Do Robots Have Sex? A Prolegomenon

Questions relating to the gendering of robots are a subset of questions about gender and robots. There are important questions about gender and robots, including questions regarding barriers to the participation of women in robotics research, about the differential impacts of labour market disruption due to robots on men and women, and about the gender politics of different purposes for which robots are being developed, which are relatively independent of whether robots are held to be male or female or masculine or feminine.² Our concern here is with the latter matter: that is, with the question of whether, and if so how, when, and why, robots “have sex” or “have gender”?

Our treatment of this matter builds on previous research on the topic, including, in particular, key work by Alesich and Rigby [1], Carpenter et al. [2], Cranny-Francis [3], Nomura [4], Robertson [5], and Tannenbaum et al. [6]. The current manuscript goes beyond these in: the depth of the discussion of the relationship between sex and gender,attempting to provide a comprehensive account of the different factors that may contribute to the gendering of robots,considering the possibility that sex is a real property of some robots,treating ethical as well as empirical questions,and, discussing how the ethical and empirical questions interrelate.

Understanding when, how, and which, if any, robots come to have sex/gender will require multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, involving (at least) HRI, gender studies, and critical theory.

It will require research in HRI, particularly that part of the discipline that draws upon and overlaps with anthropology and social psychology. The phenomenon under investigation—sex/gender—is itself the topic of investigation of a discipline of its own—gender studies—and understanding the gendering of robots will require collaboration between HRI researchers and gender studies researchers [7]: each of these disciplines may have much to learn from the other in the course of this collaboration. As we argue below, studying the gendering of robots will also require engaging with difficult questions about the nature of gender and sex and the relationship between these concepts, which have been most discussed in critical theory. For this reason, critical theory, and especially feminist critical theory, offers vital resources for this project [8, 9].

Whatever the outcome of an investigation into the gendering of robots, because sex/gender fundamentally structures existing human societies and relations between human beings, the results of this investigation will have large implications for the way human beings relate to robots and the effectiveness of robots in various roles. Consequently, it will raise questions in ethics and—especially political—philosophy [10].

As well as these disciplinary resources, the subtle and dynamic nature of the phenomena under investigation means that researching the gendering of robots will require a high degree of methodological rigour. In particular, it will require moving beyond research involving vignettes and/or videos of robots to study human robot interaction “in the wild”—that is when people are actually engaging with real robots and not just with their preconceptions about robots [11, 12]. It will require research involving different cohorts and large sample sizes. It will also require experiments with appropriate control conditions. This latter demand is particularly challenging given that it often can be difficult to identify the relevant variables—and thus controls—when working with robots: should the control condition be another robot with different features or an object or person with the same features that is not a robot? An engagement with intersectional feminism is also crucial in this regard insofar as one of the key findings thereof is that sex/gender is imbricated with race, class, age, and sexuality, such that, for instance, what it is to be a man or woman may be very different depending on whether one is rich or poor or black or white [8, 13‐15]. Another key insight from intersectional feminism—indeed from feminism and critical theory more generally—is that the important research questions, as well as the answers to these questions, differ depend upon who is asking them [8, 16, 17]. When it comes to social phenomena, in particular, members of different social groups may have different insights. For this reason, it will be important to strive for diversity within the research community working on the gendering of robots. Given the low levels of diversity within the robotics and engineering communities [18, p. 34], this is a significant challenge. The fact that our societies and cultures are so deeply structured by sex/gender—and that this system brings it about that different people have different material interests in relation to this system—also means that the ethical and philosophical issues related to sex/gender are subtle and complex. We hope researchers will resist the temptation to fall back on shallow cultural generalisations about sex and/or gender or to try to apply ethical theories “out-of-the-box” to solve the ethical dilemmas their work exposes: there is ethical and philosophical work to be done here, as we demonstrate in what follows.

