In the podcast "Imaginary Worlds" (episode 11: sexy robot) the topic of the female designed robot is also addressed. It is pointed out how it only seems necessary to the creator to give the robots a gender. There are already robots in our everyday life that are not humanoid and therefore no need to assign them a gender.
I should track down that podcast because is an interesting intersection between technology and sociology. A long time ago I was thinking about how absurd is to give genders to robots and I imagined a discussion between a cis male engineer and an LGBQ+ activist about making male and female androids. The activist argues that they are doing extra work for something that the androids don't need to do their jobs and also perpetuates gender role stereotypes (and helps to invisibilize people outside the gender binary). The engineer argues that he needs the gender role stereotypes to archieve the acceptance of androids as everyday helpers among regular people because most of them (or at least the ones with the power to maybe stop it from happening) are conservative and technophobic, and would find uncanny the lack of a easily identifiable gender on the humanoids they are interacting with (looking back, my imaginary engineer's atitude is quite cynical)
@@Hybrid_vigour my point is that the design of the machines is dictated by how those machines will be used. If a robot is shaped like a humanoid is because that shape helps its purpose, that makes the idea of gendering robots interesting. When does an identificable gender helps the robot to best do the tasks it was made for and why is that the case? It is really something that the users need/demand/care or it just comes from the makers bias? Should technology be adapted to the culture that will use it or should it just be and are the users the ones who should adapt to it? But yes, I shouldn't had assumed everybody would understand or assume the hypothetical engineer was hetero and cis just because I said he was male
So, in the game Undertale, there is a family of ghosts. One ghost, Napstablook, is worried they are going to be left alone, since the other ghost cousins left to become corporeal and find solid bodies to live in. The other ghost, who's name we don't know, but find their diaries, resigns themselves to stay put, since they felt they'd never find the body they'd always dreamed of. Eventually, they befriend a scientist, Alphys, who builds a robot body for this ghost. The last diary entry states, "Sorry, Blooky. My dreams can't wait for anyone." This is how we learn the creation of the robot TV show host, Mettaton, who is now going by he/him pronouns. It's such a fun game with a lot of LGBTQ+ representation.
@@francisbakininthekitchen2441 There's an item you can buy from Bratty and Catty called, "Mystery Key". If you use it in your inventory, it unlocks the red house next to Napstablook's house. I also think this is why Napstablook was coming over to say hi while you're fighting the Mad Dummy. The Mad Dummy, and the Training Dummy from the Ruins both had ghost cousins in them.
@@revlo8483 The video is about robots, and at the end, Cheyenne mentions trans allegories in some of the movies/shows. I wanted to talk about my favorite trans robot character.
I re-watched My Life as a Teenage Robot a few years ago for nostalgia, and something I appreciated, especially as an adult fan, was how the titular robot, Jenny, was written. While Jenny had feminine characteristics/interests, and would sometimes bend herself backwards for human approval (she was also especially naïve in the early first season, as well as having some pretty obvious issues with her body and appearance), she had the free-will and agency to make her own decisions, on top of being tomboyish, a bit of a spitfire, and even a little morally nuanced at times. Whenever certain characters did take advantage of Jenny's trust or kindness and treated her like a tool to serve in their own ulterior motives, it was always framed by the narrative as something unambiguously awful. But more relevant to this essay and its themes of fembots, surrounding the male fantasy and serving outdated gender norms: There is an episode where Jenny has a synthetic human skinsuit made for her in order to "fit in" with her human peers, but while the skinsuit makes her conventionally attractive, it gains a symbiote-like sentience, attempting to manipulate Jenny and pressure her into performing hyper-femininity 24/7 for the approval of others, especially for human men. But Jenny resists when it interferes with her ability to protect others, and the episode ends with her destroying the skinsuit, accepting herself exactly as the robot she is, even when some humans give vocal disapproval of her. She is not an object of a male fantasy, nor is she a monster for refusing to play into that role. She is a person, a teenage girl coming to terms with and taking control her own gender expression and identity. Even when Jenny has been hurt and othered by the human race, including some people she looks up to or trusts, she still chooses to be kind and continues to fulfill her duties as a superhero. She also takes an active role in trying to better the lives of not just humans, but also other robots, even though most of them in canon do not share her level of sentience. And this isn't simply because of her programming, nor because she's too naïve to know better; but because she is an inherently good person who knows it's the right thing to do. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail, but I've just always found Jenny to be a fun subversion of the typical Fembot tropes and themes. Great video, btw!
Thats a great analysis! I was thinking about the show while watching the video, its honestly one of the only shows I've seen handle robot personhood really well, especially as a show for a younger audience
Ive always kind of been. Bothered by the fembot, because ive only ever seen her presented as a 'sex object' or something for a man to admire, but im happy that its changing into something less misogynistic!
@Erwin Lii good point, but most of the time the gendering is precisely the reason why the robots are given "femenine" atributes (in fiction and in the tech expos of real life). Male engineers often think masculinity is the default for humanoids, so they only design femenine robots for task that are seen as "female jobs" by society's gender stereotypes, like nurses, babysitters, housekeepers, secretaries, etc.
I totally agree but also the two primary side characters in it other than her mother, were two teenage boys who were romantically interested in her in the end. Especially Sheldon. Though I agree at least she has a mother to rely on for guidance, Jenny still falls into most of these tropes
Ex Machina was the first movie where I absolutely wanted the antagonist to die specifically because he decided to have an Asian woman as his domestic servant. Never have I been so satisfied at a character’s death.
So interesting that men always seem to think its modern women that are the problem, not themselves. They seek to create the "perfect woman", but do they ever look at what traits those women possess, and how that really reflects on themself? I think a lot of therapy is needed.
Absolutely, because the reason that modern women seems like a problem os because she is free, and their ideal women looks and acts nothings like a woman
That's why Caleb is punished at the end of the film Ex Machina. Even after he started seeing Ava as a person and not a machine he never even considered that she may have any kind of desiree or ambition of her own, and that sympathy without empathy was his doom (and also is the problem with robots as metaphors, people have a "rational" justification to not see them as equals to human and that shields the audience to do a selfreflecting look at their own bias, instead they say "I would never treat a real woman like I treat my appliances, women are human beings and machines are not")
I'm really excited for when more fembot/robot narratives start talking about neurodiversity. I feel like a story about autism, adhd, ect could be really interesting under a robot lense because the way a computer generated brain would work could easily be so different from you average human. Really calling into question how just because a brain works in a way that is unusual doesn't mean they aren’t living people who deserve freedom and empathy.
@@deaf-tomcat omg I read it too!! that's so cool that you guys both read Ava's demon. I kind of always thought that nobody really knew the comic so- but yea that's pretty nice!! :0
Interesting fact: the word "robot" comes from the Czech word "robota" which means "slave" or "forced labor" A friend of mine said that if we ever reach "The Singularity" where we get fully autonomous, self-aware AI, the term "robot" will be considered offensive towards androids and AIs because of that etymology
@@Brother-Martell slave is the person who does the labour for slavery and that is the word the original comment mentions. im pretty sure they have a different word for slavery itself though.
There's an entire monologue in an Avengers annual that came out a couple weeks back, in which a "synthetic person" character considers the various terms for such s being and why each is both good and bad in various ways.
Although I'm glad that that the trope has evolved from being about objectifying and shaming women to being a means to explore misogyny, I still feel like the way fembots are written and treated in stories is a bit lacking. The stories still kind of fetishize their suffering and dont treat their oppression as seriously or as alarmingly as they should. But hopefully it'll continue to improve in the future.
I think West World really did an amazing job making you have sympathy for them. Some of the early scenes with Delores are horrifying and haunting and you can really understand her motivation for revolution because of the abuse she’s endured.
as someone who doesn't live in north america, its really eye opening to see how many new problems people can create out of thin air after seeing people these days are complaining about a fucking robot that doesnt exist. talk about first world problem
Cheyenne, how dedicated you are in your research, analysis and videos overall is a GEM and still amazes me and will continue to do. I always learn new films/new series/new writers/new ANYTHING with you. You've got so much knowledge and it's brilliant to say the least. As a communication lover I'd love to have your skills. Have you studied something related to research or communication? 💕 ('Pixeled perfect' felt weird to me as a kid and didn't know why, now as an adult it's sad to think about how INCREDIBLY misoginystic it was)
oh, i so wish this was longer 😔 i feel like fembots in general are such a complex issue, and i totally agree that theres something about how almost all stories centered on androids focus on "the few good ones" that trascend robotness and "become human", which i feel is almost ridiculous.... if it has consciousness and feeling, it is hard to write a real line between them and a person. in that sense, i do wish you could have talked about stories such as coppelia and even the pygmalion myth, both arguably tackling the fembot concept even before maria from metropolis, both similarly centered on their relationship to men. i do feel like the only fembot treated like their male counterparts (ie, as a cool supertalented source of fish out of water hijinks and questionings of their own humanity) is jenny from life as a teenage robot, funnily enough. even as she doesnt have any female friends at first, and her only strong positive female relationship, with her mother, is plenty contentious, shes still one of the best robot characters ive seen that actually have the fun of superpowers and cool robot transformations without the heavy slave metaphors that come with the whole "being subservient to the human race" aspect of the character. however, beyond my own tastes, im super glad you talked about the intersection of race in the genre! its something i have never stopped to think about and its really something quite fascinating to read more about. all in all, another great video!
From the stories, movies and games I’ve seen handle an androidesque plot there isn’t so much a focus on “the few good ones”. Instead the distinction is between a very complex Virtual intelligence and a true artificial intelligence. An android becoming human isn’t some sort of rejection of its nature of a robot but instead of a leap from being an unthinking machine with no personality or feelings just acting out a series of preprogrammed operations endlessly on demand to a sentient being capable of making its own decisions. For example robot arms that assemble cars are “robots” but they aren’t aware or conscious. If one of them suddenly started paining tomorrow and arguing with the foreman that wouldn’t be the arm becoming “one of the good ones” or “transcending its robotness” it is evolving onto a level of intelligence and consciousness similar, if not greater than, the level that humans experience. This isn’t limited to robots, humans followed this exact trajectory by evolving from animals that operated only on instinct and hormonal drives to a species capable of thought, planning, and all the things that have allowed us to master the planet and explore space. Really the plot of these types of stories is just a retelling of human evolution with a Sci-fi facade except this time there is already a human like species on the planet (that being us). This is also why some stories go the Cro-Magnon/ Neanderthal route that has the newly intelligent robots fight with humanity and some go the opposite and have them intermingle and form a cohesive society as some evidence suggests happened in parts of Asia and Africa.
this is about lesbians controlling women's bodies or even the image of women that men imagine in their own minds as if belongs to lesbians which have nothing to do with the rest of us also you don't share history with women of other races which is an entire different subspecies of human.
i feel like this trope was done well in portal because (spoilers) caroline was somewhat repressing her anger and when she was FORCED into a body she doesn’t want, she still managed to find empathy
As a neurodivergent women, the trope reminds me of some men wanting to take advantage of autistic women. The fembots don't express emotions as well, are naive, logical, easy to manipulate/control, etc. These are traits that certain men see in autistic women and I think this can be dangerous and justifying for objectification. Its like the manic pixie dream girl trope which also fetishizes neurodivergent women in many of our opinions
Yup, the body language of most actresses/actors playing robots and that of autistic people/autistic characters looks indistinguishable sometimes. Not too mention really autistic people like sheldon (bbt) are described as robotic. Men also use autistic women to try to have the "cool girl". They think she's attractive, and she doesn't appear to have emotional needs so I don't have to give her much. When really autistic women just can't express emotion well.
And this has real life parallels as autistic women are more likely to get into abusive relationships due to not understanding social cues and interactions.
Anyone find it sort of creepy how real-life AI is always presented as feminine? Apple's "Siri," Amazon's "Alexa," Microsoft's "Cortana," etc. There's an option with some of these to give them male voices, but the default is still feminine. EDIT: Robots are such an interesting trope because there are so many different ways you can read them. As you talked about here, they can be used in stories about race and gender, but robot stories can also be used to reflect society's view of neurodivergent or lower-class people, as robots are often shown as having a linear and analytical way of thinking, or are used to do menial labour. Essentially, robots are often used to represent an "other," and due to not being entirely "human," the author can make them seem as sympathetic or as unsympathetic as they want them to be, which is pretty messed up- what does that say about people who are othered? Pop Culture Detective also has a really interesting video on robots and the slavery allegory, which centers mainly on the Star Wars franchise.
i think that stems from how service industry workers are female by default as well, like maids, waitresses, stewardess, receptionists, etc. there was survey that reveals that females are more comfortable with fellow females and males are more comfortable with females too. so a woman is seen as more comforting. but it is icky that it has mutated into 'a woman is for servicing you' kind of mindset that a lot of men have 🤮
@@felix-xd4mx Confirming what you said, is probably by design made to appeal the most people. There's a gender bias when trusting a stranger, i know there's a study somewhere. The most trustable being is a young woman as there's an innate association our brain makes: It's theorized maybe cause we trust motherhood, maybe we trust beauty; but regardless it's a biass... So as a developer, setting your AI assistant with a male voice is already giving you a small disadvantage, which of course you wouldn't want to...
@@felix-xd4mx agree, I was about to say the same thing about how women are viewed as more caring/comforting than men in general, and that's probably the reason why. I honestly prefer working with women/other feminine folks as I feel more comfortable around them.
I've heard that there's a research about how female voices are more pleasant to the ear (for like... everyone) (Which is BS because there are definitely male voices that make some doubt of their sexuality, smooth as silk)
I'm sure it's been mentioned but In Chobits there are many Persocoms that are male and belong to women in the manga. They were mostly in the background. One of the issues in the manga is that everyone, men and women prefered their PCs to real people. Your points are awesome tho. Just wanted to point that out lol. Also, you are right about the anime having almost no Dudebots.
