Two Motives

[xodar]

There seem to be two basic motives for persons to be interested in fembots. One, like mine, starts with a desire to duplicate biological women as closely as possible both to create the physical ideal we've never found and to avoid personality traits we don't like. The other seems to have started with an interest in robots and grown into a vision of the possibilties that could be developed, from a goal similar to the first to being transfered or tranformed into a potentially immortal and limitless machine.

Both are motivating the creation of a technology that will radically change and improve our lives.

[kman1]

I'm certainly better described by the latter category. My dream is to have a woman I love transformed into powerful and limitless (nice term!) machine.

That way, she retains the human qualities I loved while discovering how they are augmented by her new cybernetic capabilities. Androids, while visually sexy, do less for me because they lack the complexities of melding humanity with technology.

But hey, we're all in this together.

[Puppetmaster16]

I think it may be just a bit more complex than that overall, but that may describe it for many people.

Personally, I'd say number one is closer, although I don't think I can be listed as having a geniune interest in a REAL fembot, just a funky woman who has fun pretending to be one.

[Moxon]

I personally feel that the whole thing is nothing more than a fantasy and any application in real life really holds little interest in my mind. I have tried over the years to imagine my girlfriends as fembots with very little success; when you bring the fantasy into the real world it no longer works for me. I guess it's an abandonment of reality thing for me because if I try to mentally roboticize a woman I actually care about and/or have a relationship with I am repulsed. The idea of a real woman becoming a fembot is a huge turn off for me, which is why I think I'm so averse to the transformation/control side of the fetish. I can't really explain why I like malfunctions and such, but no matter what the whole fantasy has to be very impersonal with regard to the actual android or else it's ruined for me. That's why most of the longer, more in depth stories, while usually good reads by their own rights, don't really excite me with regard to the fetish because any extensive character development totally destroys the mood in my opinion. I enjoy the whole thing in a very detached manner, as I would enjoy watching a movie or playing a video game for example, enjoying myself at the time but always with a certain suspension of disbelief, knowing that none of it is real. I'm sure there's some psychological explanation for it all but I honestly don't understand it . Anyway, ranting aside, I guess what I was trying to say is that I don't really agree with xodar's two basic motives as any appearance of realistic fembots in real life would cause this fantasy to no longer be a fantasy and would destroy the whole point of it in my eyes.

[xodar]

My interest is not in fantasizing about robotic women. It's about having an acceptably, functionably realistic female substitute.

[fection]

Yeah, I gotta say there's probably a lot more than just two reasons why people are into this. Seems like everyone has a slightly different spin on it.
I'm not particularly interested in actually owning a female android (assuming they even appear in the near future). The appeal for me is either the fantasy, or the idea of a real woman pretending to be an android - and loving it!

[Stephaniebot]

Well obviously I fall into the camp of the humans transformed into fembots, but that wont surprise anyone! Least it shouldnt do by now!

Well 1 human anyway at least!

[xodar]

I see that a two dimensional model of motives is more appropriate.
Imagine one axis ranging from pure interest in robots to pure interest in women and the other running from fantasy to pragmatism.

The various mixtures of motives might be plotted on that field.

(In 1970 I was in an army mental hygiene clinic with little to do but experiment with the contents of a closet that bulged with all these psychological tests. I gave them to everyone who came in whether he needed them or not. Actually some were quite good, though the accuracy changes with the times as I found when psychiatrists used those designed in the 40s declared on their basis that the entire male population was turning homosexual.) I suppose this speculation was a continuation of my experimenting with such things.

[ASFRyan]

[quote="xodar" ]The other seems to have started with an interest in robots and grown into a vision of the possibilties that could be developed, from a goal similar to the first to being transfered or tranformed into a potentially immortal and limitless machine. [/quote]

Depending on whether you're speaking to the fetish or speaking to the natural development of technology, I'd say your statement is not entirely correct.

You ignore "forced" transformation stories, which for a number of readers here are the primary interest. Typically forced transformation stories do not give the transformee limitless and immortal potential, but more often limit them and dehumanize them into slaves.

[Puppetmaster16]

- Begin Rant -

Well I have a BA in psychology myself, and one of the main issues I have with our system is that there has been a tendency to oversimplify and overcategorize things by testers who strive to turn it into a pure science via flawed statistical analysis. Also, because most researchers spend a lot of time and effort on their work, they sometimes tend to get attached to their results and try to draw more from them than there really is to find.

