationship worth having. Ditto if relationships are just about what you can get out of them, not what you put in.

It’s sad – but it maybe it’s not surprising – and surely not unrelated to other factors, like the high divorce rate. Perhaps we moderns are just people with lots of money to spend, but not much love to give.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Question: do you believe there is a gender difference in our ability to ‘give love’ as you put it? Also is the way in which ‘all that money’ is spent different and what are the implications of that, if so. I have my own views but am anxious to hear yours as you raised the issues.

Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Question: do you believe there is a gender difference in our ability to ‘give love’ as you put it? Also is the way in which ‘all that money’ is spent different and what are the implications of that, if so. I have my own views but am anxious to hear yours as you raised the issues.

Last edited 1 year ago by Liam O'Mahony
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

In this way, surrogate partners seem to be a product of a broad cultural desire to organise every emotionally risky endeavour into a rules-based framework that makes it safe

Perhaps, of course, those “emotionally risky endeavours” have become more risky as society has become more narcissistic, self centred and transactional.

If you feel that someone will jump ship at the first sign of trouble instead of trying to work through things perhaps it’s easier just not to get started. And if the relationship motto is – I should be free to do whatever I want, whatever hurt it causes the other person – well maybe that’s not a relationship worth having. Ditto if relationships are just about what you can get out of them, not what you put in.

It’s sad – but it maybe it’s not surprising – and surely not unrelated to other factors, like the high divorce rate. Perhaps we moderns are just people with lots of money to spend, but not much love to give.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

My generation’s approach was far healthier. Raised in semi-ignorance about intimacy and all that stuff, we simply learnt on the job.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

and it was and still is fun

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

and it was and still is fun

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

My generation’s approach was far healthier. Raised in semi-ignorance about intimacy and all that stuff, we simply learnt on the job.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

normal dating and relationships have been all but pathologised, the conversation surrounding them rife with “red flags” and “triggers” and “boundaries” 

Women’s magazines have long been full of this stuff, even if the jargon has changed. The big difference is that men are now thinking like this too. And to be honest, it makes sense. If there are early warning signs that someone is self centred, emotionally unstable, vindictive, narcissistic or even violent etc then it’s good to pick up on that early before you commit emotionally to the relationship.

It’s really just like checking your parachute before you jump out of the plane. No one is saying “don’t jump”, just “don’t take stupid risks”.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Correct in theory, but the difference is the parachute definitely will not work whereas an apparently flawed relationship might surprise everyone, including themselves! As Jordan Peterson would say: It’s complicated man!

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Correct in theory, but the difference is the parachute definitely will not work whereas an apparently flawed relationship might surprise everyone, including themselves! As Jordan Peterson would say: It’s complicated man!

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

normal dating and relationships have been all but pathologised, the conversation surrounding them rife with “red flags” and “triggers” and “boundaries” 

Women’s magazines have long been full of this stuff, even if the jargon has changed. The big difference is that men are now thinking like this too. And to be honest, it makes sense. If there are early warning signs that someone is self centred, emotionally unstable, vindictive, narcissistic or even violent etc then it’s good to pick up on that early before you commit emotionally to the relationship.

It’s really just like checking your parachute before you jump out of the plane. No one is saying “don’t jump”, just “don’t take stupid risks”.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

The development of highly interactive sexbots with advanced AI is inevitable and unstoppable. So too is the artificial womb. The financial and business rewards are simply too great. Make no mistake, as AI advances the sexbots will eventually be indistinguishable from real humans and, not all, but a majority of men will find their company more than adequate. Based on female nature this seems unlikely to be reciprocated for women. Ultimately, these inventions will liberate men from intimacy with women. Not all men, but a large percentage. The sexes will lead increasingly separate lives. Feminists have written about the end of men. It’s more likely that it will be the end of women since their usefulness in society will rapidly decline.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The real thing will never be replaced, nor will it go altogether “out of style”.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

No – but it may become an elite taste, conferring higher status.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes, I have the Trophy Bot Pro with real hair and lab-grown flesh, while you’re still using that outdated model from 2034.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

I think DM means a real, flesh and blood relationship may become an elite taste. It’s a sobering thought…

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Thanks, that completely slipped by me 🙂

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Thanks, that completely slipped by me 🙂

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

With a tailored personality and a willingness to serve.
I doubt women can appreciate just how many men would be satisfied with such a solution.
And if boredom sets in a personality change would be little more than a software update.
Tired of her physical appearance, trade her in for a different model to suit your fancy.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

…well, Hollywood got exactly there early William with “Cherry 2000” a 1987 movie, with Melanie Griffith in her first screen role. It flopped at the box office at the time, but it’s now what gets called a ‘cult classic’. So as not to spoil it, here’s link to the movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKkdgnDu3MA