A significant challenge in investigating the gendering of robots is characterising the phenomenon under investigation. If, as seems likely, people think of some robots as being “men” and others as being “women”, are they attributing sex? Or gender? Is this distinction, between sex and gender, even useful when thinking about robots or, indeed, more generally?

The nature of the distinction, if any, between sex and gender, and the relation between these phenomena, are highly controversial in gender studies and critical theory [19, 20, 21, p. 7, 22, 23]. These matters are also contested by—because they matter for—feminist, queer, and trans activists in the “culture wars” around gender (sometimes called “sex”) reassignment (or “confirmation”) surgery. Given the depth and complexity of the issues involved we cannot hope to resolve them here. Nevertheless, researchers investigating the gendering of robots need to be aware of these controversies and what is at stake in them: it is also vital that this research community is clear on what, precisely, it is investigating.

Acknowledging, then, that the distinction is controversial, those who do operate with the distinction between sex and gender typically distinguish between these two things in the following manner. “Sex” is thought to be a matter of biology, related to an organism’s resemblance to a “type”, which is itself defined by its role in reproduction [6, 24, 25]. A majority of human beings are either male or female, with a small minority being “intersex” or (perhaps) “non-binary” and sharing features of each sex [26‐28]. Although determining the sex of a particular individual may be difficult, distinguishing the type “male” from the type “female” is straightforward and is a matter of genetics, anatomy, and physiology. As such, sex does not vary significantly between societies or cultures. For any given individual, there is a “truth of the body” with reference to which the matter of their sex should be determined. By contrast “gender” is understood to be a matter of social role [19, 29, p. 28]. Behaviours—and thus individuals—are “masculine” or “feminine” or perhaps “genderqueer” (or just “queer”). Insofar as gender is related to behaviour and not bodies, gender is significantly more “fluid” than is sex. A person may behave in a more masculine or feminine fashion in different contexts and behaviours that are masculine in one society may be feminine in another. As this latter observation suggests, according to this way of understanding sex and gender, where answering the question of whether a particular individual is male or female requires an investigation of their biology, informed by the relevant science, answering the question as to whether they present as masculine or feminine (or as non-binary) requires observing their behaviour and also knowledge of the relevant cultural norms. Importantly, while sex and gender are interrelated at the level of culture—masculine traits are those associated with men, feminine traits are those associated with women—at the level of the individual, sex and gender may come apart [30, p. 21]. For instance, an individual man might consistently behave in a feminine manner without thereby ceasing to be male.

This way of drawing the distinction between sex and gender—and, indeed, the distinction itself—has been, and continues to be, subject to criticism on at least four grounds. First, the independence of sex and gender may be challenged by pointing out that, although it is true sex and gender may come apart in individual cases, gender encodes generalisations about sex. Conservatives, (some) evolutionary psychologists, and those sympathetic to socio-biology, have sometimes argued that at least some of these generalisations are accurate and founded in the different roles the sexes play in relation to reproduction and, especially, the care of infants [31, 32, p. 84, 33]. Second, conversely, some researchers have mounted powerful challenges to the empirical claims that are typically used to support the idea that there are only two human sexes, and that sex and gender can be neatly separated [34‐36]. Third, relatedly, an influential line of thought follows Judith Butler [19, 37] in rejecting the idea, implicit in the distinction, that sex is somehow more real than gender by virtue of being located in the body [38]. On a day-to-day basis, we judge people to be male or female (or non-binary) on the basis of how they look, talk, and act, without knowing anything about their genitals, chromosomes, or endocrinology. Sex is never determined by “the body” itself but by social practises—which sometimes, but not always, include scientific practises—that are socially contested and that have changed over time [39, p. 7, 40]. Thus, sex is as much a social construction as is gender [41, p. 2, 42‐44, p. 24] and should itself be understood as a form of gender [41, 45, p. 230, 46, pp. 90, 131–132, 47, pp. 161–167]. Finally, fourth, some critics object to the implication that there is a single way of being sexed, and thus to the whole project of trying to define sex or gender [48‐51].

