Metro 241

Last year I wrote about how watching the actor Gemma Chan play a robot on the TV show Humans had piqued my interest in the subject of having sex with beautiful robots. I debated whether it'd count as cheating on your partner. I thought that it wasn't cheating. My wife disagreed, saying it was and that she would divorce me if I did it.

But she is wrong. Sex with a robot is not cheating because a robot is not a person (even if it made to look and react exactly like one). It's a machine.

I took a straw poll and it seemed that generally women were less keen on the sex robot revolution than men. Which is ironic. Because I bet a lot of those women have a sex toy of some kind. If you think about it a vibrator is essentially a robot penis. But that's OK? There's a loophole for that is there? Maybe that wasn't the best choice of phrase.

Actually the sex toy is more ethically dubious than the sex robot, because it's as if the user has said, “No, it's all right, mate. You can just throw the rest of the robot away. I just need this… Don't get me wrong, you've done an amazing job. That robot is so realistic, it looks exactly like a real person. But throw it all in a big burning bin. This is the only bit I need.”

Despite this kind of hypocrisy the sex robot issue has left a cloud over our marriage, even though I never explicitly said I wouldn't have sex with a sex robot in my marriage vows. If you are getting married and care about this then do make sure the service is future-proofed to include any infidelity with technology as yet uninvented or alien species.

Luckily for my own sacred union the issue seemed unlikely to destroy our marriage, as I had understood that there would be no realistic sex robots for fifty years.  I was disappointed as it's always been a dream of mine to have sex with a sex robot. So I asked my wife if she'd mind me having sex with the actor Gemma Chan, as long as she stayed in character as a robot for the entire time (which I think she could do, she's a brilliant actor), but my wife was even more against that than the robot idea. I just can't win.

Then I read in the Metro that talking sex robots with “human-like” genitals (that's my favourite kind – not human ones, but ones that are like human ones) will be available next year for just £12,000. Dammit, that's a lot of money. Some times when I mention a company in this column they send me free stuff. I got some cakes, a load of yoghurt and some interdental brushes. So I'd just like to say that I think Abyss Creations make fantastic sex dolls (though I am not sure I want one with an abyss). I mean if you send one to my house then I can't really send it away. And my wife couldn't be so heartless to let a defenceless sex robot live out on the streets.

Alternatively I might just pitch it to my editor as a feature. “Why having sex with sex robots is wrong – Richard Herring investigates the seedy world of human-like genitals and the sad perverts who buy them and what it is exactly that they get out of having sex with them.” If it's for my job, then my wife has to agree to it, right?

 

I popped into Debenhams in Manchester to buy a belt last week. My trousers were falling down so I put the belt on in the store. On the way out the security guard stopped me and I thought I was in trouble, but he shook my hand and told me he loved this column. What a relief. Especially as I had a load of shoplifted women's knickers down my trousers. Not really (this time).