@@susanwjoh0re735And I'll just give examples of shounens where female characters are treated well and even take important roles in plot: JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, Fullmetal Alchemist, Rubaki (Slayers), Ryounin Kenshi, Gintama, Jujutsu Kaisen etc. It's not that hard to treat women well even in for-male series, dude
one more time i tell you. keep your woke bs to yourself. stop telling japan how to do their own thing. stop it. it's none of your business. if you do not like it go make your own or dont watch it at all.@@peachesandcream22
I never really paid attention to how fucked up pixel perfect and Chobits was a child, but rewatching them now, I can clearly see how weird they were, at least to be direct towards children.
A (male) friend of mine lent me Chobits intensely convinced that I would loooooove it. He was very surprised. I was fuming at the ending, I thought it was stupid and ridiculous and did not actually address any of the issues the narrative had opened up (and I didn't even recognize the slavery coding/allegory! ... I was young and uneducated) . But I guess he thought "the male character renounces sex" was the peak of feminism, so I, clearly a sex hating feminist, would hail it as a masterpiece. I wish I had known "asexuality" was a thing, because I would have been way better equipped to deal with this bs.
I live for your video essays!! Since I started watching Westworld I've been waiting for some intelligent commentary that addresses all the underlying themes and issues within the show
Chobits kinda fucked up my idea of love and being a "girl" btw XD watching it as a 14 year old. I was already brainwashed by media but I think chobits really put that last punch in to my mind all that toxic shit we love sooo much. I still have some weird nostalgia for it tho.
@@admiralkipper4540 I dunnu if you ever watched it... but the undertones of what a perfect girl should be. Women's roles in general. Maybe watch it and think about it? ^_^~ desu neeee~
@@admiralkipper4540 i think you’re right that it was meant to be a romance, however chi acts like a child and is seriously infantilized while also being portrayed in a sexual way (like her turn-on button being where it is and the focus on her different body parts) which is very concerning. also there’s a part in the series where one guy has a bunch of female robots and it’s just??? super odd to have a harem with submissive robots with no autonomy. sadly, the manga is very much influenced by a male gaze.
@@admiralkipper4540 Regardless of a creators intentions, media can and will be interpreted in all kinds of ways. This is especially true of tropes or subjects that inherently bring a lot of baggage with them, and subservient robots (especially those primarily modelled to appear female & serve men) is certainly one of those tropes. You can’t really escape the questions that come with that kind of world set-up, and if a creator refuses to deliberately address any of them then people are just going to connect the dots themselves.
I would love to hear your opinion on the movie Her. Although the AI is not in a physical body, I think it talks about the replacement of human connection through technology. And that she is meant to fulfill the the male protagonists desires, when she gets her own ambitions is when their relationship gets too complicated to handle.
I thought it was because, well... she was being romantic with others simultaneously. It was interpreted by her completely different than it is for a human, to be in tens or hundreds of conversations simultaneously; to a human it feels then like the relationships would be less meaningful then, but that wasn't the case at all with a "computer being" like her. It hurt his feelings and it’s understandable, but her perspective is valid too, because she just functions in a different way than a human. Her way of existence is legitimate as well, but it doesn't mix well with a monogamous human.
It's more like her artificial mind worked way faster then that of a humans to the point where she was “cheating“ on him out of pure boredom and then collectively leaving with all the other AIs wich i still think was a bullshit ending
I was looking for this comment and i'm so glad to find it. Pearl's arc as a fembot slave allegory is just perfect. The issue i had with the "Rose is Pink Diamond" thing for a while was that at the end, Pearl was still doing what her Diamond told her to do, making her story of liberation kind of frustrating and hypocritical. But then came SU Future and that beautiful episode where both she and Pink Pearl finally stop making excuses for Pink Diamond's flaws and the very bad things she done and finally set themselves free.
Cheyenne, have you thought about how Detroit Become Human addresses this? Especially with the difference between how Kara (a white maid robot) and Marcus (a black housekeeper) are treated by the stories and by other human characters. In a lot of ways, Kara's objectification and abuse continues, but in largely different ways than Marcus is. Marcus is given a role of emancipator, finding a group of androids to save and fight for their rights, whereas Kara's main story leads her to having to just run away from her mistreatment.
And the fact that North (in Marcus' troupe) is the person telling Marcus to do the antagonistic things, vs Josh and Simon, saying to do the more passive/compassionate things... interesting that if a woman is to be a part of the action, she must be antagonistic..
@@emilylockwood795 Yes! I didnt know how to bring up North myself, so thanks for this. I feel like North is meant to be the young activist that wants to do bigger and bigger things "for the cause". She does have a point and there are real activists like that out there but there's a weird bit that if you want to romance her, you have to have Marcus sign off on all of what shes saying and doing - ridding himself of agency in order for romance. A good relationship has disagreements, and I feel it's kind of out of character for Marcus to enable something so dangerous. But theres a lot to Marcus I cant really speak for given I'm white.
Detroit become human actually tackles the robot rights well in the sense that the ideal end does give all robots the rights to live free willed, but I'm not happy about the gender roles either. Kara's story is beautiful, but it ends tragically and doesn't tie into the main plot at all. You can actually let her die at any point in the game and it won't impact the "main plot". And also they put North in a place, where she's supposed to shut up and just fall in love with the male leader. Because what is a good guy hero without getting the woman as a reward? The game had so much potential and yet it chose to display the two significant female characters as a mom and a love interest, not as meaningful actors to the outcome of the revolution. Then again the audience is mainly heterosexual men and the choice for making it a hetero male power fantasy was kind of expected.
Yes I feel like there's definitely some uncomfortable themes involved in dbh, especially in the ways the white woman and child vs the white male cop vs the black male housekeeper are characterized and treated within the story
@The Golden Sphere Very weird that you're assuming I'm a lesbian lol.. Can you explain to me how men calling android women who are obedient and submissive "the perfect women" is not misogynistic?
@The Golden Sphere Well, I'm glad you had fun arguing with the imaginary lesbian in your head. Maybe I'll meet her some day and we'll live happily ever after ! 🌈👩❤️💋👩💕
@The Golden Sphere you seem like the kinda guy who has been responsible for a comment chain that is over a hundred replies long. What video did you do it on?
I wonder how it would feel to see a female enslaved robot who is Black. I guess I had implicitly assumed that female robot race and design reflected cultural beauty standards. But thinking about it now, as a director, it would be scary and challenging to enter a space of overlap between real history and male fantasy robot enslavement.
Yeah I can imagine that being some pretty dicey waters but it says a lot that having the mindless female robot sex slave kink shit was more important to them than telling stories with characters who aren't all white.
I feel like the whole “Do sentient robots deserve rights” question has kinda been settled. For a while. Yes, they do. Yet people keep returning to this well. And the obvious racial parallels strike me as a bit disquieting, mostly because, ya know… white people didn’t invent black people. Black people already existed, and had their own various cultures and homes. And then they were kidnapped and enslaved. Likewise, men didn’t invent women. So I don’t really see how robots can be used as a meaningful allegory without being extremely paternalistic. And without those allegories, we’re just back at “Do sentient robots deserve rights?” Galatea was written when women-as-objects was a largely uncontroversial perspective. I guess, maybe, if there was an intelligent AI that already existed in its own world, then was taken out of that world and put into a robot body and enslaved, that might be a somewhat more respectful allegory. Except, of course, it’s still coming from the default understanding that the stand-in for women, people of color, trans people, or any other oppressed group, is fundamentally inhuman. Which is weird.
I don't think that media is seriously asking the question "do robots deserve rights" anymore, if they ever were. It's always pure allegory, it's asking the question "do all humans deserve rights," but through a lens that is not so overtly confrontational to preconceptions. It's designed to get in behind the viewer's preconceptions, so that they don't realize it until the message is already inside the house.
I’ve never seen someone critically analyze Chobits (or Pixel Perfect tbh) and I’m so interested to hear your thoughts. I grew up in the 90s watching anime and reading manga with my little cousin. She was maybe 7 or 8 when she got into Chobits, but I didn’t know anything about the story or characters. I just thought Chi had a cute design and never thought much of it. I had no idea how disturbing the content was until very recently. It’s incredibly unsettling how Chi (and other anime girls/women) are designed to be visually appealing to young girls and creepy men. It’s nothing new but… ugh. It’s hard to see that growing up and have it not leave an impression.
It is unsettling to design appealing characters now? Are you for real? Calling men "creepy" because they enjoy the design of a cute girl it's fucking disgusting, if men like something cute, they're creepy, and if they dislike it, they're assholes...
@@cristalido3640 Exactly. Especially when Chobits was made by Clamp, thus by WOMEN. These woke women in this channel hate not only men, but other women too (if they have different views).
@@piotr004 Like, as a person who liked Chobits, you are being very obtuse man. Did you not watch the video? There are more things that cause a character design to be weird besides just the design. As a creative, the way a character looks implies a lot apon the narrative and the themes, and the commentor clearly didn't have a issue with the design for the design, but the implications within the story.
@@cristalido3640 Oh it's you again, still pushing that narrative huh? Why do you click on clearly leftist breakdowns of tropes and stories if you are just going to push the "woke waman!!1!" Narrative? Like did you watch the video? There are very weird undertones to Chobits and her character design that makes it unsettling, because of the implications and themes of her story. That's coming from someone who liked Chobits too.
@@edenswhateverchannel It's only weird towards you because you don't like it, i'm tired of men being portrayed in any negative way you can think of just because he likes and desires something cute.
I didn't think much of the fembots as being more than sexy machines, or wanting to gain sentience. But this is actually a very interesting discussion. Enslaved beautiful girls who are programmed to serve their master and keep human women from establishing their own agency, by making it so that they fear replacement. It's more terrifying than I gave it credit for.
I'm curious if you've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how it handled the subject of "fembots". It's an interesting example of pop culture that's trying to pass off as feminist while still being deeply problematic (much like its creator, Joss Whedon). Essentially the fembots are used in nearly every way you described (as "perfect" women, sex objects, fantasies, replacements, etc.) and there are moments where you are supposed to sympathize with them... but usually only just as they're going to die, besides that it's played for laughs. Then there's Whedon's later project, Dollhouse, and oh boy, is THAT a can of worms.
@@CheyenneLinI’m a man myself but I can’t stand that sort of thing because it’s so offensive and disrespectful to women I just pulled a Lisa Simpson I did didn’t I
What's hilarious about anime is that due to same face syndrome really hot personocoms look identical to the real women. With the exception of the personocoms having more interesting hair and kawaii ear things.
I would have like to see your opinion over Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, even though she is not a robot, she was manufactured. And definitely would be considered a monster too, specially in EoE. Or maybe Yuki from Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. She got her freedom temporary but then had to return to her former mechanical self for the sake of everyone.
I can also see a lot of this in the Purus from Gundam double Zeta Especially considering some of the context around the decision to create those characters, and that it came out nearly a decade before Eva did But to get to Double Zeta you’re going to need to watch like 80 episodes of Gundam and regular Zeta can get pretty brutal at times
It's far less serious, but I thought the Amazon episode of "Futurama" did a really good job with using a fembot (who was pretending to be a femputer lol) as commentary on misogyny and misandry. Also, Katey Segal (Leela) played a fembot herself in the Disney straight to video movie "Smart House," which from what I can tell, takes some inspiration from Stepford Wives (I admit, I've only seen the Brutalmoose review though lol)
To be honest, this video made me think of Detroit: become human. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a video game that tackles the idea of freedom for androids, The game it self is pretty good and I love the characters we follow, but I think the thing I thought about the most is that of the idea of how you can achieve freedom in the game. Now, this game is about making decisions since your the one that gets to control how the story goes, but I think the way they handle it is very good to say the least. How they were created to serve humans and even take jobs that humans normally do. And then to realize (deviant) that they can break free from it and become Deviants. I don’t really know how to explain it, but all I wanted to say is that it just reminded me of it and I thought that was cool. Sorry for not being very good at explaining, but thank you for reading if you did! And the video is great!
I TOTALLY had forgotten about Chobits! It almost feels like a fever dream. I remember one thing I didn't like was that the persocomes had switches between their legs that could erase and restart them if activated. Just felt super weird and low key gross. But I remember one thing I loved was the storyline of the neighbor writing that magazine about finding a special someone in a scary, lonely world. Was definitely one of the most poignant parts of the manga.
@@vbrown6445 Yes! It was a big storyline because it was the main reason the main character couldn't have sex with his robot - if he did, it would reset her and clear her memory.
Coming from someone who grew up with Chobits and Pixel Perfect back in 2004 as a 12-year-old sixth-grader, these films might have been entertaining to me when I was a lad. However, speaking as a grown-up, I cannot help but cringe at how women are objectified to be the perfect life-like dolls for the male protagonists. Then again, female objectification is not just limited to these fembots, as ETA Hoffmann also wrote his story, The Sandman or Der Sandmann. In this story, there is the existence of the mechanical doll Olimpia who is created by Spallanzani, Nathanael's professor, and Clara who is Nathanael's human fiancée. Nathanael is utterly charmed by Olimpia, thanks to purchasing glasses by Coppola who is actually the villain Coppelius in disguise, but he is driven to sheer insanity by her otherworldly beauty and her eyes. All Olimpia could utter is "Ah. Ah" as if though people perceived her to have a speech impediment because Spallanzani was trying to pass her off as his daughter. Coppelius and Spallanzani have an argument, Coppelius destroys Olimpia, Nathanael is taken to the insane asylum, despite Clara and his friend Lothar trying to stop Nathanael, and Clara ends up becoming the wife of a kindly gentleman and the mother of two boys.