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

…well, Hollywood got exactly there early William with “Cherry 2000” a 1987 movie, with Melanie Griffith in her first screen role. It flopped at the box office at the time, but it’s now what gets called a ‘cult classic’. So as not to spoil it, here’s link to the movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKkdgnDu3MA

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

I think DM means a real, flesh and blood relationship may become an elite taste. It’s a sobering thought…

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

With a tailored personality and a willingness to serve.
I doubt women can appreciate just how many men would be satisfied with such a solution.
And if boredom sets in a personality change would be little more than a software update.
Tired of her physical appearance, trade her in for a different model to suit your fancy.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Caty Gonzales
Caty Gonzales
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I agree – I think you see this somewhat with families today. A large family is becoming the preserve of wealthy people who can afford to have children, although it is also prevalent in the underclass. Middle class families defer having children, have 1-2 or go without as they are so expensive.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes, I have the Trophy Bot Pro with real hair and lab-grown flesh, while you’re still using that outdated model from 2034.

Caty Gonzales
Caty Gonzales
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I agree – I think you see this somewhat with families today. A large family is becoming the preserve of wealthy people who can afford to have children, although it is also prevalent in the underclass. Middle class families defer having children, have 1-2 or go without as they are so expensive.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Never say never.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

True. I reject every absolute construction, without exception.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

True. I reject every absolute construction, without exception.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

No – but it may become an elite taste, conferring higher status.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Never say never.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

“more likely that it will be the end of women’
Feminists usually talk in this language about men, and that’s why they cotton in on fringe men’s groups or weird online chatrooms that reciprocate.

In reality, women (and men) will still be around. What might happen though, is indifference. Most men don’t hate women or wish for them to end, they just find it not worth their time to engage someone who is so full of themselves and entitled.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Feminists usually talk in this language about men, and that’s why they cotton in on fringe men’s groups or weird online chatrooms that reciprocate.

I can’t speak for William, but I guess that’s why he did it. To give feminists a taste of their own medicine, and to see if he could wind up a few of the less intelligent ones.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Exactly right Samir.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
Many futurists see technology (sexbots and artificial womb are just two examples) resulting in male indifference towards women becoming dominant.
Given female nature the same is not predicted to happen to women, at least not on the same scale.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Many men are already indifferent to both women and each other on every level. What you may end up with are suicidally lonely people of every kind.

Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Many men are already indifferent to both women and each other on every level. What you may end up with are suicidally lonely people of every kind.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Feminists usually talk in this language about men, and that’s why they cotton in on fringe men’s groups or weird online chatrooms that reciprocate.

I can’t speak for William, but I guess that’s why he did it. To give feminists a taste of their own medicine, and to see if he could wind up a few of the less intelligent ones.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Samir Iker

Exactly right Samir.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
Many futurists see technology (sexbots and artificial womb are just two examples) resulting in male indifference towards women becoming dominant.
Given female nature the same is not predicted to happen to women, at least not on the same scale.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Alison Wren
Alison Wren
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Artificial wombs won’t ever substitute for the real thing in the body of a real woman. I have noticed amongst the transactivist literature the strange idea that if you can just get a uterus transplant and IVF we will have male mothers. Women are not cars, replace the faulty part and it will all work fine!! Pregnancy and birth are a symphony of interactions involving the whole mother-foetus dyad. Men will never manage it!!

Last edited 1 year ago by Alison Wren
David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Artificial wombs won’t ever substitute for the real thing in the body of a real woman.

Sorry but I found this post a bit odd. Whether there is ever an artificial womb will depend on technical issues. It may turn out to be a lot more tricky than anticipated. It’s unlikely to be impossible. It won’t have anything to do with symphonies or other metaphors.

Why are you assuming the inventors will be men?

Perhaps what you are really saying is that you would rather it be impossible? Me too. I feel the same about everything from weapons of mass destruction, through plastic surgery to genetic engineering of human beings. I’d like to stop some technologies dead, while other, technically similar but benign, technologies were allowed to proceed. But alas …..

Last edited 1 year ago by David Morley
Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

“Why are you assuming the inventors will be men?”
Because they almost always are.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

“Why are you assuming the inventors will be men?”
Because they almost always are.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Not to mention, attachment starts in utero, if you have problems with a disconnected society today. One where children are being grown in tanks is going to be even worse!

