Sex Robots

As someone who tries to write funny articles about health-related topics, I spent years enjoying a virtually infinite pool of hilarious material provided by the mainstream media. On any given day, all I had to do was scroll through my medical news feed to find breaking stories like these:

Viagra factory is turning men in this town into walking stiffs

Exploding Head Syndrome: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments

Beez in the trap: women putting wasps nests in their vajayjay

‘Seductive names’ make vegetables more appealing

Anal Bleaching at Home: A DIY Guide

It was a writer’s dream, until suddenly one day in the spring of 2020 it all came to a crashing halt. Since then, medical news feeds have offered up nothing but one serious COVID article after another. The worst part of this whole pandemic, besides over a million people dying, was that I had to actually think of funny things to write about all by myself.

But an end to the pandemic may be in sight, because as I scrolled through my news feed the other day, just for old time’s sake, I came across this:

UW professor proposes developing sex robots for older disabled adults

At last! A glimpse of normalcy brought to you by groundbreaking scientist Nancy Jecker, professor of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Her paper titled “Nothing to be ashamed of: sex robots for older adults with disabilities,” presents the long awaited argument that while sex robots are “often depicted as a product for younger, able-bodied people, this paper is a bid for reimagining sex robots as a product for older, disabled people.”

Couple of things. First, as a physical therapist, I treat a lot of older people who do an amazing job with many functional skills. But from a strictly medical perspective, most of them have a hard time figuring out how to work their cell phones. So I’m a little concerned about unleashing unsupervised sex robots into their homes.

Second, I’m fifty-six, not exactly young, but certainly able-bodied. How did I miss this? Is the sex robot craze just another one of those things that is going on right under my nose while I have absolutely no idea what it is, like TikTok?

And third, whatever happened to good old-fashioned human-to-human interaction? What kind of world are we leaving for our children as they get older? And besides, why would anyone want a fake relationship with an artificial robot when they already have Facebook?