I've read Hoffmanns Snadman thanks to your comment, and it was disturbing. Partially bc it was weitten 2 centuries ago and partially bc of it's portrayal of fembot...
@@ИмяФамилия-ф2д8ш I'm glad my comment also had you talking about Hoffmann's Sandman. I knew about this story through one of my most favorite operas of all time, Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, specifically with Olympia's scene and how it ended.
in the chobits manga there is actually more male persocoms in background scenes etc. It's mentioned that both men and women own them (both make and female presenting coms) the focus of the story is just on female ones
the first time i ever heard the word "fembot" was on an episode of the bionic woman in 1980. it was a charlie's angels crossover. the fembot special effect was basically what looked like a motherboard with eyes taped to the women's faces. i don't recall hearing "fembot" actually coined in the stepford wives even though that's definitely what they were.
Talking about the chobits style of AI and "fembots" you get to a very good point. A frequent refrain I hear among lonely men on the internet and 'incels' is that AI and robot sex dolls are going to fix the problem of male loneliness. Personally I think it will only make it worse. If we ever reach a point where robots are available for companionship they will have to be limited in some ways. I presented this conundrum to a person who was eager for this future and who thought that a "perfect robot girlfriend" would finally make him happy. "If the robot does not have free will then any "love" it shows you will be false. Created through programming and no better than an illusion. If the robot does have true free will then you will be a slave owner. The robot will also be free enough to choose not to love you and you will be back at square one." The man I said this too found it utterly enraging. He insisted that if it were convincing enough a robot would not need free will to show true affection. I countered by saying if it were that convincing it would once again look like slavery. He would then be dealing with not just am illusion of love but a ln illusion of enslavement as well. He exploded, called me some pretty derogatory names and left the discord server. This is something that worries me about the future of AI companionship ship. As a woman i am not afraid that AI will replace me. I am afraid of men's rage when they find out it cannot. I'm afraid of men's despair when they realize free will is necessary for true companionship with another being.
The solution is Matrix level VR games populated by sentients npc. Then, you create an avatar that look better than 24 year old Brad Pitt, and born from an AI family as rich as the Rothschild.
You're acting as if women are even capable of love. The divorce rate is 40-50% and women initiate 70-80% of divorces. You can say a robot wife's love is an illusion, but so is a real woman's, the difference is that one doesn't betray you.
I think people drastically underestimate how much they would value AI companions and synthetic matrix like experiences. People think that reality is what matters most, but that is not how things are trending.
@@jackmiddleton2080 it's only trending like that due to the novelty of it. When everyone has access to it and it becomes everyday then it will become no more entranceing than any other tech we have at hand. Nobody is opineing about the magic of cellphones anymore and people have largely fallen out of love with the internet at large. If you look at the romanticised excited way people spoke about the web in the 90s and compare it to now you can easily see the trend. As robots and AI become mundane and corporate the appeal of them as companions will follow suit. You'll have your AI girlfriend and she'll be just the same as everyone else's. A passing fancy with a subscription service fee.
I do understand where he is coming from but if he was to buy a robot and pressed the "activate free will" button and the robot left, that would definitely just mean he isnt someone even a robot would have a relationship if the robot remembers his actions in the test phase. which I think is what he fears the most. usually incels externalize their issues to be fault of others but obviously it is their fault since they are generally weird and sometimes even genuinely bad people, with way too high egos and expectations. even if they found a relationship with a real person, it doesnt automatically fix them like a light switch because they have real problems they should talk about with a therapist. so from that perspective a robot wouldnt solve his issues what so ever. though if the issue is mere loneliness and he was to buy a robot and treat it like a person should in a relationship and he was to press this button, then I dont see why the robot would walk away. a lack of confidence, low self-esteem and social anxiety maybe the real issues that disappear with an automated companion, and if this companion was to become self-aware, the issues wouldnt be there anymore and the robot wouldnt be walking away since nothing bad has happened and he is not a bad person.
This is probably one of my favourite videos of yours. Very interesting topic, your in-depth research and look on the tropes from different angles. Not just informative, but also fun. Thank you so much for sharing this, and also the links.
I'd say that the Chobits manga is worth a read even if you have watched the anime. Not only is it beautifully drawn, the tone is very different. The anime is overly comedic, glossing over the darker, more contemplative themes and changing the ending entirely. And I haven't watched the anime in over a decade but I remember that in the manga they're seen accompanying passerbys as much as female persocoms.
It’s even funnier when you know that back when the matrix was first made, oestrogen came as little red pills instead of blue. So all those incel types going on about how they “took the red pill” are unknowingly saying they’re making themselves more feminine (ofc there’s nothing wrong with that, I just find it ironic considering how much they hate women & anything remotely feminine lol). Still tho, doesn’t surprise me that they never acknowledge it, since they’ve got their heads so far up their asses they might as well be living in a whole separate reality.
It wasn't though. The redpill is just a program that helps locate the person's pod, thus acceptance of the truth. The Blue Pill is a reset program, reverting the person to a state where they aren't aware the Matrix is a simulation. Besides. They only even confirmed that cause people were theorizing about it.
I've forgotten about Chobits except for the really pretty designs. I thought there were also male personcoms but they're not as common. God it's been so long since I've seen the series. I'm so glad you mentioned Janelle Monae, her music videos and emotion picture Dirty Computer is really good too with using fembots and tech as means of oppression and trying to break out into freedom. Awesome analysis of the fembot, looking forward to your next ep
One of my favourite fembot stories is The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia. It explores beautifully what it means to be a sentient fembot whose life, as it were, is totally dependent on a man, but who also fights hard for her right to autonomy.
So I both watched and read Chobits when I was much younger, and I’ll definitely say one difference between the anime and manga is that the manga _did_ have male persocoms that were popular among women. Granted, they were expanded upon but the fact they had both male and female bots in servant positions to both male and female humans. The anime on the other hand only had female ones mostly seen. Still, I can’t believe I went this long without seeing the creepy undertones.
It’s really disheartening to grow up and realize how much anime I watched was p edophilic and misogynistic in tone and nature. I can count on one hand the anime shows I watched that didn’t include the sex ualization of underage girls, and even less genuine feminist elements of the story. It’s freaking disturbing how embedded into the medium that stuff truly is.
this is why i started to get into sports anime and magical girl anime...though i wish there was a sports anime that focused on a team of girls for a change. Its kinda hard being a female anime lover : /
@@timefortee yeah ikr, Japan really needs to crack down on the p3do shit sold in doujin stores and shit and should make recruiting kids as young as 11 to be idols illegal because some pics of the girls are really creepy especially cuz the fanbase is made up of middle aged men
I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your video essays. It reminded me of another robot uprising show that was released around the same time as Westworld (don't worry, nobody saw it). AMC's Humans also touched on a lot of what you are talking about.
I mean... it's not like the persocons were slaves, they were just robots (they only become sentient for real in the post ending), but in my opinion they are specifically the "waifu" impersonation. The thing is: Chobits came from the same "Lain" social anxiety theme of technology becoming more and more present in Japanese society specifically, to a point that people would exchange actual human interaction with "talking with your computer" and we becoming more isolated with our "persocons" at home. Also, otaku waifu culture is also mixed in the bag because persocons are ALSO the allegory to the fictional anime girl: it's beautiful, it's cute, but there is things you cant so with it, like have sex or actualy build a relationship - that's from where most of the conflict of the show comes from. The problem is that, unlike Lain, Chobits never expands it's themes, instead chooses focusing on Chii's cute daily life. Also it woukd be cool if they portrayed a male persocon with human female in the story, cuz the truth is women also have the desire for perfect "partners". It's a shame, cuz Yumi's storyline impersonated this anxiety really well. Still really love Chii and the show.
This. Seems like most people didn't get it at all. Also, there were women with male persocons on the background, the story implies that both males and females exchanged actual human interactions with their persocons. The thing is, anime industry being heavily bent towards otaku culture, will cater to otaku's taste. Otaku buys manga, otaku buys dvd/BR, otaku buys figure and most otaku are male. So you'll see a lot of cute anime girls in most anime/manga. It's a business, after all. Another thing that I see is a lot of judgement based on western cultural background. We have to take into account that anime/manga is a japanese cultural phenomenon, they are made by japanese for japanese. And japanese culture have lots of nuances that most people don't even acknowledge.
I only recently like within the past year watched Chobits. I’m 21 and after watching it I got so invested in these dark, ominous and immoral themes that plague the entire series. So much so that in my English Comp 2 course at my college for my final project I wrote about it. I mainly focused on the world building of the Chobits series and the problems it poses. For example the ethical dilemma of knowing something has sentience and a personality and essentially using that thing as nothing more then a servant that you use until you discard it for a newer model. The other main portion of my paper was about Chi and her life story. The way she and her sister were created and given life, a personality and a consciousness only to be dolls in a family they never asked for. And when Freya began to have unnatural feelings for her father she was taken advantage of. Was the show cringe at times. Absolutely it was! However I do enjoy speaking on the creative ways it spoke on sensitive real life subjects by using metaphors to spell it out for the viewer.
Why are you talking about them robots as if they had a consciousness (and emotions) akin to our own? It is utterly illogical to treat a computer like it has a complex emotional inner world.
@@timefortee It isn’t illogical at all. It is an ethical and moral dilemma we are talked about ever since artificial intelligence was thought of and created. The closer we get to AI having some sort of something akin to emotion and sentience the closer we get to having to have this debate more rapidly. Also it is “Why are you talking about the robots.” Not them. If you are going to call me illogical then I expect proper grammar at least.
@@catcheek7761 But it's pure fantasy and only exists in fiction. Or do you believe those fairytale depictions of AI will actually exist irl one day??? Perhaps an atheistic mindset predisposes one to such irrational expectations?
@@timefortee I’m totally unsure if we will have anything like Chobits as you are correct it is a work of fiction. However if technology continues to advance it may be possible to have something similar to Chobits. We already have very human looking robots so what’s to say that may not happen. It would be illogical to not think it could happen one day. However it may not happen. I was simply sharing my thoughts on if it did happen and the moral and ethical issues that would present if it did.
@@catcheek7761 Your potential scenario only works if you have a materialistic worldview, cause if you believe in a soul, you would know that humans cannot give any of their creation one.
Also, the younger audiences shows are mostly written by men. What the Android from metropolis? Would she count as a fembot? You should do one on subverting magic girl (ex. I Dream of Genie).
In the most technical definition, yes, Maria the robot from 1927's Metropolis is considered a fembot. But were it becomes interesting is when you wonder about the purpose of her creation, because in the movie she is _used_ to impersonate an specific human female and lead a rebelion of human workers into a trap, but I'm not sure if that was _the reason_ why she was constructed or if it was more of a happy coincidence that the creepy scientist just happened to be finishing the creation of a female robot when the evil aristocrat needed to replace a female with a doppleganger they could control (I think the restored cut of the movie and the novel it is based on expand on that, but I'm didn't watch/read them soo I'm not sure)
this was a rlly great, well written video. super satisfying to watch everything unfold and refold in a new way, esp with the well connected transitions to the next topic/part. the content itself was great too, even if im not particularly interested in the fembot genre. amazing vid
"...Knowing that none of us have 200 years to wait" That hit too close to home... Living on a country that sees trans people like me as "fakers", or "wanting to fool real men/women" is so heartbreaking and each and every day eats at me. I'm real. I exist, I'm right here and yet my cries fall on deaf ears. I wish for future generations, maybe 200 years from now to be able to proudly say "I'm real" without fear of ab/se.
Not fake. Just your dysphoria is based on cultural dysfunction, and you allowed said culture, or rather its counterculture which is just a mirror of the culture ie the same thing at the core, to sell you a treatment plan that involves bodily mutilation. Your issues with dysphoria are real and serious and deserve both attention and compassion, just society's reaction towards it from both ends is warped which reflects how warped society is.
@@ethosterros9430 yeah, fuck those that are too lazy to change and instead try to force “normality“ onto others doesn't matter if it makes everyone miserable or not
@@whitehavencpu6813 the government is also responsible for laws pal, and with the majority republican supreme court there is literally nothing holding lawmakers accountable, let alone prevent shit like restricting abortions in texas to the point nobody could realistically do it without getting sued to the ground
@@PancakemonsterFO4 Why act like people can't have laws without government? What makes the government so uniquely different from people that they can dictate and enforce laws that free people couldn't do themselves in a decentralized fashion?
@@whitehavencpu6813 because that leads to every town having their own set of rules aka chaos, also with no restrictive power about how far laws can go those who make the rules will have more power over everyone living in those areas. Corruption will bloom and police will have even more power then they do already
The song "Build a B***h" sums the issue of fembots up and female objectification perfectly. The opening lyrics of the song are literally, "Bob the builder broke my heart; Told me I need 'fixing".
And yes the worth of women to a lot of people, and what's ingrained into us from when we're born, is that we are only how attractive we are to men. How we can serve or satisfy or please men for the benefit of men. That is just how we are socialized and many people don't seem to want to accept that. But it's a major flaw in our culture.
I am here for my baby Chi! Im glad you added that anime into this discussion, it definitely needs the spotlight Edit: of course it could be better and I probably shouldn't have read it as a teen with how kinda... adult it was? But it was good lol
One thing I have noticed peppered throughout western literature, is that they cannot conceieve of not oppressing/looking down on others. They MUST have a class system in place. I see this flaw within men (of all backgrounds) in how they dipict the Perfect Woman as a man-made machine rather than a person
considering perfection is an illusion, it would be a man made thing either way. everyone has flaws, were it in appearance, psyche or personality. usually fembots just cut personality and thought in preference of looks, id imagine a malebot wouldnt be any different. if we lived in a world where we can actually make this kind of machines, it would be solely superficial one, no different to cyberpunks superficiality.