- End Rant -

So basically, while I find your observations interesting, I'm not sure if I feel it quite covers our varied and complicated interests and feelings regarding 'technosexuality'.

[xodar]

Depending on whether you're speaking to the fetish or speaking to the natural development of technology, I'd say your statement is not entirely correct.

You ignore "forced" transformation stories, which for a number of readers here are the primary interest. Typically forced transformation stories do not give the transformee limitless and immortal potential, but more often limit them and dehumanize them into slaves.

Actually, I didn't come here familiar with the entire scope of speculation and fiction about robots.
I knew a bit about robots and their possibilities, but until I came across a magazine article about RealDoll I didn't realize the technology was that close to building an android.
My interest was entirely in substitute women that duplicated female functions as closely as possible but without asking 432 times a day if their ass looked fat.

[xodar]

- Begin Rant -

Well I have a BA in psychology myself, and one of the main issues I have with our system is that there has been a tendency to oversimplify and overcategorize things by testers who strive to turn it into a pure science via flawed statistical analysis. Also, because most researchers spend a lot of time and effort on their work, they sometimes tend to get attached to their results and try to draw more from them than there really is to find.

- End Rant -

So basically, while I find your observations interesting, I'm not sure if I feel it quite covers our varied and complicated interests and feelings regarding 'technosexuality'.

It's useful to have a general outline. An example is Jung's classification of people as introverts and extraverts. That's obviously a reality but admitting it is doesn't deny the individuality of every person of either type.
The reason I came up with the fantasy axis is to deal with persons whose approach is quite different from mine; I never fantasize about robots, only about biological women if I do at all.
The situation reminded me of the psychiatrists educated in the 1940s and 1950s who were sure that a person who chose (on the MMPI) that he'd rather go to a museum than a football game was thereby proven gay. It didn't occur to them that values had changed, though in fact if a European had made that selection in 1955 they'd not have assumed he was gay.

I'm imagining changing clusters of measured traits or interests that are statistically consistent, not an eternally rigid grid. That's the purpose of flexible behavior: to improve and adapt. Besides, on a (so far) much longer scale even biological properties alter. If you saw a guy from 200,000 years ago you'd probably prefer he be in the cage next to the chimps.

A conceptual structure has uses but those uses are defeated if it's thought of as fixed and finished.

[fection]

Talking about people as extroverts and introverts is another over-simplification. I don't think 'that's obviously a reality'. I'm both, and that stems from complexities of my mind that I can't quite describe, because I'm 'in here' all the time.
And I'm not sure analysing motives is actually all that useful. It seems to me that the more you analyse fun, the more you realise it isn't. I'd prefer things left fresh-faced and un-jaded.
That's not to say I haven't thought about things - probably the contrary. I'm all for rationality, but some things are more fun unexplained, surely.

[xodar]

You'll never know everything.
There's no use creating needless unknowns, especially if it's about common knowledge.
I see it as leading one onward because it's easy to stop learning and deliberately not know something to pretend it's a mystery.

I don't think it would necessarily worsen things to have increased and functional knowledge of behavior, even if it's shown that much behavior is predictable and repititious. In fact, it's dangerous not to. How do you think people can make a caree of repeated murder and not get caught? Or become dictators controlling millions? They have a pragmatic, cold knowledge of how people act.
So it's important for sane, "nice" people to have such knowledge to protect themselves and ultimately to move human possibilties beyond the limits those types use.

But my purpose here was simply to get an idea of the motives of people interested in and involved with robots. After all, I'm one of them, too.

[Puppetmaster16]

Well to add to the discussion, I agree with part of what you're saying, but also feel that our current scientific approach (unfortunately) lacks the flexibility to fully explore the depths of something so potentially abstract as the human mind.

For instance, your cross-axis model, which is quite flexible in and of itself, is still defined by two 'opposites' which you have somewhat arbitrarily establshed to be polar extremes. It may not be the case at all. I don't have any issue with your motive - if anything I'd love to see more research in this area. But I just don't know if you have the right starting point. Why does the humanization of technology have to be labled as opposite to the technological 'improvement' of human biology?

[Tio]

Ummm.....neither

I dont want a woman substitute as I am fully capable of dealing with real women and think that personality is a good thing.

