Monday 19 October 2009

Remote control - sexual circuitry


"Monotones are very useful, and remain a major turn on for me.It also took us a while to get the modes of speech right: "Command. Protocol. Uplink. Established. This. Unit. Awaits.Your. Section". Sounds a hell of a lot sexier than ""yes Master"" .
Quote: Foxdroid.

Robot.
What is the first image that comes to mind? I'm guessing a mix between the old school funny looking,boxy robots we drew when we were kids and saw in the movies, and the high tech modern robots we see evolving in Japan made to cater our every need. But some of you will get all flustered and hot. Some of you came to my blog for the sole sake of reading about your darkest secret: Your robot fetish.

The net is full of forums and web sites dedicated to this. You would be amazed at the staggering amounts of people who are into this specific type of fetish. Male and Female.
But it didn't use to be like that, and we tend to forget that there was a time when there was no internet. But there has been no time in history when mankind didn't engage in deviant desires.
Some of you will picture these people fantasizing about mechanical engineered sex dolls, high tech and life like creations to substitute a human woman. Sure there are people into that (check out RealDoll) But this is not about high tech or substituting human flesh. It's all very low tech, and some are perfectly happy fantasizing about store mannequins or playing with wind up dolls.
For some of these people Toys R Us is referred to as a fetish shop.

Like with any fetish, this one also branches out to a huge field of different preferences. Some live out their fetish alone, some with partners. Some want to be the robot, others want their partner to be the robot. It can be about the detachment from life, from females, from sex itself. Or it can be a form of dominance and submission, ie taking, or giving orders.
I am willing to guess a lot of you would stay most of your time indoors if you had a naked, robotic partner and a remote control. Don't deny it.
To quote RobotMaster: " I have a strong fantasy about having a device that can be placed behind the ear of the back of the neck of an unsuspecting woman, which will in essence turn her into a robot controlled by remote."
He admits to being very insecure and shy around women. He is, however, actually married to a woman who occasionally lets him act out his fetish. But he prefers the interactive online sex sites where he can instruct the woman to behave robotically. How many of you engage in cyber sex? You all log on to a machine to get your rocks off. He enjoys the ridiculous looking fakeness of his outfits, and like most who share this fetish, he does not want to act the scene out with a real robot. That would be too real, too authentic.

Again, as for most people with a fetish, there is a sense of shame and fear of being looked at as a pervert, or a deviant. So little is known about the number of people who are into this specific fetish. But the number of related websites indicates that there's alot of them. Sex researcher and journalist Katherine Gates argues that this is objectification in it's purest form. Explaining this is a adult version of the doll play we engaged in as children, mirroring our fears and desires. I would say this is a valid point. As children we would set stage for every situation, as we were learning new information everyday. You would pick up a new word, or see something on TV - and the next day you would incorporate that in your games/role playing, with friends or by your self. Consider the popular game of playing house. Certainly Barbie dolls has had a huge impact of girls early experimentation with sexuality. Those dolls were asking for it. There is nothing obscene about that, it's healthy and part of learning. Some just never grow out of the games.

I want to explain the domination and submission side of this. Apart from the obvious (exerting control over another human), it's more than instructing a partner to perform sexual acts. It's the jerky movements, the monotonous speech, the winding up and the winding down. It's controlling life itself in a way. It's total control. But without typical bondage gear, no duct tape, no chains. As in more standard forms of BDSM, there has to be a great deal of trust. I mean if you don't know and trust that your partner is willing to act like robot and react to you every command, there can be no relationship. And like I have claimed repeatedly, the trust and communication in a BDSM relationship is an absolute prerequisite. It beats the vanilla relationships hands down. The BDSM relationship DEPENDS on honesty and trust. Everything must be agreed on, eg there is the contract and the safe word, both common, perhaps vital in BDSM relationships. In a vanilla relationships you have mind games and pouting. That's torture, if you ask me. As strange as the robot fetish might be to you, it is actually very safe and sane. As for the person playing out the role of the robot, we see the same needs as with any submissive human. The need to be controlled, told what to do, to reject all responsibility, to give up their body and soul to someone they trust completely. Being the robot is just another branch of the wide range of submission. I see no difference between being hog tied to a wooden torture table screaming "Thank you, Master!!" for every stroke of the whip. Different strokes for different folks.
(I kill my self.)