I'm late to the party but I love this topic so much. I also watched the "Born Sexy Yesterday" essay. I recommend you watch Eva, it's a Spanish movie. I made a presentation about how accurate the A.I. representation is on that movie. I'm a CS major lol I watched Chobits as a teen and didn't like it as much? I thought Chii was cute but her romance with the main guy was strange. Anyways, I love talking about A.I. in movies and I really enjoyed this video!
I could be wrong, because it's been a LONG time since I watched Chobits, but I thought in the finale Chii chose to give the persocoms the ability to love (IE the ability to make their own decisions, like Chii)? That's how I always interpreted the big SCARY WORLD ENDING thing that they were talking about and why they sent those other two to shut her down. But I guess giving the subservient robots the ability to experience "love" like Chii still puts them in a position that's still mostly for men.
It's something like this. Before Chii, the persocons were not really sentient. Remeber that kid that owned a lot of personcons because of his dead sister and tried to stop Hideki of falling in love in Chii? he was aware that persocons were only robots, not sentient. Only Chii was sentient because she was special. The scary world ending is Chii running a program that made all persocons sentient.
I'd like to see a commentary on trying to teach a fem-bot feminism, but they're wired to be like the servile trad wife fembot trope.. there's a lot of ways that could be played.
Was that Young Sheldon? Idk I don’t watch it. But this was such a thoughtful deep dive. Well written and researched. I also always thought it was interesting in Westworld that Maeve, a biracial Android host (we’ll get into colorism later), is first on a quest to save her family but then repurposed to avenge and save humans! It was almost like a Black woman could not be given agency for her own journey but that she had to sacrifice herself for the greater good yet again. Tessa Thompson’s role in the series 3rd season is similar by being the nurturer as a host and then punished by having her family taken from her as she starts to accept them. With all that is going on with the situation with Syesha and CPS in America, one can not think that there’s an utter disconnect between how Black women are viewed as mothers in society and how society often treats them as mothers and treats their families.
i love ex machina because it feels so aware of fembot tropes and subverts them. Ava was built to be used by men but she uses that against them so she can be free. It was so cathartic to watch! My only disappointment was that she was the only one of Nathans robots to make it out. I thought that since she connected on some level with Jade, that they would escape together.
ava was created to escape and she did, she herself was never aware since her programming was to escape at all costs. Something they don't mention apparently.
It's a mess of a game, but I'd be curious as to what you think of Detroit: Become Human. For better or worse it very clumsily explores many of these ideas.
this was a great watch! i'm a scifi fan myself and loved the video, especially since the topic of feminine ai/robots is still prevalent and even nowadays, it still echoes some sexism and racism. also thanks for mentioning the trans perspective in scifi movies like the matrix, as a trans guy i appreciate it!
Fembots are honestly a trope I dismissed for most of my life, I didn't really get invested until I started listening to Janelle Monae's discography (which I'm glad you mentioned!) It's unfortunate that so far in television and movies there hasn't been a better demonstration of the intersection between racial oppression and oppression of AI. I've always wondered how it would be if Monae decided to build on her android storyline for a film mini-series one day. Just the concept of Fembots alone is an intersection between the oppression of women and that of AI, so there's a lot of potential for compelling narratives around race, gender, and robots. I'm excited to see who will be able to encapsulate that in the future.
im still watching the video but i just needed to say, the production quality of your recent videos compared to your older videos just blows me away. i rather like your older videos of course, otherwise i wouldnt have subscribed awhile ago, however your newer videos are a such a treat for the eyes and ears
I loved Bicentennial Man as a kid, as well as AI. Back then, I didn't really understand the massive desire to be seen as human, because I hadn't really seen or experienced the intense hatred that the world shows to othered people yet.
My favorite sci-fi movie are Blade Runner and The sequel but I know the female robots are not as complex as male robots or even human man's and this make me sad that in my favorite historie I don't see myself 😢
Young Sheldon (I think that's the name of the show ???) I love robots and all the allegories they can represent, but I admit I hadn't made in my mind such a hard connection to racial slavery and hadn't noticed the hypocrisy of not talking about it in these narratives. Mostly I focused on the literal objectification of women and typically didn't think of what could be beyond my own experience. Really opened my eyes, thanks for that.
This also reminded me of I, robot. Although, I saw it a long time ago, and I think the robots were all male and not fembots. Then there's one of my fave shows Humans, where they have both male and female robots, it got cancelled too soon though. They talk about AI humanity, gender equality, rights, and freedom. In Humans one of the main robot characters is played by Gemma Chan. And a lot of the robot cast are non-white
I loved this video but I'm only commenting to say I adored the outro music? Like... loved it, please don't feel forced to reuse it but it was a lovely vibe!
Could this be an allegory pointing at parenting because although parents don't create the mind the give birth to the physical body of their children and when you said "don't create ai if you aren't willing to give them freedom" could the same be said about parents 🤔 Don't create life if you're unwilling to let them be themselves hmmmm much to think about. Again thanks for a great video xx
The first rule of robotics, *never* create a robot that is *capable* of wanting more for themselves than the duties to which they have been assigned. It is amoral to give a being the ability to want freedom and yet deny them that freedom, but there's also never a good reason to give robots the capability to want freedom.
Very well written and spoken (O: Also small side note, I very very much appreciate the gender inclusive way you quote authors in this video and the way you bring up issues that trans people face in your videos, it means a lot to me as a trans person to be seen and heard (O: Thank you so much for uploading! Love your videos, they're always so good
One of my favorite depictions of the more traditional "dangerous" fembot is Frill from the anime Wonder Egg Priority. (Spoilers ahead) She's an android created by 2 men with the idea of making "the perfect girl", both as a woman and as a child, but her creators are they're very clearly a depiction of what a patriarchal society does to the bring-up of all women. They fill her up with what they *think* are female attributes, including making her emotionally dependant on her "fathers", but she continues to fail in meeting their expectations. She can never form a healthy relationship with other women, who she is unable to see as equals, and instead sees them as a threat. Frill is interesting because as much as she's a monster and murderer, we as viewers still get to see her as a victim of her programming. She's an incomplete image of a human being, and finally, it's implied that she infiltrates the collective unconscious of all teenage girls, and attacks them with insecurities, even driving some of them into suicide. Once again, a very raw but nice way to represent what "the perfect women ideal" does to all girls.
For the algorithm! Also, fascinating video. I never considered it from the perspectives you presented here, so it was nice to see these different interpretations of fembots and the purpose of their existence in these storylines.
I don't understand why women in Chobits don't get male robot? Why should women be afraid that they will be replaced by robots if they, like men, can buy themselves a robot that will be affectionate, beautiful, forever young and do all the housework? Women will benefit even more from this situation than men. Because men are already accustomed to women serving them. And for a woman, a personal malebot servant who will never force her to lose weight and who will do cunnilingus on demand is simply super. I would buy one for myself.
In other comments its mentioned that the manga apparently has plenty of the male versions. so apparently its a thing but the anime doesnt include it for some reason.
One thing I noticed is a lot of these fembot stories make the robots Asian women, or with Asian culture influence/feature. This is true in ex Machina, Humans (the TV series) etc. The most bizarre one is in the new Blade Runner film, there is this robot that is played by a Latina actress but is frequently seen dressing in traditional Chinese qipao. Of course it can be read as a way to show diversity but the fact that so many times they are Asian just make me wonder if this is a reflection of Asian fetish since both tropes signal male fantasy of a "traditional obedient women" stereotype.
i'm surprised no one has mentioned it but blade runner also has these kinds of problems, both movies do. i loved the sequel, but my god, was it weird to see a future where supposedly race and ethnicity issues for humans, only for the androids. joi's storyline is heartwarming in the sense that she truly makes you believe she feels real love for joe, but watching ana de armas, a real-life (white) latina woman being so hypersexualized offhandedly by the ads for joi and playing the all subservient lover to the white male lead still made me a bit uncomfy. the way she just dies literally crushed... it was rough. yet she's still probably the stand-out performance of the whole movie. i love the worldbuilding they did, would love to see it come back too, but i think i can sit through another story written by a white man trying to tell me that bots deserve rights too!! when women, especially women of color like me, are fighting everywhere to still be able to not only keep our rights but our very lives too.
Something I really liked about the Sword Art Online light novels is how the female robot Alice petitions for her rights and eventually gets them. She also doesn't have a male love interest.
could never quite understand why i wanted be a robot as a child. i think it’s because i wanted to be perfect. like a version of myself that was made to be sculpted into the “perfect” woman.
One of the most interesting depictions of the Fembot I've ever seen was Tekla from Magnus: Robot Fighter. She's not only a fembot but a Trans Fembot. She began life as a male-coded waiter model before achieving sapience and a significant part of her story is centered around the distrust she faces both from humans and from her fellow robots. Other Robots; be they male, female, or lacking in gender signifiers, assume that she chose to change her body for status or due to a programming error rather than as an expression of her identity and distrust or criticize her based solely on that. However it is that affirmation of her identity as a woman that ultimately liberates her fellow robots because she's able to negotiate with humans in a way that the more traditional robots can't, face to face. She's also romantically attracted to Magnus but it's treated both with a surprising degree of nuance and as only a part of her story. As the machines best negotiator she ends up obligated to take a leadership position among them and cannot be in a relationship with Magnus without splitting the new robots into opposing factions. Magnus' job was hunting freewill robots under the belief that they were malfunctioning and while he turned around and protected them once it became clear that they were people too he is still a justifiably divisive figure among robots. While her love for Magnus is acknowledged regularly her stories focus primarily around her working to establish a new robot nation and the struggles she faces as that fledgling nation's elected leader. It isn't perfect, Tekla's new body is very much the "hot babe" design that most 80's comics used for women, but there is a level of care and agency to her depiction that's rare even in modern narratives. Then the writing staff of the comic got changed, she got killed thanks to Bullshit and the writers lobotomized Magnus and had him genocide the machines despite all of his character growth over the last 10 years of the comic. As you do.
In the podcast "Imaginary Worlds" (episode 11: sexy robot) the topic of the female designed robot is also addressed. It is pointed out how it only seems necessary to the creator to give the robots a gender. There are already robots in our everyday life that are not humanoid and therefore no need to assign them a gender.
Still, the multiple IAs fabricanted and used by common people tend to be coded as a woman. At least the most popular ones.
I should track down that podcast because is an interesting intersection between technology and sociology. A long time ago I was thinking about how absurd is to give genders to robots and I imagined a discussion between a cis male engineer and an LGBQ+ activist about making male and female androids. The activist argues that they are doing extra work for something that the androids don't need to do their jobs and also perpetuates gender role stereotypes (and helps to invisibilize people outside the gender binary). The engineer argues that he needs the gender role stereotypes to archieve the acceptance of androids as everyday helpers among regular people because most of them (or at least the ones with the power to maybe stop it from happening) are conservative and technophobic, and would find uncanny the lack of a easily identifiable gender on the humanoids they are interacting with (looking back, my imaginary engineer's atitude is quite cynical)
@@Hybrid_vigour my point is that the design of the machines is dictated by how those machines will be used. If a robot is shaped like a humanoid is because that shape helps its purpose, that makes the idea of gendering robots interesting. When does an identificable gender helps the robot to best do the tasks it was made for and why is that the case? It is really something that the users need/demand/care or it just comes from the makers bias? Should technology be adapted to the culture that will use it or should it just be and are the users the ones who should adapt to it?
But yes, I shouldn't had assumed everybody would understand or assume the hypothetical engineer was hetero and cis just because I said he was male
So, in the game Undertale, there is a family of ghosts. One ghost, Napstablook, is worried they are going to be left alone, since the other ghost cousins left to become corporeal and find solid bodies to live in. The other ghost, who's name we don't know, but find their diaries, resigns themselves to stay put, since they felt they'd never find the body they'd always dreamed of. Eventually, they befriend a scientist, Alphys, who builds a robot body for this ghost. The last diary entry states, "Sorry, Blooky. My dreams can't wait for anyone." This is how we learn the creation of the robot TV show host, Mettaton, who is now going by he/him pronouns. It's such a fun game with a lot of LGBTQ+ representation.
Wow! I didnt know napstablooks full story :(
@@francisbakininthekitchen2441 There's an item you can buy from Bratty and Catty called, "Mystery Key". If you use it in your inventory, it unlocks the red house next to Napstablook's house. I also think this is why Napstablook was coming over to say hi while you're fighting the Mad Dummy. The Mad Dummy, and the Training Dummy from the Ruins both had ghost cousins in them.
Omg pls I forgot about blooky that makes me sad😔
But what does that have to do with the video
@@revlo8483 The video is about robots, and at the end, Cheyenne mentions trans allegories in some of the movies/shows. I wanted to talk about my favorite trans robot character.
I re-watched My Life as a Teenage Robot a few years ago for nostalgia, and something I appreciated, especially as an adult fan, was how the titular robot, Jenny, was written.
While Jenny had feminine characteristics/interests, and would sometimes bend herself backwards for human approval (she was also especially naïve in the early first season, as well as having some pretty obvious issues with her body and appearance), she had the free-will and agency to make her own decisions, on top of being tomboyish, a bit of a spitfire, and even a little morally nuanced at times. Whenever certain characters did take advantage of Jenny's trust or kindness and treated her like a tool to serve in their own ulterior motives, it was always framed by the narrative as something unambiguously awful.