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

I suspect we will find such things are vastly overrated, perhaps even imaginary.
After all, foster parents and surrogate mothers provide some counter to your belief.
Mimicry of movement, sounds and voice could easily be built into the womb.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

I suspect we will find such things are vastly overrated, perhaps even imaginary.
After all, foster parents and surrogate mothers provide some counter to your belief.
Mimicry of movement, sounds and voice could easily be built into the womb.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Indeed. The female foetus is programmed from its first heartbeat to be the heartbeat that a new foetus first becomes aware of as it grows in utero.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Initial application of the artificial womb will be in breeding livestock. A lamb has already been used as a test case. Imagine the financial benefits if race horses and prize cattle can be bred without limitation on their numbers.
Then those who are unable to have a child by other means will be considered deserving candidates.
The ultra rich and famous will be next. Wealthy gay men and female celebrities who don’t want to lose their figure.
After them it’ll be the middle class.
And eventually everyone else.
Ultimately, bearing a child the natural way will be looked upon as a disgusting animal experience resembling something from the barnyard.
There may be a decade or more between each of these steps but they will surely happen.
Technology advances are inevitable.
If liberal western democracies balk at the technology there will be some countries in the world that will implement it.
The demographic crisis affecting much of the world will only hasten the introduction of these advances.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

If you think technology can eventually be so sophisticated, why not have bots solve the demographic crisis. They can have sex, their characters and looks can be programmed and they will do our work. They might as well replace us, no need for humans anymore. What a nightmare!!

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

That is the ultimate evolution of the human race.
There is no doubt it will come to pass.
Flesh and blood humans will eventually give way to the AI we create.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I can’t tell how sincere you are being right now–how sincere is Siri?–but you sound just like the antagonist in a sci-fi dystopia: film, tv show, or pulp novel.
Will these AI have AI doggies too? Do androids dream of electric surrogates?
I hope you’re joking when you suggest elsewhere that you are keen to see this come to pass, beyond merely being convinced of its certainty by the voices in your head.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

It’s simply evolution.
Every species either dies out or evolves into its successor.
I’m an optimist.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Too many futurists are keen to hasten the demise of actual humans, ignoring both true human nature and the balance of the natural world.
On a related note, I’d be willing to entertain humans colonizing another planet if this planet becomes uninhabitable, but we should cherish and preserve the Earth while we can. Everything is impermanent but only truly so only a scale of billions of years, not decades.
Rushing toward an imagined certainty of non-biological living could also represent (earlier) disaster for whales, gorillas, birds, bees, trees, and every other living thing that is interdependent on our oversized influence.
And what of people who are not so intellectual and self-sufficient as you, for whom being some advanced version of a “brain in a jar” is not a dream but a true nightmare?
I don’t want to be disrespectful to your point of view (“voices in your head”) but the extremity of your perspective leaves me still doubting whether you are sincere about the all-in transhumanism you’ve outlined.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Too many futurists are keen to hasten the demise of actual humans, ignoring both true human nature and the balance of the natural world.
On a related note, I’d be willing to entertain humans colonizing another planet if this planet becomes uninhabitable, but we should cherish and preserve the Earth while we can. Everything is impermanent but only truly so only a scale of billions of years, not decades.
Rushing toward an imagined certainty of non-biological living could also represent (earlier) disaster for whales, gorillas, birds, bees, trees, and every other living thing that is interdependent on our oversized influence.
And what of people who are not so intellectual and self-sufficient as you, for whom being some advanced version of a “brain in a jar” is not a dream but a true nightmare?
I don’t want to be disrespectful to your point of view (“voices in your head”) but the extremity of your perspective leaves me still doubting whether you are sincere about the all-in transhumanism you’ve outlined.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

It’s simply evolution.
Every species either dies out or evolves into its successor.
I’m an optimist.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I can’t tell how sincere you are being right now–how sincere is Siri?–but you sound just like the antagonist in a sci-fi dystopia: film, tv show, or pulp novel.
Will these AI have AI doggies too? Do androids dream of electric surrogates?
I hope you’re joking when you suggest elsewhere that you are keen to see this come to pass, beyond merely being convinced of its certainty by the voices in your head.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

That is the ultimate evolution of the human race.
There is no doubt it will come to pass.
Flesh and blood humans will eventually give way to the AI we create.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The likely availability of such technologies in the near future in no way establishes their widespread prospective adoption, let alone dominance over gettin’ down the way nature intended.
I think I know but forgive me for checking: Do you in part welcome or get some dark thrill from anticipating these “inevitable” advances, as a form of just rewards for fallen humankind (or something)?