Also as much as I dont mind playing the submissive robot in fantasy, in real life I would much prefer cybernetic implants should it be possible. I see myself more like Motoko from Ghost in the Shell. A free thinking, sexually liberated female that has a strong will of her own.

As for a robot to own I would prefer them to obviously be a robot and either male, female or both as long as they were effeminate and pretty.

Thus I feel I dont fit into either of the original statements of this post

[xodar]

I find it boring to be in constant conflict, especially in daily life. Having to deal over and over with such nonsense as the belief that personal autonomy means pestering people and constantly opposing them rather than making one's own choices and bearing responsibility simply draws energy from positive matters.

[xodar]

Well to add to the discussion, I agree with part of what you're saying, but also feel that our current scientific approach (unfortunately) lacks the flexibility to fully explore the depths of something so potentially abstract as the human mind.

For instance, your cross-axis model, which is quite flexible in and of itself, is still defined by two 'opposites' which you have somewhat arbitrarily establshed to be polar extremes. It may not be the case at all. I don't have any issue with your motive - if anything I'd love to see more research in this area. But I just don't know if you have the right starting point. Why does the humanization of technology have to be labled as opposite to the technological 'improvement' of human biology?

I don't know that I said the humanization of technology is the opposite of improving human biology.
By "humanization" of technology, which except in such cases as chimps using tools is a human activity, I assume is meant making tools easier and more convenient to use.

Persons responding to my original post gave the idea of two axis. Everything can't be everything else. Furthermore, neither you nor anyone else who doesn't have to be on anti-psychotic medication actually acts as though it could. I can see the political utility of instilling such confusion, since it enables someone to always claim they are right -- the other guy's position can then be opposed on moral rather than rational grounds and since everything is really everything that can't be refuted.

Add a third dimension if you want. It might be useful.
The human mind does in fact have limits, but since there's nothing apparent to us that exceeds those limits and since we ourselves use human minds, much of others' behavior has "blind spots" to us.
Note that the less intelligent a life form is, the more predictable its behavior; to a creature as much smarter than humans as we are than rats our behavior would be largely predictable no matter what we're doing even if our subjective experience would be as largely inaccessible to it.
Those are limits we have to overcome, and to do so we have to see what we actually do....

Well, that goes beyond my intention. I just wanted to see which general motives were most common here. Robots on the face of it are somewhat strange, though their basis lies equally in toolmaking and in domesticating animals and human slaves, with a few elements of the sheer survival instinct (becoming one).

[fection]

Yeah, this discusison has somewhat hijacked itself, but hey, I feel like I need to explain myself more fully.
I'll start by saying that my rational view of the world does not paint a pretty picture of it. I wish it did - and I'm not saying that my view is the CORRECT one, just that from past experience, the more I rationalise something, the less entertainment that thing seems to provide.
I'm not condoning ignorance in most things. Just the things (for me) that are more fun un-analysed. So first up, for me, this fetish is about preserving the fun.
But the real reason I'm replying, is this:
When you talk about...
'Having to deal over and over with such nonsense as the belief that personal autonomy means pestering people and constantly opposing them rather than making one's own choices and bearing responsibility simply draws energy from positive matters.'
.. you must realise that that statement is a belief of your own. You're talking about how YOU view someone stating their opinion. Your statement is a subjective description of someone disagreeing with you. I DO think that events only happen one 'objective' way (does that even need to be said?), but often we people are so emersed in our own skewed experience (myself included, of course) that individual perception is coloured by previous patterns, ego and emotion.
In that, I would guess we agree. I'd also guess we would disagree about the accuracy of, specifically, your perceptions.
And yes, my own 'sensitivity' to the recurring nature of your posts is itself emersed in my own experience. But while I think complete objectivity is impossible, the awareness that I tend to view things in favour of myself, can lead me to put conscious effort into seeing (and listening to) what might motivate someone else to think a certain way.
Sorry if I've made this too serious - I just wish you wouldn't draw your lines so deeply. Don't you wonder what motivates people to behave the way they do? It seems more probable that their own views are at least moderately self-consistent than the alternative of them behaving in some utterly random or unduly vindictive fashion - however emotional they, or I, might be.

[xodar]

Of course I wonder what motivates people. otherwise I wouldn't have come up with this topic. Since I can't directly participate in people's subjective experience, least of all online, I have to do it this way.