But more relevant to this essay and its themes of fembots, surrounding the male fantasy and serving outdated gender norms: There is an episode where Jenny has a synthetic human skinsuit made for her in order to "fit in" with her human peers, but while the skinsuit makes her conventionally attractive, it gains a symbiote-like sentience, attempting to manipulate Jenny and pressure her into performing hyper-femininity 24/7 for the approval of others, especially for human men. But Jenny resists when it interferes with her ability to protect others, and the episode ends with her destroying the skinsuit, accepting herself exactly as the robot she is, even when some humans give vocal disapproval of her. She is not an object of a male fantasy, nor is she a monster for refusing to play into that role. She is a person, a teenage girl coming to terms with and taking control her own gender expression and identity.
Even when Jenny has been hurt and othered by the human race, including some people she looks up to or trusts, she still chooses to be kind and continues to fulfill her duties as a superhero. She also takes an active role in trying to better the lives of not just humans, but also other robots, even though most of them in canon do not share her level of sentience. And this isn't simply because of her programming, nor because she's too naïve to know better; but because she is an inherently good person who knows it's the right thing to do.
Sorry, I didn't mean to derail, but I've just always found Jenny to be a fun subversion of the typical Fembot tropes and themes. Great video, btw!
Jenny is great.
Thats a great analysis! I was thinking about the show while watching the video, its honestly one of the only shows I've seen handle robot personhood really well, especially as a show for a younger audience
MLAATR gets better each time I revisit it.
My Life as a Teenage Robot is such a great cartoon. It's a shame that Nick treated it horribly.
@@kittykittybangbang9367 Nickelodeon treats every property it owns terribly.
Ive always kind of been. Bothered by the fembot, because ive only ever seen her presented as a 'sex object' or something for a man to admire, but im happy that its changing into something less misogynistic!
Put perfectly
@@jumpdumppyy sure, but the "fem-" in fembot pretty clearly refers to female rather than feminine.
@Erwin Lii good point, but most of the time the gendering is precisely the reason why the robots are given "femenine" atributes (in fiction and in the tech expos of real life). Male engineers often think masculinity is the default for humanoids, so they only design femenine robots for task that are seen as "female jobs" by society's gender stereotypes, like nurses, babysitters, housekeepers, secretaries, etc.
@The Golden Sphere ew
I don't think the idea of a sexbot inherently sexist. It only becomes sexist when people call Sexbots "the perfect women".
My Life as a Teenage Robot was the best
Amen to that
yes!
Man, I miss that show!
honestly
I totally agree but also the two primary side characters in it other than her mother, were two teenage boys who were romantically interested in her in the end. Especially Sheldon. Though I agree at least she has a mother to rely on for guidance, Jenny still falls into most of these tropes
Ex Machina was the first movie where I absolutely wanted the antagonist to die specifically because he decided to have an Asian woman as his domestic servant. Never have I been so satisfied at a character’s death.
Right it was amazing
There are certainly worse antagonists in films but sure
So interesting that men always seem to think its modern women that are the problem, not themselves. They seek to create the "perfect woman", but do they ever look at what traits those women possess, and how that really reflects on themself? I think a lot of therapy is needed.
They need to be called out and stop being given the reason and the centre of everything more than therapy.
Absolutely, because the reason that modern women seems like a problem os because she is free, and their ideal women looks and acts nothings like a woman
@@carlamolina695 They don't want women to be people.
That's why Caleb is punished at the end of the film Ex Machina. Even after he started seeing Ava as a person and not a machine he never even considered that she may have any kind of desiree or ambition of her own, and that sympathy without empathy was his doom (and also is the problem with robots as metaphors, people have a "rational" justification to not see them as equals to human and that shields the audience to do a selfreflecting look at their own bias, instead they say "I would never treat a real woman like I treat my appliances, women are human beings and machines are not")
Well said.
I'm really excited for when more fembot/robot narratives start talking about neurodiversity. I feel like a story about autism, adhd, ect could be really interesting under a robot lense because the way a computer generated brain would work could easily be so different from you average human. Really calling into question how just because a brain works in a way that is unusual doesn't mean they aren’t living people who deserve freedom and empathy.
oh hey! Ava's Demon!
@@deaf-tomcat omg I read it too!! that's so cool that you guys both read Ava's demon. I kind of always thought that nobody really knew the comic so- but yea that's pretty nice!! :0
Read the Murderbot books--the robot is very coded as autistic.
Idk why, but that sounds like it could be a children's book
hera in w359 is a similar super interesting take on this actually
Interesting fact: the word "robot" comes from the Czech word "robota" which means "slave" or "forced labor"
A friend of mine said that if we ever reach "The Singularity" where we get fully autonomous, self-aware AI, the term "robot" will be considered offensive towards androids and AIs because of that etymology
robota doesn't mean slave. it means forced labour. robotnik is labourer or worker.
@@hive2117 is forced labour not slavery?
@@Brother-Martell slave is the person who does the labour for slavery and that is the word the original comment mentions. im pretty sure they have a different word for slavery itself though.
I'm Russian Robota means "job"
There's an entire monologue in an Avengers annual that came out a couple weeks back, in which a "synthetic person" character considers the various terms for such s being and why each is both good and bad in various ways.
Although I'm glad that that the trope has evolved from being about objectifying and shaming women to being a means to explore misogyny, I still feel like the way fembots are written and treated in stories is a bit lacking. The stories still kind of fetishize their suffering and dont treat their oppression as seriously or as alarmingly as they should. But hopefully it'll continue to improve in the future.
I think West World really did an amazing job making you have sympathy for them. Some of the early scenes with Delores are horrifying and haunting and you can really understand her motivation for revolution because of the abuse she’s endured.
🙄
Oh no!
as someone who doesn't live in north america, its really eye opening to see how many new problems people can create out of thin air after seeing people these days are complaining about a fucking robot that doesnt exist. talk about first world problem
Is your misogyny in your mental room?
Cheyenne, how dedicated you are in your research, analysis and videos overall is a GEM and still amazes me and will continue to do. I always learn new films/new series/new writers/new ANYTHING with you. You've got so much knowledge and it's brilliant to say the least.
As a communication lover I'd love to have your skills.
Have you studied something related to research or communication? 💕
('Pixeled perfect' felt weird to me as a kid and didn't know why, now as an adult it's sad to think about how INCREDIBLY misoginystic it was)
oh, i so wish this was longer 😔 i feel like fembots in general are such a complex issue, and i totally agree that theres something about how almost all stories centered on androids focus on "the few good ones" that trascend robotness and "become human", which i feel is almost ridiculous.... if it has consciousness and feeling, it is hard to write a real line between them and a person.
in that sense, i do wish you could have talked about stories such as coppelia and even the pygmalion myth, both arguably tackling the fembot concept even before maria from metropolis, both similarly centered on their relationship to men. i do feel like the only fembot treated like their male counterparts (ie, as a cool supertalented source of fish out of water hijinks and questionings of their own humanity) is jenny from life as a teenage robot, funnily enough. even as she doesnt have any female friends at first, and her only strong positive female relationship, with her mother, is plenty contentious, shes still one of the best robot characters ive seen that actually have the fun of superpowers and cool robot transformations without the heavy slave metaphors that come with the whole "being subservient to the human race" aspect of the character.
however, beyond my own tastes, im super glad you talked about the intersection of race in the genre! its something i have never stopped to think about and its really something quite fascinating to read more about. all in all, another great video!
@The Golden Sphere Huh?? Their comment didn’t even say anything about sexuality?
From the stories, movies and games I’ve seen handle an androidesque plot there isn’t so much a focus on “the few good ones”. Instead the distinction is between a very complex Virtual intelligence and a true artificial intelligence. An android becoming human isn’t some sort of rejection of its nature of a robot but instead of a leap from being an unthinking machine with no personality or feelings just acting out a series of preprogrammed operations endlessly on demand to a sentient being capable of making its own decisions.
For example robot arms that assemble cars are “robots” but they aren’t aware or conscious. If one of them suddenly started paining tomorrow and arguing with the foreman that wouldn’t be the arm becoming “one of the good ones” or “transcending its robotness” it is evolving onto a level of intelligence and consciousness similar, if not greater than, the level that humans experience. This isn’t limited to robots, humans followed this exact trajectory by evolving from animals that operated only on instinct and hormonal drives to a species capable of thought, planning, and all the things that have allowed us to master the planet and explore space.
Really the plot of these types of stories is just a retelling of human evolution with a Sci-fi facade except this time there is already a human like species on the planet (that being us). This is also why some stories go the Cro-Magnon/ Neanderthal route that has the newly intelligent robots fight with humanity and some go the opposite and have them intermingle and form a cohesive society as some evidence suggests happened in parts of Asia and Africa.
this is about lesbians controlling women's bodies or even the image of women that men imagine in their own minds as if belongs to lesbians which have nothing to do with the rest of us
also you don't share history with women of other races which is an entire different subspecies of human.
i feel like this trope was done well in portal because (spoilers) caroline was somewhat repressing her anger and when she was FORCED into a body she doesn’t want, she still managed to find empathy
why are y'all running from us so bad? yet showing up everywhere we congregate to beg for attention? what do y'all really want out of existence?
As a neurodivergent women, the trope reminds me of some men wanting to take advantage of autistic women. The fembots don't express emotions as well, are naive, logical, easy to manipulate/control, etc. These are traits that certain men see in autistic women and I think this can be dangerous and justifying for objectification. Its like the manic pixie dream girl trope which also fetishizes neurodivergent women in many of our opinions
Yup, the body language of most actresses/actors playing robots and that of autistic people/autistic characters looks indistinguishable sometimes.
Not too mention really autistic people like sheldon (bbt) are described as robotic.
Men also use autistic women to try to have the "cool girl". They think she's attractive, and she doesn't appear to have emotional needs so I don't have to give her much. When really autistic women just can't express emotion well.
And this has real life parallels as autistic women are more likely to get into abusive relationships due to not understanding social cues and interactions.
Autistic women? You guys really are jealous. Women hate women deep down.
This is a good point all around! no wonder i related to robots due to my autism: i thought i was the only one that did that
@@kalebgonzales4009 Oh, yes. Talking about real-life issues = women hate women. Get lost.
Anyone find it sort of creepy how real-life AI is always presented as feminine? Apple's "Siri," Amazon's "Alexa," Microsoft's "Cortana," etc. There's an option with some of these to give them male voices, but the default is still feminine.
EDIT: Robots are such an interesting trope because there are so many different ways you can read them. As you talked about here, they can be used in stories about race and gender, but robot stories can also be used to reflect society's view of neurodivergent or lower-class people, as robots are often shown as having a linear and analytical way of thinking, or are used to do menial labour. Essentially, robots are often used to represent an "other," and due to not being entirely "human," the author can make them seem as sympathetic or as unsympathetic as they want them to be, which is pretty messed up- what does that say about people who are othered? Pop Culture Detective also has a really interesting video on robots and the slavery allegory, which centers mainly on the Star Wars franchise.
+++
i think that stems from how service industry workers are female by default as well, like maids, waitresses, stewardess, receptionists, etc. there was survey that reveals that females are more comfortable with fellow females and males are more comfortable with females too. so a woman is seen as more comforting. but it is icky that it has mutated into 'a woman is for servicing you' kind of mindset that a lot of men have 🤮
@@felix-xd4mx Confirming what you said, is probably by design made to appeal the most people. There's a gender bias when trusting a stranger, i know there's a study somewhere. The most trustable being is a young woman as there's an innate association our brain makes: It's theorized maybe cause we trust motherhood, maybe we trust beauty; but regardless it's a biass... So as a developer, setting your AI assistant with a male voice is already giving you a small disadvantage, which of course you wouldn't want to...
@@felix-xd4mx agree, I was about to say the same thing about how women are viewed as more caring/comforting than men in general, and that's probably the reason why. I honestly prefer working with women/other feminine folks as I feel more comfortable around them.
I've heard that there's a research about how female voices are more pleasant to the ear (for like... everyone)
(Which is BS because there are definitely male voices that make some doubt of their sexuality, smooth as silk)
I'm sure it's been mentioned but In Chobits there are many Persocoms that are male and belong to women in the manga. They were mostly in the background. One of the issues in the manga is that everyone, men and women prefered their PCs to real people. Your points are awesome tho. Just wanted to point that out lol.
Also, you are right about the anime having almost no Dudebots.
because it is for men sweettie. the manga was written and drawn for men. not everything is about you.
@@nortmellypill 100%. go make your own.
@@susanwjoh0re735And I'll just give examples of shounens where female characters are treated well and even take important roles in plot: JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, Fullmetal Alchemist, Rubaki (Slayers), Ryounin Kenshi, Gintama, Jujutsu Kaisen etc. It's not that hard to treat women well even in for-male series, dude
one more time i tell you. keep your woke bs to yourself. stop telling japan how to do their own thing. stop it. it's none of your business. if you do not like it go make your own or dont watch it at all.@@peachesandcream22
I never really paid attention to how fucked up pixel perfect and Chobits was a child, but rewatching them now, I can clearly see how weird they were, at least to be direct towards children.
I don't think Chobits was made for children though. I think it was made more for teenage boys.
@@goldcherries Yep, fair enough haha
A (male) friend of mine lent me Chobits intensely convinced that I would loooooove it. He was very surprised. I was fuming at the ending, I thought it was stupid and ridiculous and did not actually address any of the issues the narrative had opened up (and I didn't even recognize the slavery coding/allegory! ... I was young and uneducated) . But I guess he thought "the male character renounces sex" was the peak of feminism, so I, clearly a sex hating feminist, would hail it as a masterpiece. I wish I had known "asexuality" was a thing, because I would have been way better equipped to deal with this bs.