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Let’s just say I am interested in technology and future trends.
Eventually humans will evolve and no longer be flesh and blood.
I see many advantages in these developments… space travel and colonization of other planets for instance.
So, a thrill, yes. But whether or not it’s dark depends on your perspective.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I totally disagree as I think a non-flesh, non-mortal creature is no longer human at all, and do not accept that we understand or will ever understand the full, true nature of Consciousness well enough to upload and preserve it in any genuinely living way on our own, that is: without Nature or God in some level of command.
I do accept, though not fully welcome, the likely imminence of a time when some people will be machine or computer hybridized, as they already are in a sense with pace makers and robot prosthetics (etc.) but far more so. And the inert characteristics of an individual’s personality or consciousness might be digitally sustainable.
But even all your longed for “advances”–short of the more sci-fi transhumanist extremes–will not eliminate the presence and value of women, as much as you may want them to do so.
Fair enough and thanks for the clarification.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

I totally disagree as I think a non-flesh, non-mortal creature is no longer human at all, and do not accept that we understand or will ever understand the full, true nature of Consciousness well enough to upload and preserve it in any genuinely living way on our own, that is: without Nature or God in some level of command.
I do accept, though not fully welcome, the likely imminence of a time when some people will be machine or computer hybridized, as they already are in a sense with pace makers and robot prosthetics (etc.) but far more so. And the inert characteristics of an individual’s personality or consciousness might be digitally sustainable.
But even all your longed for “advances”–short of the more sci-fi transhumanist extremes–will not eliminate the presence and value of women, as much as you may want them to do so.
Fair enough and thanks for the clarification.

Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I suspect it’s just for entertainment, may be wrong of course.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Let’s just say I am interested in technology and future trends.
Eventually humans will evolve and no longer be flesh and blood.
I see many advantages in these developments… space travel and colonization of other planets for instance.
So, a thrill, yes. But whether or not it’s dark depends on your perspective.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Alison Tyler
Alison Tyler
1 year ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I suspect it’s just for entertainment, may be wrong of course.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

If you think technology can eventually be so sophisticated, why not have bots solve the demographic crisis. They can have sex, their characters and looks can be programmed and they will do our work. They might as well replace us, no need for humans anymore. What a nightmare!!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The likely availability of such technologies in the near future in no way establishes their widespread prospective adoption, let alone dominance over gettin’ down the way nature intended.
I think I know but forgive me for checking: Do you in part welcome or get some dark thrill from anticipating these “inevitable” advances, as a form of just rewards for fallen humankind (or something)?

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Artificial wombs won’t ever substitute for the real thing in the body of a real woman.

Sorry but I found this post a bit odd. Whether there is ever an artificial womb will depend on technical issues. It may turn out to be a lot more tricky than anticipated. It’s unlikely to be impossible. It won’t have anything to do with symphonies or other metaphors.

Why are you assuming the inventors will be men?

Perhaps what you are really saying is that you would rather it be impossible? Me too. I feel the same about everything from weapons of mass destruction, through plastic surgery to genetic engineering of human beings. I’d like to stop some technologies dead, while other, technically similar but benign, technologies were allowed to proceed. But alas …..

Last edited 1 year ago by David Morley
Lindsay S
Lindsay S
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Not to mention, attachment starts in utero, if you have problems with a disconnected society today. One where children are being grown in tanks is going to be even worse!

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Indeed. The female foetus is programmed from its first heartbeat to be the heartbeat that a new foetus first becomes aware of as it grows in utero.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Initial application of the artificial womb will be in breeding livestock. A lamb has already been used as a test case. Imagine the financial benefits if race horses and prize cattle can be bred without limitation on their numbers.
Then those who are unable to have a child by other means will be considered deserving candidates.
The ultra rich and famous will be next. Wealthy gay men and female celebrities who don’t want to lose their figure.
After them it’ll be the middle class.
And eventually everyone else.
Ultimately, bearing a child the natural way will be looked upon as a disgusting animal experience resembling something from the barnyard.
There may be a decade or more between each of these steps but they will surely happen.
Technology advances are inevitable.
If liberal western democracies balk at the technology there will be some countries in the world that will implement it.
The demographic crisis affecting much of the world will only hasten the introduction of these advances.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

William, you sound like a lonely guy!

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

That sounds like something someone at the other end of the Myers-Briggs personality scale would say.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Ah. I have a better understanding of where you’re coming from now.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Ah. I have a better understanding of where you’re coming from now.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

I hope he’s trolling the board – because he sounds like a terrible human. Anyone thinking that sexbots “solve” the Battle of the Sexes fails to understand that the problem is not with the *other* sex, but with his own. Sexbots would only make humans sadder and lonelier than ever before.
Notice how these futurists must imagine sexbots of such sophisticated development they are indistinguishable from real women – except the parts of women that annoy or grate or push back or the like. This is The Stepford Wives, obviously – and the whole thing breaks down when you realize that it’s the annoyance, grating and push-back that make all the rest so wonderful. This has nothing to do with some feature of womanhood, and everything to do with universal features of personhood – our problems come from within, and can only be solved from within (or from above, if you like).
Someone who eats ice cream all day quickly loses his taste for ice cream, even comes to hate it.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

That sounds like something someone at the other end of the Myers-Briggs personality scale would say.

