Gynoids and Student Apathy

Almost every semester, I talk to my class about the concept of gynoids and virtual sexuality. I have, of course, for a long time known of the stereotyped female androids of Star Trek, and the subversively submissive androids of The Stepford Wives (how anyone could see Levin's work as anti-feminist is beyond me). But in the early 2000's, after I accepted evolutionary theory and many of the concepts of the transhumanist movement, I gradually grew nervous with the idea of virtual sexuality. I predicted, it turned out correctly, that virtual, and particularly online avatars of women, would be used for sexual exploitation. Other people's concerns at the time, quite correctly, were for the women being harmed by cyberstalking, avatar bullying, etc. My concern was more fundamental: what would happen when those virtual images, or their solid robotic counterparts, started taking on human emotions. Early in 2004, I expressed this in a story about a pedophile who abuses sentient robotic children, that the state will not protect (perhaps not the most original idea). I am of course, concerned for any A.I. that might be harmed in such a process, but I am also concerned about how such a process might lead us to objectify other human beings as well, treating them like gynoids rather than flesh and blood people.

My concern is that my students don't seem to even care about this phenomenon. Even when I mention extreme examples of this kind of sexual disregard for women, such as Japanese hentai games (Rapelay, for instance), it merely infuriates my students, who want unrestricted gaming freedom. I understand their frustration to a certain extent, as censorship is usually a bad thing. But if our Wild West of internet subjectivity has led us to create rape simulators, isn't it about time we calmed things down a little bit?