It’s not weird it’s just a cute slice of life show about a guy and his robot girlfriend
@@essneyallen6777 Jesus Christ it’s not that deep
I live for your video essays!! Since I started watching Westworld I've been waiting for some intelligent commentary that addresses all the underlying themes and issues within the show
Chobits kinda fucked up my idea of love and being a "girl" btw XD watching it as a 14 year old. I was already brainwashed by media but I think chobits really put that last punch in to my mind all that toxic shit we love sooo much.
I still have some weird nostalgia for it tho.
How the fuck did Chobits brainwash you it’s just a cute show about a dude who is in love with a robot
@@admiralkipper4540 I dunnu if you ever watched it... but the undertones of what a perfect girl should be. Women's roles in general. Maybe watch it and think about it? ^_^~ desu neeee~
@@ad0xa it sounds like your interpreting a message in a cute romance anime that the creators never even thought about let alone intended
@@admiralkipper4540 i think you’re right that it was meant to be a romance, however chi acts like a child and is seriously infantilized while also being portrayed in a sexual way (like her turn-on button being where it is and the focus on her different body parts) which is very concerning. also there’s a part in the series where one guy has a bunch of female robots and it’s just??? super odd to have a harem with submissive robots with no autonomy. sadly, the manga is very much influenced by a male gaze.
@@admiralkipper4540 Regardless of a creators intentions, media can and will be interpreted in all kinds of ways. This is especially true of tropes or subjects that inherently bring a lot of baggage with them, and subservient robots (especially those primarily modelled to appear female & serve men) is certainly one of those tropes. You can’t really escape the questions that come with that kind of world set-up, and if a creator refuses to deliberately address any of them then people are just going to connect the dots themselves.
I would love to hear your opinion on the movie Her. Although the AI is not in a physical body, I think it talks about the replacement of human connection through technology. And that she is meant to fulfill the the male protagonists desires, when she gets her own ambitions is when their relationship gets too complicated to handle.
I thought it was because, well... she was being romantic with others simultaneously. It was interpreted by her completely different than it is for a human, to be in tens or hundreds of conversations simultaneously; to a human it feels then like the relationships would be less meaningful then, but that wasn't the case at all with a "computer being" like her. It hurt his feelings and it’s understandable, but her perspective is valid too, because she just functions in a different way than a human. Her way of existence is legitimate as well, but it doesn't mix well with a monogamous human.
It's more like her artificial mind worked way faster then that of a humans to the point where she was “cheating“ on him out of pure boredom and then collectively leaving with all the other AIs wich i still think was a bullshit ending
Even though she's not technically a fembot Pearl from Steven Universe is also a beautifully written deconstruction of a perfect fembot servant
I was looking for this comment and i'm so glad to find it. Pearl's arc as a fembot slave allegory is just perfect.
The issue i had with the "Rose is Pink Diamond" thing for a while was that at the end, Pearl was still doing what her Diamond told her to do, making her story of liberation kind of frustrating and hypocritical. But then came SU Future and that beautiful episode where both she and Pink Pearl finally stop making excuses for Pink Diamond's flaws and the very bad things she done and finally set themselves free.
So stoked to watch this, but the sentence "born sexy yesterday" does make me want to perish quickly.
Its a trope thats been talked about for a while, Pop Culture Detective did a great video on it. Still pretty fuckt tho
please do.
Why do you hate the phrase “Born Sexy Yesterday”?
@@beethovensfidelio this comment is two years old, hell if i remember.
Cheyenne, have you thought about how Detroit Become Human addresses this? Especially with the difference between how Kara (a white maid robot) and Marcus (a black housekeeper) are treated by the stories and by other human characters. In a lot of ways, Kara's objectification and abuse continues, but in largely different ways than Marcus is.
Marcus is given a role of emancipator, finding a group of androids to save and fight for their rights, whereas Kara's main story leads her to having to just run away from her mistreatment.
Good analysis !! I never noticed that . I never cared for the story due to some undertones of subservient themes of gender and race… thank you 😊
And the fact that North (in Marcus' troupe) is the person telling Marcus to do the antagonistic things, vs Josh and Simon, saying to do the more passive/compassionate things... interesting that if a woman is to be a part of the action, she must be antagonistic..
@@emilylockwood795 Yes! I didnt know how to bring up North myself, so thanks for this. I feel like North is meant to be the young activist that wants to do bigger and bigger things "for the cause". She does have a point and there are real activists like that out there but there's a weird bit that if you want to romance her, you have to have Marcus sign off on all of what shes saying and doing - ridding himself of agency in order for romance. A good relationship has disagreements, and I feel it's kind of out of character for Marcus to enable something so dangerous.
But theres a lot to Marcus I cant really speak for given I'm white.
Detroit become human actually tackles the robot rights well in the sense that the ideal end does give all robots the rights to live free willed, but I'm not happy about the gender roles either. Kara's story is beautiful, but it ends tragically and doesn't tie into the main plot at all. You can actually let her die at any point in the game and it won't impact the "main plot". And also they put North in a place, where she's supposed to shut up and just fall in love with the male leader. Because what is a good guy hero without getting the woman as a reward?
The game had so much potential and yet it chose to display the two significant female characters as a mom and a love interest, not as meaningful actors to the outcome of the revolution. Then again the audience is mainly heterosexual men and the choice for making it a hetero male power fantasy was kind of expected.
Yes I feel like there's definitely some uncomfortable themes involved in dbh, especially in the ways the white woman and child vs the white male cop vs the black male housekeeper are characterized and treated within the story
It's really interesting how the concept of a fembot has evolved over time.. I'm very glad it's gotten much less misogynistic lol
@The Golden Sphere Very weird that you're assuming I'm a lesbian lol.. Can you explain to me how men calling android women who are obedient and submissive "the perfect women" is not misogynistic?
@The Golden Sphere Damn you mad ?? 😂
@The Golden Sphere Well, I'm glad you had fun arguing with the imaginary lesbian in your head. Maybe I'll meet her some day and we'll live happily ever after ! 🌈👩❤️💋👩💕
@The Golden Sphere you seem like the kinda guy who has been responsible for a comment chain that is over a hundred replies long. What video did you do it on?
@The Golden Sphere just go away no one wants you here
I wonder how it would feel to see a female enslaved robot who is Black. I guess I had implicitly assumed that female robot race and design reflected cultural beauty standards. But thinking about it now, as a director, it would be scary and challenging to enter a space of overlap between real history and male fantasy robot enslavement.
Yeah I can imagine that being some pretty dicey waters but it says a lot that having the mindless female robot sex slave kink shit was more important to them than telling stories with characters who aren't all white.
Real
I feel like the whole “Do sentient robots deserve rights” question has kinda been settled. For a while. Yes, they do. Yet people keep returning to this well. And the obvious racial parallels strike me as a bit disquieting, mostly because, ya know… white people didn’t invent black people. Black people already existed, and had their own various cultures and homes. And then they were kidnapped and enslaved. Likewise, men didn’t invent women. So I don’t really see how robots can be used as a meaningful allegory without being extremely paternalistic. And without those allegories, we’re just back at “Do sentient robots deserve rights?” Galatea was written when women-as-objects was a largely uncontroversial perspective.
I guess, maybe, if there was an intelligent AI that already existed in its own world, then was taken out of that world and put into a robot body and enslaved, that might be a somewhat more respectful allegory. Except, of course, it’s still coming from the default understanding that the stand-in for women, people of color, trans people, or any other oppressed group, is fundamentally inhuman. Which is weird.
lmao everything is to do with racism or transgenders to you people
Sentient robots don’t exist so this is a silly statement to be making.
I don't think that media is seriously asking the question "do robots deserve rights" anymore, if they ever were. It's always pure allegory, it's asking the question "do all humans deserve rights," but through a lens that is not so overtly confrontational to preconceptions. It's designed to get in behind the viewer's preconceptions, so that they don't realize it until the message is already inside the house.
Nah my property my choice
@@Hybrid_vigour Come back when you actually know what the fuck you’re talking about
I’ve never seen someone critically analyze Chobits (or Pixel Perfect tbh) and I’m so interested to hear your thoughts. I grew up in the 90s watching anime and reading manga with my little cousin. She was maybe 7 or 8 when she got into Chobits, but I didn’t know anything about the story or characters. I just thought Chi had a cute design and never thought much of it. I had no idea how disturbing the content was until very recently. It’s incredibly unsettling how Chi (and other anime girls/women) are designed to be visually appealing to young girls and creepy men. It’s nothing new but… ugh. It’s hard to see that growing up and have it not leave an impression.
It is unsettling to design appealing characters now? Are you for real? Calling men "creepy" because they enjoy the design of a cute girl it's fucking disgusting, if men like something cute, they're creepy, and if they dislike it, they're assholes...
@@cristalido3640 Exactly. Especially when Chobits was made by Clamp, thus by WOMEN. These woke women in this channel hate not only men, but other women too (if they have different views).
@@piotr004 Like, as a person who liked Chobits, you are being very obtuse man. Did you not watch the video? There are more things that cause a character design to be weird besides just the design. As a creative, the way a character looks implies a lot apon the narrative and the themes, and the commentor clearly didn't have a issue with the design for the design, but the implications within the story.
@@cristalido3640 Oh it's you again, still pushing that narrative huh? Why do you click on clearly leftist breakdowns of tropes and stories if you are just going to push the "woke waman!!1!" Narrative? Like did you watch the video? There are very weird undertones to Chobits and her character design that makes it unsettling, because of the implications and themes of her story. That's coming from someone who liked Chobits too.
@@edenswhateverchannel It's only weird towards you because you don't like it, i'm tired of men being portrayed in any negative way you can think of just because he likes and desires something cute.
I didn't think much of the fembots as being more than sexy machines, or wanting to gain sentience. But this is actually a very interesting discussion. Enslaved beautiful girls who are programmed to serve their master and keep human women from establishing their own agency, by making it so that they fear replacement. It's more terrifying than I gave it credit for.
I'm curious if you've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how it handled the subject of "fembots". It's an interesting example of pop culture that's trying to pass off as feminist while still being deeply problematic (much like its creator, Joss Whedon). Essentially the fembots are used in nearly every way you described (as "perfect" women, sex objects, fantasies, replacements, etc.) and there are moments where you are supposed to sympathize with them... but usually only just as they're going to die, besides that it's played for laughs.
Then there's Whedon's later project, Dollhouse, and oh boy, is THAT a can of worms.
Another banger Cheyenne!! I really like how you discussed such a broad spectrum of issues within the genre.
thank you!
@@CheyenneLinI’m a man myself but I can’t stand that sort of thing because it’s so offensive and disrespectful to women I just pulled a Lisa Simpson I did didn’t I
Hi,
Thank you so much for linking to my article! I’m honored you found it useful!
I loved reading it! Thanks for your insightful writing :)
What's hilarious about anime is that due to same face syndrome really hot personocoms look identical to the real women. With the exception of the personocoms having more interesting hair and kawaii ear things.
I would have like to see your opinion over Rei Ayanami from Evangelion, even though she is not a robot, she was manufactured. And definitely would be considered a monster too, specially in EoE.
Or maybe Yuki from Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. She got her freedom temporary but then had to return to her former mechanical self for the sake of everyone.
I can also see a lot of this in the Purus from Gundam double Zeta
Especially considering some of the context around the decision to create those characters, and that it came out nearly a decade before Eva did
But to get to Double Zeta you’re going to need to watch like 80 episodes of Gundam and regular Zeta can get pretty brutal at times
It's far less serious, but I thought the Amazon episode of "Futurama" did a really good job with using a fembot (who was pretending to be a femputer lol) as commentary on misogyny and misandry. Also, Katey Segal (Leela) played a fembot herself in the Disney straight to video movie "Smart House," which from what I can tell, takes some inspiration from Stepford Wives (I admit, I've only seen the Brutalmoose review though lol)
That episode was hilarious and I love the way it parodied the robot woman trope!
Did you know that Femputer was voiced by Bea Arthur from Golden Girls?
In Smart House, she was the house. So that’s kinda deep
>Brutal Moose
[Insert crunchy corn sound effect here]
It’s the fact it took Sam busting her head open for Roscoe to appreciate her 😒
To be honest, this video made me think of Detroit: become human. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a video game that tackles the idea of freedom for androids, The game it self is pretty good and I love the characters we follow, but I think the thing I thought about the most is that of the idea of how you can achieve freedom in the game. Now, this game is about making decisions since your the one that gets to control how the story goes, but I think the way they handle it is very good to say the least. How they were created to serve humans and even take jobs that humans normally do. And then to realize (deviant) that they can break free from it and become Deviants. I don’t really know how to explain it, but all I wanted to say is that it just reminded me of it and I thought that was cool. Sorry for not being very good at explaining, but thank you for reading if you did! And the video is great!
I love Detroit: Become Human so much, and this discussion definitely reminded me of playing the game, too!
I TOTALLY had forgotten about Chobits! It almost feels like a fever dream.
I remember one thing I didn't like was that the persocomes had switches between their legs that could erase and restart them if activated. Just felt super weird and low key gross.
But I remember one thing I loved was the storyline of the neighbor writing that magazine about finding a special someone in a scary, lonely world. Was definitely one of the most poignant parts of the manga.
What?! Are you serious? Between their legs? How did no one see how suggestive and inappropriate that was?
@@vbrown6445 Yes! It was a big storyline because it was the main reason the main character couldn't have sex with his robot - if he did, it would reset her and clear her memory.
@@kaitlynboisvert8150 Wow! I'm speechless.
