Rampant issues with feminism....

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No. Marriage is not required to be a good person.

In the words of a iFriend of mine, "not gonna lie-guitar players make the panties drop".

And being a good person is not required for getting married. Believe-it-or-not.

I just strive to be somewhat realistic.

That's what all the most rabidly cynical people say.

And getting a divorce does not require either party to have been a bad person.

During my upbringing, I came to see feminist ideas as the "official" truth, since all authorities and the media seemed to subscribe to it. I tried most my life to live up to the image of what a "good alternative/progressive guy" was supposed to be...

And it turned out it was all for nothing. Not even the girls/women I had admired as role models seemed to like the allaround nice guy I tried to be, the one they'd said they wanted me to be.

So...in short. I looked up to/admired feminists/women, I took everything they said as truth, and THOSE B'TCHES LIED TO ME!! !

I simply can't let it go. It's lika a christian upbringing, you can distance yourself from the religion, but the values are still kinda ingrained in you....

No. That's what brainless bodies are for. That's my point.

My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said.

Pygmalion to Roomba

The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life.

This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist.

"There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans," Levy said. "At first robots were used impersonally, in factories where they helped build automobiles, for instance. Then they were used in offices to deliver mail, or to show visitors around museums, or in homes as vacuum cleaners, such as with the Roomba. Now you have robot toys, like Sony's Aibo robot dog, or Tickle Me Elmos, or digital pets like Tamagotchis."

In his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them.

"It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable."

Sex in 5 years

Levy argues that psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, "and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too."

In 2006, Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicted that people will be having sex with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that's quite likely. There are companies that already sell realistic sex dolls, "and it's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration," he said, or endowing the robots with a few audio responses. "That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there."

As software becomes more advanced and the relationship between humans and robots becomes more personal, marriage could result. "One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States. Interracial marriage has been legal now for 50 years, and same-sex marriage is legal in some parts of the states," Levy said. "There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with."

"The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy said. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."

When and where it'll happen

Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage," Levy said. "There's also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT."

Although roboticist Ronald Arkin at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta does not think human-robot marriages will be legal anywhere by 2050, "anything's possible. And just because it's not legal doesn't mean people won't try it," he told LiveScience.

"Humans are very unusual creatures," Arkin said. "If you ask me if every human will want to marry a robot, my answer is probably not. But will there be a subset of people? There are people ready right now to marry sex toys."

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Scientists in New Zealand say brothels staffed by robot prostitutes could be a reality by 2050. In the paper Robots, Men And Sex Tourism, Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars of the Victoria Management School in Wellington imagine a world in which sex tourism has become respectable and human trafficking and the spread of STDs stemmed by replacing human prostitutes with lifelike sex robots.

Made with bacteria-resistant materials, these robots will ensure safe sex and may be seen as a more ethical way of hiring a prostitute. Although prostitutes themselves may not be keen on the developing technology, researchers believe robot sex workers can bring a level of respectability to the prostitution game.

The paper describes a fictitious brothel in Amsterdam called Yub-Yum where, for a little more than $8,000 (£6,200), visitors are "guaranteed a wonderful and thrilling experience as all the androids are programmed to perform every service and satisfy every desire."

I'd love for sex robots to become common place, but I think that their will always be men who will pay real women for sex. That's because some of the johns get off on the whole power play of paying for sex. What about the guys who beat up or rape prostitutes? You won't find it as satisfying to to do that to a robot.

It seems to me that no matter how life-like robots might be, women will never be willing to have sex with them because a robot can't get a woman pregnant.

It seems to me that no matter how life-like robots might be, women will never be willing to have sex with them because a robot can't get a woman pregnant.

No, "women" do not do that. Some women do that; sometimes it is because they, like a professional football player, won the genetic lottery for the physical attributes considered 'ideal' for their sex, and they can hit the financial jackpot by capitalizing on that; some, because they've internalized the idea that looks are the only way a woman can achieve social status (similar to a male gym rat).

I'd love for sex robots to become common place, but I think that their will always be men who will pay real women for sex. That's because some of the johns get off on the whole power play of paying for sex. What about the guys who beat up or rape prostitutes? You won't find it as satisfying to to do that to a robot.