It might be thought that references to reproduction and to biology in a definition of sex makes it straightforward that robots cannot have sex but only, perhaps, gender [52]. This is too swift. Even if the concept of sex is linked to reproduction, it need not be the case that particular individuals must be able to reproduce to have a sex. It is, for instance, possible to be an infertile man, or woman, or a male, or female, infant.³ The idea that sex is a matter of biology is, perhaps, more likely to disqualify robots from sex. However, there are at least three reasons to avoid a rush to judgement on this matter. First, the nature of robots as artefacts does not prevent them having other features, such as “eyes” or “hands” that look to be just as “biological” as sex. Second, some—arguably the dominant—social understandings of gender-transition and sex-reassignment/confirmation surgery imply that, while sex is a matter of bodily difference, an individual’s sex is not determined by the body into which they were born or by any of the biological “facts” (anatomy, chromosomes, gonads, endocrinology) that those who advocate biological accounts of sex emphasise. To the extent to which we think of bodies as themselves artefacts and an individual’s sex as something that can change, the idea that entities with non-biological bodies might be sexed becomes more plausible. Third, as we noted above, and will discuss further below, an influential contemporary theorisation of sex insists that sex itself is socially constructed and should, therefore, be understood as a form of gender [41, 45, p. 230, 46, pp. 90, 131–132, 47, pp. 161–167]. If to be male or female is to be acknowledged by others as male or female, it does not seem impossible that robots will have sex [55].

The definition of sex and gender, and the relationship between them, are some of the most controversial questions in the human sciences and we cannot possibly hope to settle them here. However, we will argue below that, at least on some plausible account of the nature of sex, some robots will, indeed, be male or female. Even if readers should ultimately conclude that robots don’t “really” have sex and that all our language here is metaphorical, the question of how people think about, and treat, robots when it comes to both sex and gender will remain of interest.

Previous work on the gendering of robots (see for example, [6, 52, pp. 99–115, 85, p. 76, 86]), as well as theoretical considerations from gender studies, suggests that the attribution of sex or gender to robots is determined by features of the robots (“them”) and characteristics of the people doing the attributing as well as their social environment (“us”). While this distinction is somewhat artificial—in reality, both sex and gender emerge as a result of the interactions of these two sets of variables—it is a useful way to structure our discussion of the factors that may influence the gendering of robots. In this section, we treat the factors that are more obviously associated with the robot itself and thus within the power of designers to alter. In the next section, we treat the factors that relate to the users and the social context in which robots are used.

Insofar as gender is something that we attribute to robots, or at least that they have by virtue of their relations with us, the gender of robots will also be shaped by human beings and all the different ways in which our thinking and behaviour around sex and gender is shaped by context. People make use of “gender schemas” and “gender stereotypes” to understand the identities and behaviours of those around them [117, 118]. These schemas and stereotypes differ across history, culture, and different social groups, and may be activated differently in different contexts.

The complex nature of the phenomena of robot sex and robot gender means that a number of different methodologies have the potential to reveal valuable information about the gendering of robots. While each of these methodologies is used by one or more researchers investigating the sex/gender of robots, each researcher typically uses only one or two of these methodologies. For this reason, it is important to highlight the full range of different methodologies available, as we do here: we also draw attention to the possibility that different methods will produce different findings.

Given that the relationship between sex and gender is so heavily contested, both at the level of theory and of politics, we have deliberately chosen to remain under committed on the question as to whether sex and gender are characteristics that people attribute to robots or whether sex, at least, might be a characteristic of some robots themselves. However, it is important to note that if, as an influential account of the nature of sex holds, to have sex is just to be treated as though one is male or female (or intersex or non-binary) [43], and people do gender some robots, distinguishing between “male” and “female” (or intersex or non-binary) robots and relating to them differently, then those robots really will “have sex”. That is to say, some robots may be male or female (or intersex or non-binary) just as much—and in the same way—as human beings may be male or female (or intersex or non-binary) [1, 55].