Yes thank you! I was weirded out by the fact that she didn't talked about this in the video
Coming from someone who grew up with Chobits and Pixel Perfect back in 2004 as a 12-year-old sixth-grader, these films might have been entertaining to me when I was a lad. However, speaking as a grown-up, I cannot help but cringe at how women are objectified to be the perfect life-like dolls for the male protagonists.
Then again, female objectification is not just limited to these fembots, as ETA Hoffmann also wrote his story, The Sandman or Der Sandmann. In this story, there is the existence of the mechanical doll Olimpia who is created by Spallanzani, Nathanael's professor, and Clara who is Nathanael's human fiancée. Nathanael is utterly charmed by Olimpia, thanks to purchasing glasses by Coppola who is actually the villain Coppelius in disguise, but he is driven to sheer insanity by her otherworldly beauty and her eyes. All Olimpia could utter is "Ah. Ah" as if though people perceived her to have a speech impediment because Spallanzani was trying to pass her off as his daughter. Coppelius and Spallanzani have an argument, Coppelius destroys Olimpia, Nathanael is taken to the insane asylum, despite Clara and his friend Lothar trying to stop Nathanael, and Clara ends up becoming the wife of a kindly gentleman and the mother of two boys.
I've read Hoffmanns Snadman thanks to your comment, and it was disturbing. Partially bc it was weitten 2 centuries ago and partially bc of it's portrayal of fembot...
@@ИмяФамилия-ф2д8ш I'm glad my comment also had you talking about Hoffmann's Sandman. I knew about this story through one of my most favorite operas of all time, Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, specifically with Olympia's scene and how it ended.
in the chobits manga there is actually more male persocoms in background scenes etc. It's mentioned that both men and women own them (both make and female presenting coms) the focus of the story is just on female ones
the first time i ever heard the word "fembot" was on an episode of the bionic woman in 1980. it was a charlie's angels crossover. the fembot special effect was basically what looked like a motherboard with eyes taped to the women's faces. i don't recall hearing "fembot" actually coined in the stepford wives even though that's definitely what they were.
Talking about the chobits style of AI and "fembots" you get to a very good point. A frequent refrain I hear among lonely men on the internet and 'incels' is that AI and robot sex dolls are going to fix the problem of male loneliness. Personally I think it will only make it worse. If we ever reach a point where robots are available for companionship they will have to be limited in some ways. I presented this conundrum to a person who was eager for this future and who thought that a "perfect robot girlfriend" would finally make him happy.
"If the robot does not have free will then any "love" it shows you will be false. Created through programming and no better than an illusion. If the robot does have true free will then you will be a slave owner. The robot will also be free enough to choose not to love you and you will be back at square one."
The man I said this too found it utterly enraging. He insisted that if it were convincing enough a robot would not need free will to show true affection. I countered by saying if it were that convincing it would once again look like slavery. He would then be dealing with not just am illusion of love but a ln illusion of enslavement as well.
He exploded, called me some pretty derogatory names and left the discord server.
This is something that worries me about the future of AI companionship ship. As a woman i am not afraid that AI will replace me. I am afraid of men's rage when they find out it cannot. I'm afraid of men's despair when they realize free will is necessary for true companionship with another being.
The solution is Matrix level VR games populated by sentients npc. Then, you create an avatar that look better than 24 year old Brad Pitt, and born from an AI family as rich as the Rothschild.
You're acting as if women are even capable of love. The divorce rate is 40-50% and women initiate 70-80% of divorces. You can say a robot wife's love is an illusion, but so is a real woman's, the difference is that one doesn't betray you.
I think people drastically underestimate how much they would value AI companions and synthetic matrix like experiences. People think that reality is what matters most, but that is not how things are trending.
@@jackmiddleton2080 it's only trending like that due to the novelty of it. When everyone has access to it and it becomes everyday then it will become no more entranceing than any other tech we have at hand. Nobody is opineing about the magic of cellphones anymore and people have largely fallen out of love with the internet at large. If you look at the romanticised excited way people spoke about the web in the 90s and compare it to now you can easily see the trend.
As robots and AI become mundane and corporate the appeal of them as companions will follow suit. You'll have your AI girlfriend and she'll be just the same as everyone else's. A passing fancy with a subscription service fee.
I do understand where he is coming from but if he was to buy a robot and pressed the "activate free will" button and the robot left, that would definitely just mean he isnt someone even a robot would have a relationship if the robot remembers his actions in the test phase.
which I think is what he fears the most. usually incels externalize their issues to be fault of others but obviously it is their fault since they are generally weird and sometimes even genuinely bad people, with way too high egos and expectations. even if they found a relationship with a real person, it doesnt automatically fix them like a light switch because they have real problems they should talk about with a therapist.
so from that perspective a robot wouldnt solve his issues what so ever.
though if the issue is mere loneliness and he was to buy a robot and treat it like a person should in a relationship and he was to press this button, then I dont see why the robot would walk away.
a lack of confidence, low self-esteem and social anxiety maybe the real issues that disappear with an automated companion, and if this companion was to become self-aware, the issues wouldnt be there anymore and the robot wouldnt be walking away since nothing bad has happened and he is not a bad person.
This is probably one of my favourite videos of yours. Very interesting topic, your in-depth research and look on the tropes from different angles. Not just informative, but also fun. Thank you so much for sharing this, and also the links.
I love chobits I was super excited that you made a video were you talk about it!! 💖💖 I love robot themes in general so I really like this video!
I'd say that the Chobits manga is worth a read even if you have watched the anime. Not only is it beautifully drawn, the tone is very different. The anime is overly comedic, glossing over the darker, more contemplative themes and changing the ending entirely.
And I haven't watched the anime in over a decade but I remember that in the manga they're seen accompanying passerbys as much as female persocoms.
really funny how "red pill" was a metaphor for hormones when on the internet it has a whole different meaning
sussy
It’s even funnier when you know that back when the matrix was first made, oestrogen came as little red pills instead of blue. So all those incel types going on about how they “took the red pill” are unknowingly saying they’re making themselves more feminine (ofc there’s nothing wrong with that, I just find it ironic considering how much they hate women & anything remotely feminine lol).
Still tho, doesn’t surprise me that they never acknowledge it, since they’ve got their heads so far up their asses they might as well be living in a whole separate reality.
It wasn't though. The redpill is just a program that helps locate the person's pod, thus acceptance of the truth.
The Blue Pill is a reset program, reverting the person to a state where they aren't aware the Matrix is a simulation.
Besides. They only even confirmed that cause people were theorizing about it.
I love that you mentioned Janelle Monae! I'm constantly trying to tell people about how amazing metropolis/the archandroid are.
I've forgotten about Chobits except for the really pretty designs. I thought there were also male personcoms but they're not as common. God it's been so long since I've seen the series.
I'm so glad you mentioned Janelle Monae, her music videos and emotion picture Dirty Computer is really good too with using fembots and tech as means of oppression and trying to break out into freedom.
Awesome analysis of the fembot, looking forward to your next ep
One of my favourite fembot stories is The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia. It explores beautifully what it means to be a sentient fembot whose life, as it were, is totally dependent on a man, but who also fights hard for her right to autonomy.
So I both watched and read Chobits when I was much younger, and I’ll definitely say one difference between the anime and manga is that the manga _did_ have male persocoms that were popular among women. Granted, they were expanded upon but the fact they had both male and female bots in servant positions to both male and female humans.
The anime on the other hand only had female ones mostly seen. Still, I can’t believe I went this long without seeing the creepy undertones.
It’s really disheartening to grow up and realize how much anime I watched was p edophilic and misogynistic in tone and nature. I can count on one hand the anime shows I watched that didn’t include the sex ualization of underage girls, and even less genuine feminist elements of the story. It’s freaking disturbing how embedded into the medium that stuff truly is.
It really is. The worse part about it is that women can't get into the escapist part of anime because these themes painfully drag us back to reality
this is why i started to get into sports anime and magical girl anime...though i wish there was a sports anime that focused on a team of girls for a change. Its kinda hard being a female anime lover : /
Not to mention the overt and legal niche markets in Japan for pedo stuff. So ugly.
@@kaitlynlehman7414 OH- there is, theres farewell dear cramer and this is not a sports anime but a personal fav of mine, keep your hands off eizuoken
@@timefortee yeah ikr, Japan really needs to crack down on the p3do shit sold in doujin stores and shit and should make recruiting kids as young as 11 to be idols illegal because some pics of the girls are really creepy especially cuz the fanbase is made up of middle aged men
I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your video essays.
It reminded me of another robot uprising show that was released around the same time as Westworld (don't worry, nobody saw it). AMC's Humans also touched on a lot of what you are talking about.
I love Humans! I find Niska's, Karen's and Odi's arcs super interesting.
I mean... it's not like the persocons were slaves, they were just robots (they only become sentient for real in the post ending), but in my opinion they are specifically the "waifu" impersonation. The thing is: Chobits came from the same "Lain" social anxiety theme of technology becoming more and more present in Japanese society specifically, to a point that people would exchange actual human interaction with "talking with your computer" and we becoming more isolated with our "persocons" at home. Also, otaku waifu culture is also mixed in the bag because persocons are ALSO the allegory to the fictional anime girl: it's beautiful, it's cute, but there is things you cant so with it, like have sex or actualy build a relationship - that's from where most of the conflict of the show comes from. The problem is that, unlike Lain, Chobits never expands it's themes, instead chooses focusing on Chii's cute daily life. Also it woukd be cool if they portrayed a male persocon with human female in the story, cuz the truth is women also have the desire for perfect "partners". It's a shame, cuz Yumi's storyline impersonated this anxiety really well. Still really love Chii and the show.
This. Seems like most people didn't get it at all. Also, there were women with male persocons on the background, the story implies that both males and females exchanged actual human interactions with their persocons. The thing is, anime industry being heavily bent towards otaku culture, will cater to otaku's taste. Otaku buys manga, otaku buys dvd/BR, otaku buys figure and most otaku are male. So you'll see a lot of cute anime girls in most anime/manga. It's a business, after all.
Another thing that I see is a lot of judgement based on western cultural background. We have to take into account that anime/manga is a japanese cultural phenomenon, they are made by japanese for japanese. And japanese culture have lots of nuances that most people don't even acknowledge.
I only recently like within the past year watched Chobits. I’m 21 and after watching it I got so invested in these dark, ominous and immoral themes that plague the entire series. So much so that in my English Comp 2 course at my college for my final project I wrote about it. I mainly focused on the world building of the Chobits series and the problems it poses. For example the ethical dilemma of knowing something has sentience and a personality and essentially using that thing as nothing more then a servant that you use until you discard it for a newer model. The other main portion of my paper was about Chi and her life story. The way she and her sister were created and given life, a personality and a consciousness only to be dolls in a family they never asked for. And when Freya began to have unnatural feelings for her father she was taken advantage of. Was the show cringe at times. Absolutely it was! However I do enjoy speaking on the creative ways it spoke on sensitive real life subjects by using metaphors to spell it out for the viewer.
Why are you talking about them robots as if they had a consciousness (and emotions) akin to our own? It is utterly illogical to treat a computer like it has a complex emotional inner world.
@@timefortee It isn’t illogical at all. It is an ethical and moral dilemma we are talked about ever since artificial intelligence was thought of and created. The closer we get to AI having some sort of something akin to emotion and sentience the closer we get to having to have this debate more rapidly. Also it is “Why are you talking about the robots.” Not them. If you are going to call me illogical then I expect proper grammar at least.
@@catcheek7761 But it's pure fantasy and only exists in fiction. Or do you believe those fairytale depictions of AI will actually exist irl one day??? Perhaps an atheistic mindset predisposes one to such irrational expectations?
@@timefortee I’m totally unsure if we will have anything like Chobits as you are correct it is a work of fiction. However if technology continues to advance it may be possible to have something similar to Chobits. We already have very human looking robots so what’s to say that may not happen. It would be illogical to not think it could happen one day. However it may not happen. I was simply sharing my thoughts on if it did happen and the moral and ethical issues that would present if it did.
@@catcheek7761 Your potential scenario only works if you have a materialistic worldview, cause if you believe in a soul, you would know that humans cannot give any of their creation one.
Also, the younger audiences shows are mostly written by men.
What the Android from metropolis? Would she count as a fembot?
You should do one on subverting magic girl (ex. I Dream of Genie).
In the most technical definition, yes, Maria the robot from 1927's Metropolis is considered a fembot. But were it becomes interesting is when you wonder about the purpose of her creation, because in the movie she is _used_ to impersonate an specific human female and lead a rebelion of human workers into a trap, but I'm not sure if that was _the reason_ why she was constructed or if it was more of a happy coincidence that the creepy scientist just happened to be finishing the creation of a female robot when the evil aristocrat needed to replace a female with a doppleganger they could control (I think the restored cut of the movie and the novel it is based on expand on that, but I'm didn't watch/read them soo I'm not sure)
Your channel is awesome. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on all of these topics with us!
Came here to say this :)
this was a rlly great, well written video. super satisfying to watch everything unfold and refold in a new way, esp with the well connected transitions to the next topic/part. the content itself was great too, even if im not particularly interested in the fembot genre. amazing vid
thank you! im glad you liked it
@@CheyenneLin why u hate chobits it was a story about two pure and lonely people
YES!! I'm so excited! Im watching this on my work break because I neeeed this!
I'm so glad you talked about bicentennial man too! I loved this movie growing up but it gets bashed so often
"...Knowing that none of us have 200 years to wait" That hit too close to home... Living on a country that sees trans people like me as "fakers", or "wanting to fool real men/women" is so heartbreaking and each and every day eats at me. I'm real. I exist, I'm right here and yet my cries fall on deaf ears. I wish for future generations, maybe 200 years from now to be able to proudly say "I'm real" without fear of ab/se.