Last edited 1 year ago by William Shaw
Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  John Croteau

I hope he’s trolling the board – because he sounds like a terrible human. Anyone thinking that sexbots “solve” the Battle of the Sexes fails to understand that the problem is not with the *other* sex, but with his own. Sexbots would only make humans sadder and lonelier than ever before.
Notice how these futurists must imagine sexbots of such sophisticated development they are indistinguishable from real women – except the parts of women that annoy or grate or push back or the like. This is The Stepford Wives, obviously – and the whole thing breaks down when you realize that it’s the annoyance, grating and push-back that make all the rest so wonderful. This has nothing to do with some feature of womanhood, and everything to do with universal features of personhood – our problems come from within, and can only be solved from within (or from above, if you like).
Someone who eats ice cream all day quickly loses his taste for ice cream, even comes to hate it.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Ahead of the game. I have registered the url Stepford and Son, Wag for Bone merchants.

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Bollis
Julian Karst
Julian Karst
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Okay, I’ll bite.
Are you saying that the usefulness of women in society is providing sex for men and pumping out babies?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

The real thing will never be replaced, nor will it go altogether “out of style”.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

“more likely that it will be the end of women’
Feminists usually talk in this language about men, and that’s why they cotton in on fringe men’s groups or weird online chatrooms that reciprocate.

In reality, women (and men) will still be around. What might happen though, is indifference. Most men don’t hate women or wish for them to end, they just find it not worth their time to engage someone who is so full of themselves and entitled.

Alison Wren
Alison Wren
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Artificial wombs won’t ever substitute for the real thing in the body of a real woman. I have noticed amongst the transactivist literature the strange idea that if you can just get a uterus transplant and IVF we will have male mothers. Women are not cars, replace the faulty part and it will all work fine!! Pregnancy and birth are a symphony of interactions involving the whole mother-foetus dyad. Men will never manage it!!

Last edited 1 year ago by Alison Wren
John Croteau
John Croteau
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

William, you sound like a lonely guy!

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Ahead of the game. I have registered the url Stepford and Son, Wag for Bone merchants.

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Bollis
Julian Karst
Julian Karst
1 year ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Okay, I’ll bite.
Are you saying that the usefulness of women in society is providing sex for men and pumping out babies?

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 year ago

The development of highly interactive sexbots with advanced AI is inevitable and unstoppable. So too is the artificial womb. The financial and business rewards are simply too great. Make no mistake, as AI advances the sexbots will eventually be indistinguishable from real humans and, not all, but a majority of men will find their company more than adequate. Based on female nature this seems unlikely to be reciprocated for women. Ultimately, these inventions will liberate men from intimacy with women. Not all men, but a large percentage. The sexes will lead increasingly separate lives. Feminists have written about the end of men. It’s more likely that it will be the end of women since their usefulness in society will rapidly decline.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

“A New York Times article about the practice is at pains to explain that the sex therapists are not prostitutes…”
But did the NYT bother to ask the prostitutes if they agree there’s a difference? (so telling)
Though to her credit the author is wary of sex therapists, she’s taking seriously something that should be laughed out of town. These people don’t need a sex therapist; they need to rethink their conception of human sexuality. It’s not there (primarily) to make you feel pleasure; it’s not there (primarily) to make babies. It’s there to force you to surrender yourself to someone else; if you want the pleasure or the babies, you should take the intimacy that’s supposed to accompany them. The entire point of having sex with someone is to develop the deepest possible intimacy with that person; any social forms or sexual practices which don’t serve those ends, undermine human happiness.
There’s the old trope of the groomsmen asking the groom, “Are you really going to have sex with just one woman the rest of your life?” But those groomsmen are children. Here’s the real situation: “Do you realize that by agreeing never to have sex with anyone but your wife, you’re really going to have to keep her happy if you want to have sex?” Because that’s what sex is supposed to do… to use our desires (for pleasure, for babies) to transform us into better people.
Sorry to say it, but anyone thinking they need to see a “sex therapist” probably shouldn’t be having sex at all. They have many more fundamental problems in their lives they need to address, before sex gets on the radar. They need to understand a lot more about relationships, commitment, marriage, family – love as a choice not a feeling.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

In your opinion. I imagine there are a wide variety of opinions of what what sex is “there for”, although the genetic reasons for it seem pretty clear. Our genes don’t really care why we do it or what we’re thinking in the process – so long as we do it.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

Presuming you don’t want to talk of a Creator God, let’s talk about Mother Nature instead: lots of species reproduce without barely any interaction at all, and generally speaking, the further up the evolutionary ladder you go, the closer you get to reproduction which involves interdependent interaction, profound vulnerability, even intimacy. That is to say, a couple having sex are much more vulnerable than is a fish fertilizing an egg bed. From an evolutionary perspective, is that a bug or a feature?
You jokingly anthropomorphize about what genes care – but you know that genes don’t “care” at all, they simply reproduce successfully or they don’t. That doesn’t prove that the purpose of sex is reproduction; it proves that the method of reproduction is sex.
But yeah, opinions… everybody’s got one.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