What I'm bored with is in part what people in about 1960 would've called "phoniness". In part, people whose behavior is determined entirely by others' behavior: they do something because Britney does it or they oppose something because Bush favors it. Not because of any possible outcome or effect on the world, just because somebody else does it. Then there are people who always have dispute anything. The reason is not intrinsic to the matter or substance under consideration, but simply because that person always attacks whatever anyone says or does. As useless as someone who always does as told no matter what.
Dealing with such persons is not dealing with the issue at hand, but rather with their inner issues.

While complete objectivity is not possible, I don't think we should therefore give up on attaining what objectivity we can.

But what I had in mind with this topic was more like the topic where people say "I'm from Oshkosh" and "I'm in Bavaria".

[fection]

I absolutely agree that we need to strive for objectivity - to see 'outside' of ourselves - however flawed a proposition that is. And I'm sorry I made the thread so serious or personal. I tend to do that.
I guess I over reacted to you initially suggesting there might only be two approaches to this whole interest. It seemed a kind of narrow view. From the responses you've had, it's obvious the reasons are plentiful - let the reasons continue...
...End hijack.

[pm_uk]

really interesting way to look at the fetish. I fall under the latter, but anything to do with asfr seems to be appealing.

[Puppetmaster16]

I am the same way as you pm_uk... my attraction extends to many other areas of asfr like hypnosis and freezing, and seems to be more primarily related to sexual control. This is a big reason why I didn't feel xodar's model was initially broad enough to cover 'the big picture'.

All philosophical debates about modern science aside, in my experience I have found that there are also different motivations involved behind technosexuality that somehow seem to extend into other similar fetishes for many of us.

I have never had any particular interest in technology, nor do I have any interest in duplicating or creating an 'ideal' woman. Personally, I feel that what some women would consider their 'flaws' just gives them a unique and interesting personality. As strange as it sounds, I would more likely grow bored with a 'perfect' woman. All this might lead you to believe that I'm not genuinely interested in fembots, but I love the asfr part of it as much as anyone else.

[xodar]

I am the same way as you pm_uk... my attraction extends to many other areas of asfr like hypnosis and freezing, and seems to be more primarily related to sexual control. This is a big reason why I didn't feel xodar's model was initially broad enough to cover 'the big picture'.

All philosophical debates about modern science aside, in my experience I have found that there are also different motivations involved behind technosexuality that somehow seem to extend into other similar fetishes for many of us.

I have never had any particular interest in technology, nor do I have any interest in duplicating or creating an 'ideal' woman. Personally, I feel that what some women would consider their 'flaws' just gives them a unique and interesting personality. As strange as it sounds, I would more likely grow bored with a 'perfect' woman. All this might lead you to believe that I'm not genuinely interested in fembots, but I love the asfr part of it as much as anyone else.

Well, now that raises an interesting thought. I'm not interested in "perfect" women; I'm interested in women that don't incessantly nag, bitch, complain, criticize, and try to dominate a relationship. Women who have their interests and want to not be distracted from them or from a comfortable relationship. A fembot seems like the cheapest bet once they're designed -- besides, as I've mentioned, I'm not getting any younger, either, and a bot would be helpful without inconveniencing a real person.

But the interesting thought is, perhaps the very best products would have a "psychological" dimension in that you could develop her basic personality just as you would the face and body type you'd like.
The personality part of her circuitry might be built with the VERY basics you want then inserted into some kind of interface resembling a computer game; the game presents situations in which you and the bot being developed take part. Somehow -- a big word, but this is speculation -- in taking part in this game, say for several hours a day for a week or so, the basis of a personality you find compatible in whatever way you want will be developed. Then the circuitry is implanted in the fembot's control center and since she can also learn, her development continues in "real time" as she lives with you.

Again, though, this is another thread. Sorry, now I got off track...shows your post was a good one.

[xodar]

Here's a guy with one of my first two motives.


The Orient Industry Co. of Tokyo each month turns out 80 life-size, anatomically correct and finely detailed "love dolls" that retail for the equivalent of $850 to $5,500 each, for men who would rather hang out with toys than women, according to a July Reuters dispatch. The more expensive models are admirably life-like, made of silicon and with 35 movable joints. Reuters found one customer, Mr. "Ta-Bo," who owns at least two dozen of them (each with a name), even though he claims to be seeing five real women on the side. "Sex with human girls was better," he said, "but I hate the process of dating." [Reuters, 7-18-07]

http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html