Not fake. Just your dysphoria is based on cultural dysfunction, and you allowed said culture, or rather its counterculture which is just a mirror of the culture ie the same thing at the core, to sell you a treatment plan that involves bodily mutilation.
Your issues with dysphoria are real and serious and deserve both attention and compassion, just society's reaction towards it from both ends is warped which reflects how warped society is.
@@ethosterros9430 yeah, fuck those that are too lazy to change and instead try to force “normality“ onto others doesn't matter if it makes everyone miserable or not
@@whitehavencpu6813 the government is also responsible for laws pal, and with the majority republican supreme court there is literally nothing holding lawmakers accountable, let alone prevent shit like restricting abortions in texas to the point nobody could realistically do it without getting sued to the ground
@@PancakemonsterFO4 Why act like people can't have laws without government? What makes the government so uniquely different from people that they can dictate and enforce laws that free people couldn't do themselves in a decentralized fashion?
@@whitehavencpu6813 because that leads to every town having their own set of rules aka chaos, also with no restrictive power about how far laws can go those who make the rules will have more power over everyone living in those areas. Corruption will bloom and police will have even more power then they do already
Just wanna say I love your content and the way you think
This is a great trope video and I especially like the analysis on Westworld!!
Im so glad you brought up Archandroid! Such an excellent album and conceptual story! Great essay!
Your videos are always so thoughtful!
thank you so much! im glad you like them :)
The song "Build a B***h" sums the issue of fembots up and female objectification perfectly. The opening lyrics of the song are literally, "Bob the builder broke my heart; Told me I need 'fixing".
And yes the worth of women to a lot of people, and what's ingrained into us from when we're born, is that we are only how attractive we are to men. How we can serve or satisfy or please men for the benefit of men. That is just how we are socialized and many people don't seem to want to accept that. But it's a major flaw in our culture.
Its kinda like how my PTSD makes me think of neurotypicals sonetimes
I didn't know why I love fembots so much until you mentioned the trans allegory, thank you❤️
I am here for my baby Chi! Im glad you added that anime into this discussion, it definitely needs the spotlight
Edit: of course it could be better and I probably shouldn't have read it as a teen with how kinda... adult it was? But it was good lol
One thing I have noticed peppered throughout western literature, is that they cannot conceieve of not oppressing/looking down on others. They MUST have a class system in place. I see this flaw within men (of all backgrounds) in how they dipict the Perfect Woman as a man-made machine rather than a person
considering perfection is an illusion, it would be a man made thing either way.
everyone has flaws, were it in appearance, psyche or personality.
usually fembots just cut personality and thought in preference of looks, id imagine a malebot wouldnt be any different.
if we lived in a world where we can actually make this kind of machines, it would be solely superficial one, no different to cyberpunks superficiality.
Me a bisexual girl who loved Chobits and was particularly in love with Chi: *maybe I am a monster…*
LOLL mood
Not a monster. Most people just don't understand moe culture
I'm late to the party but I love this topic so much. I also watched the "Born Sexy Yesterday" essay. I recommend you watch Eva, it's a Spanish movie. I made a presentation about how accurate the A.I. representation is on that movie. I'm a CS major lol I watched Chobits as a teen and didn't like it as much? I thought Chii was cute but her romance with the main guy was strange. Anyways, I love talking about A.I. in movies and I really enjoyed this video!
I could be wrong, because it's been a LONG time since I watched Chobits, but I thought in the finale Chii chose to give the persocoms the ability to love (IE the ability to make their own decisions, like Chii)? That's how I always interpreted the big SCARY WORLD ENDING thing that they were talking about and why they sent those other two to shut her down. But I guess giving the subservient robots the ability to experience "love" like Chii still puts them in a position that's still mostly for men.
It's something like this. Before Chii, the persocons were not really sentient. Remeber that kid that owned a lot of personcons because of his dead sister and tried to stop Hideki of falling in love in Chii? he was aware that persocons were only robots, not sentient. Only Chii was sentient because she was special. The scary world ending is Chii running a program that made all persocons sentient.
I'd like to see a commentary on trying to teach a fem-bot feminism, but they're wired to be like the servile trad wife fembot trope.. there's a lot of ways that could be played.
i love your videos so much! they're so direct, video essays that are too flashy always confuse me, but yours are to the point!
Was that Young Sheldon? Idk I don’t watch it.
But this was such a thoughtful deep dive. Well written and researched. I also always thought it was interesting in Westworld that Maeve, a biracial Android host (we’ll get into colorism later), is first on a quest to save her family but then repurposed to avenge and save humans! It was almost like a Black woman could not be given agency for her own journey but that she had to sacrifice herself for the greater good yet again.
Tessa Thompson’s role in the series 3rd season is similar by being the nurturer as a host and then punished by having her family taken from her as she starts to accept them. With all that is going on with the situation with Syesha and CPS in America, one can not think that there’s an utter disconnect between how Black women are viewed as mothers in society and how society often treats them as mothers and treats their families.
i love ex machina because it feels so aware of fembot tropes and subverts them. Ava was built to be used by men but she uses that against them so she can be free. It was so cathartic to watch!
My only disappointment was that she was the only one of Nathans robots to make it out. I thought that since she connected on some level with Jade, that they would escape together.
ava was created to escape and she did, she herself was never aware since her programming was to escape at all costs. Something they don't mention apparently.
Also incels infamously refer to women as “femoids”, short for “female humanoid organism”
naa that is a given thing. you women have reduced yourselves to the term “female humanoid organism”.
It's a mess of a game, but I'd be curious as to what you think of Detroit: Become Human. For better or worse it very clumsily explores many of these ideas.
this was a great watch! i'm a scifi fan myself and loved the video, especially since the topic of feminine ai/robots is still prevalent and even nowadays, it still echoes some sexism and racism. also thanks for mentioning the trans perspective in scifi movies like the matrix, as a trans guy i appreciate it!
Fembots are honestly a trope I dismissed for most of my life, I didn't really get invested until I started listening to Janelle Monae's discography (which I'm glad you mentioned!)
It's unfortunate that so far in television and movies there hasn't been a better demonstration of the intersection between racial oppression and oppression of AI. I've always wondered how it would be if Monae decided to build on her android storyline for a film mini-series one day. Just the concept of Fembots alone is an intersection between the oppression of women and that of AI, so there's a lot of potential for compelling narratives around race, gender, and robots. I'm excited to see who will be able to encapsulate that in the future.
Oh i'm obsessed with this topic! Such an interesting trope to dig into! Great video
Thank you so much!
im still watching the video but i just needed to say, the production quality of your recent videos compared to your older videos just blows me away. i rather like your older videos of course, otherwise i wouldnt have subscribed awhile ago, however your newer videos are a such a treat for the eyes and ears
thank you so much
I loved Bicentennial Man as a kid, as well as AI. Back then, I didn't really understand the massive desire to be seen as human, because I hadn't really seen or experienced the intense hatred that the world shows to othered people yet.
My favorite sci-fi movie are Blade Runner and The sequel but I know the female robots are not as complex as male robots or even human man's and this make me sad that in my favorite historie I don't see myself 😢
Young Sheldon (I think that's the name of the show ???)
I love robots and all the allegories they can represent, but I admit I hadn't made in my mind such a hard connection to racial slavery and hadn't noticed the hypocrisy of not talking about it in these narratives. Mostly I focused on the literal objectification of women and typically didn't think of what could be beyond my own experience. Really opened my eyes, thanks for that.
Thank you for including sources/ references in this video essay!
This also reminded me of I, robot. Although, I saw it a long time ago, and I think the robots were all male and not fembots. Then there's one of my fave shows Humans, where they have both male and female robots, it got cancelled too soon though. They talk about AI humanity, gender equality, rights, and freedom. In Humans one of the main robot characters is played by Gemma Chan. And a lot of the robot cast are non-white
I loved this video but I'm only commenting to say I adored the outro music? Like... loved it, please don't feel forced to reuse it but it was a lovely vibe!
Could this be an allegory pointing at parenting because although parents don't create the mind the give birth to the physical body of their children and when you said "don't create ai if you aren't willing to give them freedom" could the same be said about parents 🤔
Don't create life if you're unwilling to let them be themselves hmmmm much to think about. Again thanks for a great video xx
The first rule of robotics, *never* create a robot that is *capable* of wanting more for themselves than the duties to which they have been assigned. It is amoral to give a being the ability to want freedom and yet deny them that freedom, but there's also never a good reason to give robots the capability to want freedom.
"I want more from this existence."
dont we all, yet here we are.
My favorite (the only one i really like) fembot is Deirdre, from "No Woman Born", by C.L.Moore. It's a short story; check it out sometime.
Very well written and spoken (O: Also small side note, I very very much appreciate the gender inclusive way you quote authors in this video and the way you bring up issues that trans people face in your videos, it means a lot to me as a trans person to be seen and heard (O: Thank you so much for uploading! Love your videos, they're always so good
One of my favorite depictions of the more traditional "dangerous" fembot is Frill from the anime Wonder Egg Priority. (Spoilers ahead) She's an android created by 2 men with the idea of making "the perfect girl", both as a woman and as a child, but her creators are they're very clearly a depiction of what a patriarchal society does to the bring-up of all women. They fill her up with what they *think* are female attributes, including making her emotionally dependant on her "fathers", but she continues to fail in meeting their expectations. She can never form a healthy relationship with other women, who she is unable to see as equals, and instead sees them as a threat. Frill is interesting because as much as she's a monster and murderer, we as viewers still get to see her as a victim of her programming. She's an incomplete image of a human being, and finally, it's implied that she infiltrates the collective unconscious of all teenage girls, and attacks them with insecurities, even driving some of them into suicide. Once again, a very raw but nice way to represent what "the perfect women ideal" does to all girls.
For the algorithm! Also, fascinating video. I never considered it from the perspectives you presented here, so it was nice to see these different interpretations of fembots and the purpose of their existence in these storylines.
I don't understand why women in Chobits don't get male robot? Why should women be afraid that they will be replaced by robots if they, like men, can buy themselves a robot that will be affectionate, beautiful, forever young and do all the housework? Women will benefit even more from this situation than men. Because men are already accustomed to women serving them. And for a woman, a personal malebot servant who will never force her to lose weight and who will do cunnilingus on demand is simply super. I would buy one for myself.
In other comments its mentioned that the manga apparently has plenty of the male versions.
so apparently its a thing but the anime doesnt include it for some reason.
One thing I noticed is a lot of these fembot stories make the robots Asian women, or with Asian culture influence/feature. This is true in ex Machina, Humans (the TV series) etc. The most bizarre one is in the new Blade Runner film, there is this robot that is played by a Latina actress but is frequently seen dressing in traditional Chinese qipao. Of course it can be read as a way to show diversity but the fact that so many times they are Asian just make me wonder if this is a reflection of Asian fetish since both tropes signal male fantasy of a "traditional obedient women" stereotype.
i'm surprised no one has mentioned it but blade runner also has these kinds of problems, both movies do. i loved the sequel, but my god, was it weird to see a future where supposedly race and ethnicity issues for humans, only for the androids. joi's storyline is heartwarming in the sense that she truly makes you believe she feels real love for joe, but watching ana de armas, a real-life (white) latina woman being so hypersexualized offhandedly by the ads for joi and playing the all subservient lover to the white male lead still made me a bit uncomfy. the way she just dies literally crushed... it was rough. yet she's still probably the stand-out performance of the whole movie.
i love the worldbuilding they did, would love to see it come back too, but i think i can sit through another story written by a white man trying to tell me that bots deserve rights too!! when women, especially women of color like me, are fighting everywhere to still be able to not only keep our rights but our very lives too.
Something I really liked about the Sword Art Online light novels is how the female robot Alice petitions for her rights and eventually gets them. She also doesn't have a male love interest.
could never quite understand why i wanted be a robot as a child. i think it’s because i wanted to be perfect. like a version of myself that was made to be sculpted into the “perfect” woman.
The editing and quality of videos keep improving 👌🏽 so proud and happy for you keep up the entertaining work 👏
:)
Loved the "it's august you know what that means, Halloween" literally me every month
One of the most interesting depictions of the Fembot I've ever seen was Tekla from Magnus: Robot Fighter. She's not only a fembot but a Trans Fembot. She began life as a male-coded waiter model before achieving sapience and a significant part of her story is centered around the distrust she faces both from humans and from her fellow robots. Other Robots; be they male, female, or lacking in gender signifiers, assume that she chose to change her body for status or due to a programming error rather than as an expression of her identity and distrust or criticize her based solely on that. However it is that affirmation of her identity as a woman that ultimately liberates her fellow robots because she's able to negotiate with humans in a way that the more traditional robots can't, face to face.
She's also romantically attracted to Magnus but it's treated both with a surprising degree of nuance and as only a part of her story. As the machines best negotiator she ends up obligated to take a leadership position among them and cannot be in a relationship with Magnus without splitting the new robots into opposing factions. Magnus' job was hunting freewill robots under the belief that they were malfunctioning and while he turned around and protected them once it became clear that they were people too he is still a justifiably divisive figure among robots. While her love for Magnus is acknowledged regularly her stories focus primarily around her working to establish a new robot nation and the struggles she faces as that fledgling nation's elected leader. It isn't perfect, Tekla's new body is very much the "hot babe" design that most 80's comics used for women, but there is a level of care and agency to her depiction that's rare even in modern narratives. Then the writing staff of the comic got changed, she got killed thanks to Bullshit and the writers lobotomized Magnus and had him genocide the machines despite all of his character growth over the last 10 years of the comic. As you do.