Presuming you don’t want to talk of a Creator God, let’s talk about Mother Nature instead: lots of species reproduce without barely any interaction at all, and generally speaking, the further up the evolutionary ladder you go, the closer you get to reproduction which involves interdependent interaction, profound vulnerability, even intimacy. That is to say, a couple having sex are much more vulnerable than is a fish fertilizing an egg bed. From an evolutionary perspective, is that a bug or a feature?
You jokingly anthropomorphize about what genes care – but you know that genes don’t “care” at all, they simply reproduce successfully or they don’t. That doesn’t prove that the purpose of sex is reproduction; it proves that the method of reproduction is sex.
But yeah, opinions… everybody’s got one.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

In your opinion. I imagine there are a wide variety of opinions of what what sex is “there for”, although the genetic reasons for it seem pretty clear. Our genes don’t really care why we do it or what we’re thinking in the process – so long as we do it.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

“A New York Times article about the practice is at pains to explain that the sex therapists are not prostitutes…”
But did the NYT bother to ask the prostitutes if they agree there’s a difference? (so telling)
Though to her credit the author is wary of sex therapists, she’s taking seriously something that should be laughed out of town. These people don’t need a sex therapist; they need to rethink their conception of human sexuality. It’s not there (primarily) to make you feel pleasure; it’s not there (primarily) to make babies. It’s there to force you to surrender yourself to someone else; if you want the pleasure or the babies, you should take the intimacy that’s supposed to accompany them. The entire point of having sex with someone is to develop the deepest possible intimacy with that person; any social forms or sexual practices which don’t serve those ends, undermine human happiness.
There’s the old trope of the groomsmen asking the groom, “Are you really going to have sex with just one woman the rest of your life?” But those groomsmen are children. Here’s the real situation: “Do you realize that by agreeing never to have sex with anyone but your wife, you’re really going to have to keep her happy if you want to have sex?” Because that’s what sex is supposed to do… to use our desires (for pleasure, for babies) to transform us into better people.
Sorry to say it, but anyone thinking they need to see a “sex therapist” probably shouldn’t be having sex at all. They have many more fundamental problems in their lives they need to address, before sex gets on the radar. They need to understand a lot more about relationships, commitment, marriage, family – love as a choice not a feeling.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kirk Susong
Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Glancing at the headline on my phone I misread the sub header as: The rapists aren’t a substitute for relationships

Which would have somewhat changed the tenor of the article

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I’ve given that a thumbs up for imaginative value, even though you probably made it up!

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

I’ve given that a thumbs up for imaginative value, even though you probably made it up!

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Glancing at the headline on my phone I misread the sub header as: The rapists aren’t a substitute for relationships

Which would have somewhat changed the tenor of the article

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

I found this article a bit high on judgement and a bit low on empathy. It’s typical of certain Unherd articles, and similar to the narrative around incels.

The trends may be regrettable, they may even be a sign of a more general social malaise, but the people caught up in it sound sad and lonely and deserve our sympathy.

Im not sure that describing them as lacking a willingness to take risks or get messy offers them a better strategy than the ones they are currently adopting

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

No sympathy from me. Just w**k, you bleating creeps.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

I doubt that anyone needs your sympathy.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

I doubt that anyone needs your sympathy.

Cynthia W.
Cynthia W.
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

An article that’s low on empathy might make a reader feel unsafe, even unseen. That’s exactly like violence. Bad author, bad. You’re not doing the work!

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Cynthia W.

Cynthia – I’ve read your post several times. I still don’t know what it means.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It’s irony. A mini satire on the culture of emotional fragility.
*I’m not against your advocacy for more empathy in a general sense, nor with incels in particular. But I don’t think it’s the duty of an individual author, especially of a short piece, to take up column space with empathetic clarifications or offer every possible solution to those who are struggling.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Cynthia W.
Cynthia W.
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It was a little attempt at humor, prompted by the (apparently) unironic use of “empathy.”

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It’s irony. A mini satire on the culture of emotional fragility.
*I’m not against your advocacy for more empathy in a general sense, nor with incels in particular. But I don’t think it’s the duty of an individual author, especially of a short piece, to take up column space with empathetic clarifications or offer every possible solution to those who are struggling.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
Cynthia W.
Cynthia W.
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

It was a little attempt at humor, prompted by the (apparently) unironic use of “empathy.”

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Cynthia W.

Haha!. “That article literally denied my existence!”

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Cynthia W.

Cynthia – I’ve read your post several times. I still don’t know what it means.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Cynthia W.

