I find the fear that sex robots will encourage violence against women or "objectification" (I'm curious what kind of research backs up that concept in general) is dubious at best. Do dildos cause women to look at a man as an inconvenient attachment to an object for her sexual gratification? Does simulated violence in video games make people more violent? People are fully capable of separating fiction from reality. In either case, they will know what they are interacting with.<p>The real fear here is women (and eventually men) potentially having to compete with sex dolls in the sexual marketplace. While I'd prefer to have a relationship with a real woman, I have seen plenty of men online who cannot wait for more realistic artificial women so they simply don't have to deal with real women. The likelihood of crossover of someone who would buy a sex robot vs trying to get in a relationship with a real woman would be pretty low. The desires are different.<p>In fact, I'd argue this could lower violence, crime, and social unrest in general. There is a growing population of men who are deciding to check out from the sexual marketplace, or at least long term relationships. If these men have a different outlet than a real woman, they can do as they please to their robotic counterparts. Not to mention, a robot isn't invincible and wouldn't have the same kind of self-healing capabilities as a human. If you are beating it, you could likely break it in some way. It would be like keying your own car; though there's a comedian who pointed out the same when it comes to beating your wife, so who knows.<p>Either way I'm kind of ambivalent towards this, but I don't think these feminists are being honest in why they think it is potentially a bad thing. If anything it will cause the divide between the sexes to get deeper. Which I think is bad for humanity in general.