The idea that robots have sex is most plausible if to be sexed is to be located in relation to a social schema regarding sex roles; that is, if sex itself is a function of gender. Interestingly, though, the possibility that (some) robots might themselves be sexed remains open even if we hold that sex is a function of bodies and not just social relations. One might plausibly hold, for instance, that to have sex is to have a body that other people would recognise as sexed were they to become aware of it [153, p. 80]. On this account, some robots, those that have genitals or (perhaps) other morphological features associated with sex, would have sex, whilst others would not. Robot anatomy—or, more precisely, people’s response to the anatomy of a robot—would ground robot sex.

That anatomy might ground sex in a non-biological body is a challenging thought. However, as we noted above, the way we talk about robot “eyes” and “hands” suggests that robots may have other features that similarly might be held to be more typically biological. People and animals can be male or female while infants, or infertile, so it is clear that individuals need not be able to reproduce to be sexed. It is possible to garner support for the idea that it is anatomy, rather than other aspects of human biology, that grounds sex in human beings from contemporary attitudes towards sex-reassignment/confirmation surgery and genital protheses. If the presence of a surgically constructed neovagina or neophallus, or regular use of a genital protheses, can establish that an individual is male or female, then it does not seem impossible that the genitals of robots might establish their sex.

It might be objected here that sex is a matter of self-identification rather than of recognition by third parties [68] and that, because robots do not identify as male or female, or have a “felt” sex, robots cannot have sex [1, p. 53, 52]. In fact, it is quite possible that some robots will announce their sex, or will name their sex if asked, if they have been programmed to do so [154]. More sophisticated machines, attuned to the complexities of human behaviour, might learn their sex from the way that they are treated by human beings and adjust their behaviour accordingly, resulting in something like “felt” sex [1, p. 56]. Nevertheless, given that there is little evidence that robots are likely to become sentient for the foreseeable future, if, in order to have sex, someone must have a conscious thought about their sex—or at least a subjective experience of a certain sort—then it will follow quickly that robots cannot be sexed.

However, although there may be good moral and political reasons not to controvert what people say about their own sex, the idea that an individual’s sex is determined by their own subjective self-identification is itself contested [65, 155]. There is a tension between the claim that sex is socially constructed and the idea that people have first person authority with regards to their sex: the social construction of sex implies both that there are (socially constructed) criteria for being male or female (or non-binary) and that the judgements of third parties are relevant to the determination of sex. Grounding sex in subjective experience also risks implying that human infants do not have sex and that the sex of human beings is radically different to the sex of non-human animals.

There are deep waters here and it is beyond the scope of this paper to try to resolve this issue—even if it were the place of the authors to try to do so, which it is not. Whether robots may have sex depends on the answers to questions about the nature of sex that are highly contested. Nevertheless, on some account of the nature of sex, robots may be male and female and not just masculine and feminine.

Until—if they are ever likely to—robots become sentient, the ethical issues raised by robots will be confined to their impacts on human beings, other sentient creatures, and the environment. Many of the ethical issues raised by robots, including those raised by the gendering of robots, are best thought of as issues in media ethics. Robots are a new medium whereby people communicate and express ideas that may impact, and be evaluated by, other people. What one might call “Robot Media Ethics” is concerned with the ethics of this new medium.

One of the first question that arises in, and about, robot media ethics is whether there is anything distinctive about robots when it comes to how they—and their power to—express ideas, especially in comparison to representations of people (and animals) in other media forms like film and video games. Robots differ from representations in these other media by being embodied and sharing three-dimensional space with us; they can move around us and manipulate the real world, including touching us. There is some evidence that, as a result of our evolved psychology, we respond to robots as though they are alive [156‐158].