Haha!. “That article literally denied my existence!”

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

No sympathy from me. Just w**k, you bleating creeps.

Cynthia W.
Cynthia W.
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

An article that’s low on empathy might make a reader feel unsafe, even unseen. That’s exactly like violence. Bad author, bad. You’re not doing the work!

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago

I found this article a bit high on judgement and a bit low on empathy. It’s typical of certain Unherd articles, and similar to the narrative around incels.

The trends may be regrettable, they may even be a sign of a more general social malaise, but the people caught up in it sound sad and lonely and deserve our sympathy.

Im not sure that describing them as lacking a willingness to take risks or get messy offers them a better strategy than the ones they are currently adopting

Phil Mac
Phil Mac
1 year ago

That film, “Demolition Man” was on the face of it a lightweight Sylvester Stallone vehicle but has turned out to be one if the most prescient films I can recall.
The relationships part but was the least of it, it’s spot on on so much more.

Last edited 1 year ago by Phil Mac
Phil Mac
Phil Mac
1 year ago

That film, “Demolition Man” was on the face of it a lightweight Sylvester Stallone vehicle but has turned out to be one if the most prescient films I can recall.
The relationships part but was the least of it, it’s spot on on so much more.

Last edited 1 year ago by Phil Mac
N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Rosenfield is right about The Demolition Man. I saw the film decades ago and the “bodily fluids” theme is what I remember rather than the endless action scenes of Sylvester Stallone chasing a punkish and near indestructible Wesley Snipes around a futuristic city. As I remember, Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt even avoid touch when doing a high-five.
But this…

…the ones who might never otherwise experience intimacy at all, the ones who fear losing control too much to ever allow themselves to be vulnerable,

…is pure therapyspeak. This is what happens when sexual relationships are reduced to self-actualising experience. Reproduction is removed and it doesn’t matter whether the relationship is same-sex or heterosexual – it’s all about a rather precious (and elusive) sense of personal fulfillment. Romantic, but not in a good way.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

Rosenfield is right about The Demolition Man. I saw the film decades ago and the “bodily fluids” theme is what I remember rather than the endless action scenes of Sylvester Stallone chasing a punkish and near indestructible Wesley Snipes around a futuristic city. As I remember, Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt even avoid touch when doing a high-five.
But this…

…the ones who might never otherwise experience intimacy at all, the ones who fear losing control too much to ever allow themselves to be vulnerable,

…is pure therapyspeak. This is what happens when sexual relationships are reduced to self-actualising experience. Reproduction is removed and it doesn’t matter whether the relationship is same-sex or heterosexual – it’s all about a rather precious (and elusive) sense of personal fulfillment. Romantic, but not in a good way.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

“I didn’t consent to being asked out!”
“Um, okay. May I ask you out?
“Go ahead.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“Oh, hell no. Pervert!”
The world is getting too complex for me.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago

“I didn’t consent to being asked out!”
“Um, okay. May I ask you out?
“Go ahead.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“Oh, hell no. Pervert!”
The world is getting too complex for me.

Nona Yubiz
Nona Yubiz
1 year ago

We struggle to find language that can reflect the rapidly accelerating rate of technological change. We struggle to keep up with each other. Of course we struggle with intimacy and sex and relationships.
Being human seems to be changing to mean “an electronic device, attached to an adult mammal, either external or internal”. I cannot see but how this will lead us further from the world of intimate physical contact and further into the world of electronic relationships.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Nona Yubiz

The pace of change is indeed accelerating and I share your concerns in a general sense. I hope and expect that the move away from physical contact into electronic relationships (good term)–or arid chambers of mind, to note a longer tradition of retreat from what is intimate and heartfelt–will lead to such obvious thickets and wastelands that many of the herd will return to the hearth, so to speak.
Perhaps one or both of us will abide here long enough to see whether that starts happening.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Nona Yubiz

The pace of change is indeed accelerating and I share your concerns in a general sense. I hope and expect that the move away from physical contact into electronic relationships (good term)–or arid chambers of mind, to note a longer tradition of retreat from what is intimate and heartfelt–will lead to such obvious thickets and wastelands that many of the herd will return to the hearth, so to speak.
Perhaps one or both of us will abide here long enough to see whether that starts happening.

Nona Yubiz
Nona Yubiz
1 year ago

We struggle to find language that can reflect the rapidly accelerating rate of technological change. We struggle to keep up with each other. Of course we struggle with intimacy and sex and relationships.
Being human seems to be changing to mean “an electronic device, attached to an adult mammal, either external or internal”. I cannot see but how this will lead us further from the world of intimate physical contact and further into the world of electronic relationships.

