From: clarka@netcom.com (Andrew Clark)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk,alt.industrial,alt.sex,rec.music.industrial,alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: Re: ROBO-COPULATION
Summary: not good, not bad, just fun
Date: 9 Nov 92 01:12:29 GMT
Followup-To: alt.cyberpunk,alt.sex,alt.sex.stories.d
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

Note followup-to line.

gallen@nyx.cs.du.edu (Geoff Allen) writes:
>Denise.Turner@f160.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Denise Turner) writes: 
>
>>>>      illuminated spot on the ground.
>>>>
>>>>Woman (whimpers): No, NOOOOOOOOOOO
>>>>
>>>>F-34(engages cannons): You are powerless, so powerless......
>>>>
>>>>Woman, crying, rushes to the specified spot.
>>>>
>>>>F-34: Now lie down, bitch.
>>>>
>>>>Woman lies down.  A huge cylindrical metal hoist 
>>>>springs up out of nowhere
>>>>      and carries the woman to the appropriate place onthe F's
>>>>      underside, where the collection of 10" missles resides throbbing
>>>>      for action... Straps and chains engage, and the rest is left to
>>>>      the reader's imagination...

>>Ugh!!!!! Not to imping on anybody's art or anything, but aren't women 
>>exploited, raped, tortured, opressed, etc. enough already?  I mean rape
>>by a goddam airplane?!! that's ...well I dunno what it is but it's definitely
>>not a good for women kinda thing. 
>>Why do people think up/write this kinda thing? Somebody please tell me cos
>>I am lost. As if we didn't have enough to worry about being raped by
>>obnoxious humans, now I can have nightmares about airplanes too, oh joy! >

>Now wait a minute... I was the one who wrote that story, and I did it for
>a reason, basically because I agree with you. I simply chose to attack
>the problem by writing a "relevant" parody of an alt.sex.story.  But do you
>read alt.sex or alt.sex.stories?  These people are seriously trying to be
>arousing and all they can think up 96% of the time is rape, torture,
>domination of women, etc.  I just thought it would be funny and expository
>to juxtapose this parody with our fetishization of machinery.

I subscribe to a.s.stories and I'd just like to point out that the
majority of stories do NOT involve rape or torture.  However, there
are some readers and writers who enjoy this material.  Why?  I don't know;
non-consensual sex, rape, and torture disgust me.  

While I disapprove of what they are discussing, I must regretfully
acknowledge that censoring their activities would do more harm than good.
The entire idea of censorship strikes a sore spot in the hearts of
alt.sex and a.s.stories readers, primarily because censors have gone
after sexual material with depressing frequency :(   

As for domination, there is a strong subculture on the Net (alt.sex.bondage)
that plays with the issue of power and control as expressed in a sexual
context.  Some of their erotic fiction ends up in a.s.stories; a quick skim
over the material can lead people to conclude that the a.s.b. crowd  
consists of a bunch of lunatics.  They do play rough, but they are playing.   

>But is mechanistic sex, sex with an airplane, sex with anything
>necessarily "amoral" or "bad"?????? Well only if it is non-consensual....

If we someday recognize machines as sentient, people will have sex with
them.  People have sex with animals and inanimate objects now . . .
I don't think it's possible to characterize any form of sex as good
or bad, with two exceptions.  Non-consensual sex (including those 
unable to give consent) is automatically bad, and anything a
particular individual doesn't like is bad, FOR THEM. 

I would say that the F-34 in the above example was bad.  

Mechanistic sex isn't my turn-on, but there are doubtless people out
there who do enjoy the idea.  I've seen the occasional story; one
involves Edgar-209 from RoboCop, an urban terrorist group, and
a propaganda video . . .  "OCP -- we know how to do it." 

In a cyberpunk universe, there will be people who seek pleasure in
any way possible.  Virtual reality will incorporate pornography;
look at the history of erotica.  It started out as paintings, sculpture,
and text.  When photography was invented, people immediately thought
of taking erotic pictures.  Some of the first flip-action "movies"
were pornographic, built into a dime-per-view machine for saloons. 
Silent films, talking pictures -- each medium was immediately
snapped up for erotic uses.  The development of the home 8mm camera
and player (followed by the much cheaper VCR and home videocamera)
has made it possible to make adult films at home.  On computers,
we have alt.sex.etc and GIFs. 

The next breakthrough in information processing (virtual reality)
will also have its pornographic applications.  Imagine sexual
input-output devices to match vision, sound, and smell . . . 
Would that be mechanistic sex? 

>I hold that we don't know enough about sexuality to even consider value
>judgments....

I think Elf Steinburg is on to something; his Journal Entries are bound
only by the rule that sexual relations MUST be consensual.  
-- 
clarka@netcom.com     Andrew Clark     My ignorance is my own fault.
"We have virtual reality today: Pete Wilson lives in it." | Bad cop! 
"Macs are to computing what television is to journalism." | No donut! 
Secondary account at aclark@UCSD.EDU -- prefer mail at netcom site.   
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk