Digital Stimulation: Fascination, Familiarity, and Fantasy in Human Relationships with Robots

by Mimi Marinucci

Digital Stimulation considers the subject of intimacy, including sexual intimacy, between humans and machines, both in the imagination and in reality. In fiction and in fact, social robots are frequently gendered as women. It is therefore important to address their potential to reinforce, or perhaps to reinvent, existing attitudes and expectations about gender, including nonbinary and transgender identities, as well as race, class, disability, and other aspects of identity.

This book provides an overview of the history of robots as depicted in popular culture, especially science fiction, as well as an overview of the history of sex toys, including blow up dolls and lifelike sex dolls. This invites an examination of the current and ongoing development of robots designed explicitly for intimate engagement with humans. The book explores positive (and often overly optimistic) attitudes, as well as negative (and often overly sensational) attitudes about the potential impact of robots and artificial intelligence. Finally, Digital Stimulation considers the possible ways in which future robot design might consciously disrupt the limitations of a binary system of gender, sex, and sexuality.

248 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2024

About the author

Mimi Marinucci completed a Ph.D. in philosophy and a graduate certificate in women's studies from Temple University in 2000. Currently serving as associate professor of philosophy and women's & gender studies at Eastern Washington University, Marinucci teaches courses on feminism, philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Marinucci, who is especially interested in the subjective and social aspects of knowledge production, particularly knowledge produced around issues of gender and sexuality, is the author of of several articles that employ references from popular culture in the service of a more scholarly agenda. Examples include 'There's Something Queer About The Onion' (forthcoming in The Onion and Philosophy, edited by Sharon Kaye, Open Court), 'What's Wrong with Porn?' (forthcoming in Pornography and Philosophy, edited by Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell), 'Television, Generation X, and Third Wave Feminism: A Contextual Analysis of the Brady Bunch' (Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 38, Number 3, February 2005), and 'Feminism and the Ethics of Violence: Why Buffy Kicks Ass' (in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, edited by James B. South, Open Court, 2003). Marinucci is also the founding editor of Wave 2.5: A Feminist Zine, a two-time Utne Independent Press Award nominee (2005, 2009).