Richard Gipps
Richard Gipps
1 year ago

The surrogates seem to me in a different category than the cuddlers. The cuddlers aren’t (I imagine, typically) cuddling you so that you can then gain confidence or repose or self-esteem to graduate to real cuddles from a real partner. But that, surely, is the whole point of the surrogate? If someone is just too hung up to be able to perform, having an expert who you’re not trying to bed help you seems prima facie reasonable. Contrast prostitution, say, which isn’t designed to help effect meaningful psychological change and may even prevent it / cement unhelpful habits.
On another point, I know little about sex therapy, but I was previously under the impression that surrogacy was once common (in the 70s, say?) but more recently rather frowned on. Can anyone say more about where it is popular and where not?

Richard Gipps
Richard Gipps
1 year ago

The surrogates seem to me in a different category than the cuddlers. The cuddlers aren’t (I imagine, typically) cuddling you so that you can then gain confidence or repose or self-esteem to graduate to real cuddles from a real partner. But that, surely, is the whole point of the surrogate? If someone is just too hung up to be able to perform, having an expert who you’re not trying to bed help you seems prima facie reasonable. Contrast prostitution, say, which isn’t designed to help effect meaningful psychological change and may even prevent it / cement unhelpful habits.
On another point, I know little about sex therapy, but I was previously under the impression that surrogacy was once common (in the 70s, say?) but more recently rather frowned on. Can anyone say more about where it is popular and where not?

Sarah Robinson
Sarah Robinson
1 year ago

A professional cuddler sounds wonderful. You don’t have to be an incel or weird in some other way for this to make sense. I know lots of single people with no partner, and those in long standing marriages too where the intimacy has died, who would love to be held and cuddled.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

No issue with them being fake cuddles, which seem as if they mean something, but actually are just a paid for service? Perhaps it’s better than nothing.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I can see “better than nothing” for some yes but not “wonderful”.
I’d rather be isolated and needy (not that I always am) than have to buy a hug.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  David Morley

I can see “better than nothing” for some yes but not “wonderful”.
I’d rather be isolated and needy (not that I always am) than have to buy a hug.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

I suspect the need for cuddles and non-threating intimacy is behind the rapidly growing popularity of dog ownership. Travelling on the London Tube yesterday I saw a woman sitting with two dogs, one of which she was cuddling as though it were a baby while the other gazed at her with the doleful eyes and needy look dogs are known for.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

This comment sadly says so much about our world. People missing intimacy in their lives would prefer fake intimacy – the illusion of warmth, the pretense of personal caring – rather than do the hard things necessary to develop real human connection. If you have not been able to maintain intimacy in a real relationship, you should look into the parts of yourself that are causing that. The answer to missing love is always, first… to love. If you miss human intimacy, then you need to put someone else’s interests above your own. They’ll give you a hug soon enough.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Excellent series of posts. Cheers.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  Kirk Susong

Excellent series of posts. Cheers.

David Morley
David Morley
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

No issue with them being fake cuddles, which seem as if they mean something, but actually are just a paid for service? Perhaps it’s better than nothing.

N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

I suspect the need for cuddles and non-threating intimacy is behind the rapidly growing popularity of dog ownership. Travelling on the London Tube yesterday I saw a woman sitting with two dogs, one of which she was cuddling as though it were a baby while the other gazed at her with the doleful eyes and needy look dogs are known for.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
Reply to  Sarah Robinson

This comment sadly says so much about our world. People missing intimacy in their lives would prefer fake intimacy – the illusion of warmth, the pretense of personal caring – rather than do the hard things necessary to develop real human connection. If you have not been able to maintain intimacy in a real relationship, you should look into the parts of yourself that are causing that. The answer to missing love is always, first… to love. If you miss human intimacy, then you need to put someone else’s interests above your own. They’ll give you a hug soon enough.

Sarah Robinson
Sarah Robinson
1 year ago

A professional cuddler sounds wonderful. You don’t have to be an incel or weird in some other way for this to make sense. I know lots of single people with no partner, and those in long standing marriages too where the intimacy has died, who would love to be held and cuddled.

George Venning
George Venning
1 year ago

Subs, Subs!
.
1 The article references Sylvester Stallone cyber sexing Sandra Bullock in Demolition Man but the illustrating image shows Sylvester Stallone snogging Sharon Stone in the Specialist. Surely the erasure of women has not gone so far as to render the two interchangeable? I wouldn’t bother mentioning it, of course, except that:
.
2 The headline says that the sex coach is killing intimacy and yet the article doesn’t argue anything of the sort. The professional cuddlers, sex coaches and, doubtless all manner of other sex workers, (both new-fangled and old-fashioned) are trying to solve the very intimacy problem that she is describing. She may be right to question their prospects for success but she doesn’t seem to be claiming that a bunch of radical therapists and huggers-for-hire caused the problem. That would be silly