It is sometimes argued that the embodied nature of robots means that they have more power to shape the attitudes and behaviours of their users than do other media. That is to say, robots have distinctive media effects. For instance, Belpaeme et al. [159] and Breazeal et al. [160], suggest that robots are more effective in training and education than film and/or videogames. If this is true, then the ethics of use of robots as media might well differ from the ethics of other media. In particular, sexism in the attribution of gender to robots might be more problematic than sexism in film and computer games.

Another possibility, which is yet to receive adequate attention in the literature, is that the embodied nature of robots means that representation—the process whereby symbols come to mean something—functions differently in robots than it does in (most) other media forms [161].⁴ In at least some contexts, robots may function as icons of a more powerful sort than other representations. An icon is a sign that shares properties with the thing it represents [162, 163]. Robots can share more properties with the things they represent than can other signs. For instance, they can share size, shape, volume, location in space, and perhaps even dispositions, with the things they represent. They also share other properties more fully with the things they represent than do other signs. Thus, for instance, while we might say of a photo and a robot that each represents a person with red hair, only of the robot will it be true that we can touch, or even cut, its hair. We might even say that the robot “has red hair” but that the photo is only a “photo of a person with red hair”. As we have seen, it may even be that one of the properties that (some) robots may share with what they represent is sex.⁵ The fact that robots can serve as icons in this way might mean that representation of people by robots raises distinctive ethical issues.

The ethical questions around the gendering of robots are connected to larger political questions about the nature and social role of sex/gender and about what justice looks like in a world that is characterised by systemic injustice (what philosophers call “non-ideal theory” [186].

On some accounts, both sex and gender represent unjust limitations on the freedom of individuals [49, 51]. It shouldn’t matter at all, when it comes to the question of how we should treat someone, what genitals they have, or how they speak, dress, or look. Consequently, a just society would not classify people by either sex or gender. On other accounts, though, sex differences are a form of human variation that a theory of justice must take into account: in a just society some social institutions would recognise sex [10, 187].

These different theoretical positions about the role of sex/gender in a just society are clearly relevant to, but do not necessarily determine, the question as to whether we should endorse or resist classification of people (and robots?) by sex and or gender in the unjust (sexist) world in which we currently live. Even if one thought that sex and/or gender would not matter in a just world, one might hold that that attempts to bring about such a world that ignore the ways in which sex and/or gender matter now are doomed [10, 188, p. 173, 189]. Alternatively, one might hold that justice requires that one works, for the moment, to disrupt and resist sex/gender classifications, because of the role they play in sustaining unjust social structures, even though such classifications will have a role to play in the world we are trying to create. What justice requires in the world we have (non-ideal theory) may differ from what justice would require in the world we want (ideal theory).

Whether engineers should build robots which mobilise gender stereotypes in order secure benefits for users [190], build robots which invert or subvert gender stereotypes in order to challenge sexist assumptions and social practices [1, p. 57, 88, 110, 165, 191, 192], or try to build robots that are not gendered at all [193, p. 22] cannot be settled without taking a position on these larger political questions.

We have argued that, because sex and gender structure social relations so deeply, and are, as a result, so heavily contested, designing valid and objective studies of the gendering of robots will require HRI researchers to collaborate and learn from researchers in gender studies and critical theory. Designing robots, and making policy about the use of robots, in the light of the findings of this investigation will require engineers, and policy makers, to engage with applied ethics and philosophy in order to confront difficult ethical and political questions.

Given the complexity, and fraught nature, of these questions, we suspect that this conclusion may be the cause of some discomfort within the engineering community. It may, we hope, be some compensation that HRI has the potential to offer much to researchers in these other fields [52]. The embodied and programmable nature of robots means that robots offer a unique opportunity to conduct controlled experiments to see what factors shape the assignation of sex/gender. As, we would like to believe, our own discussion here serves to demonstrate, thinking about sex/gender in the context of bodies that are entirely artefactual sharpens key questions in the larger cultural and philosophical debate about the nature of sex and gender and, as such, may help progress these debates. In the long run, the design of gendered robots may offer opportunities to intervene into these debates and to shape the way we understand sex/gender in the future.