There is more to the robot fetish though.
As mentioned the jerky movements, the monotonous voice, the remote control, the on/off buttons, the computer like instructions, down to the fetish attire.
Robotic dolls can be seen as both alive and dead, powerful and helpless, human and machine. Take away humanity and you are left with the flesh, the reproductive organs. Robots can be scary on an existential level. They are created by man, but they can reproduce themselves, and they can, in a futuristic and fatalistic vision, take over our planet and end all life. How's that for a turn on? This dualism, fear of losing humanity/desire to become machine, can be seen in the amazing cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man by Shinya Tsukamoto. While experimenting with shoving metal into his body, the main character wakes up to the nightmarish realization that he is in fact turning into a machine. His flesh is being taken over by metal. The human in him fights but loses. He ends up teaming up with a metal fetishist, bent on turning the world into metal and rust. Another artist well known for his biomechanical erotic nightmares, is the swiss H.R. Giger. He takes the fusion of body and machine to another level.
That's the scary side of this fetish.

But for the most part we see adults dressed up in home made, low tech costumes. Happy and content with cheesy, blinking buttons and homemade devices, or a make believe wind up between the shoulder blades.
Robotdoll, a self claimed technosexual, carries a wind-up key round his neck in a chain, (several other techonophiles are doing the same as a sign of their affiliation to this fetish). He dresses up in a silver spandex body suit, and his wife uses his belly button as an an on/of switch, and his nipples for control knobs. He looks nothing like a robot to me, but to him it's all he needs. He claims it's a form of meditation, an altered state of consciousness. Much of the thrill for him comes from the transcendence of splitting into two contradictionary parts : One aroused body, the other a pure mind. He does not feel like he is trying to escape emotions, rather like being an object of nothing but emotions and passion. A sex OBJECT, if you will, in the most literal sense possible. It's about controlling the passion, not erasing it.

For others it is about self hate, and the desire to actually merge with the machine, to escape the tormenting feelings of being human. As stated by Fraüline Robot: "I want to be gang banged by these ROBOTS as I KranK up their MusiK! I want to do to THEM what their MusiK does to ME...Machines can't LIE,CHEAT or otherwise HURT me the way humans always do. I can trust machines and kritters. I can NOT trust humans" (sic). This lady has a fascination for Kraftwerk. Yes, the band. She loves them for their mechanical performances, and dreams about building look alike robots in their image. She also wants to place her consciousness inside a perfect android body " so I could ditch my fat, ugly human body."
She also has a fetish for the well known Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The next generation. The actor playing Data (Brent Spinner) actually receives more erotic fan mail than any of the other characters of the show. (The creators of the series has made sure the fans knows Data functions in that way.) There is a massive community for fan fiction,
and the web is filled with comics, and elaborate art portraying various Sci-Fi heros engaging is unspeakable acts. This is indeed a complex subject, and you can find anyone doing anything anywhere. In slash fiction (gay fan fiction), you will find Spock and Captain Kirk exploring a very different form of space... This is something I will have to elaborate on in another entry.

Anyways...
The autistic author Temple Grandin, also strongly identifies with the android Data, in his clumsy attempts at human behaviour. Living with autism, she feels more related to the android than humans. As someone who has worked for years with children suffering from autism, I definitely see her point of view. I think most of us can relate to the feelings of awkwardness.
Foxdroid is a bisexual submissive who fantasies about abduction, deep mental reprogramming and rewriting of the thought process. For someone, like Foxdroid, who is raised in a strict christian home, the feelings shame and sin can be understood as a trigger factor in the need for not being responsible for his sexual activity. While there are many different takes on this fetish, like any other fetish, in the end it is all about tools for understanding, control or exploration.

This specific fetish has links to female mask fetish, fursuiting (furries, vore, plushies etc.), immobilization (eg mannequins, sleep-fetish and, I would say, to some extreme extent: necrophilia). Let me know if you want me to do blogs on any of these themes, and I will. You may of course write me anonymously, if you prefer.

To end this blog I will say that if you carry a secret desire inside, a fetish you think as too perverted, too weird, something you can't bear to share out of fear of rejection, log on to the forums, talk to people, get some advice on how to introduce your fetish to your partner. You might be surprised. If explained in a thoughtful way, maybe your partner will think it would be good fun to try it out. I will say it again: I love all you deviant humans out there. As long as you are not hurting anyone (unless they want to be hurt, mind you), you are free to do whatever tickles your fancy.

Have a good one, and do remember to come back to my blog for more on the fascinating sides of human nature.


2 comments:

  1. I, for one, have always purchased my sex toys at toys r us. Is that odd. I am very fond of my toy dog.

    Excellent article as usual bat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you,my dear.
    I would expect nothing less of you, I'm sure the dog loves you back ;)

    ReplyDelete