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2016 Wis. L. Rev. Forward 45 (2016)
Sexbots; An Obloquy

handle is hein.journals/wlron4 and id is 45 raw text is: 










                    SEXBOTS; AN OBLOQUY

                        THOMAS E. SIMMONS*

Introduction         ................................           ...... 46
I. Proposed Legislation.........................                      47
II. Legal Impediments                       ............................... 49
III. Political Impediments                  ............................. 52
Conclusion.         .................................          .....  53

          What  sort of wife do you have?
          He did not answer.
          Do you-
          If you weren't an android,  Rick interrupted, if I could
     legally marry you, I would. 
                                                  -Philip  K. Dick'

     Sexbots may  displace humans  in the sex trade (or on a wider scale)
sometime  between  the 2020s and  the 2050s.2 Although  some perquisites
may  derive from  the proliferation of sexbots (lower levels of sexually
transmitted diseases, for example), significant social harms can also be
predicted.  In anticipation of those  harms,   lawmakers   may  endorse
targeted regulation or outright bans. The  uncertain limits of Lawrence
v. Texas3  and  its progeny   of sex-toy  decisions will  present vague
constitutional shoals to these aims. The  legislating-of-sexbots crusade
will also make  for  strange bedfellows, politically speaking, as social
conservatives  aiming  to maintain traditional values ally with  liberals
concerned  with amplified objectification.



     *     Thomas E. Simmons is an assistant professor at the University of South
Dakota School of Law. The author acknowledges the thorough, professional, and
insightful edits of Cameron Marston, editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Law Review,
whose assistance greatly improved both prose and citations but without suggesting his
endorsement of any of the content or views contained herein.
     1.    PHILIP K. DICK, Do  ANDROIDS  DREAM   OF ELECTRIC  SHEEP? 197
(Ballantine Books 1996) (1968).
     2.    Compare PEW RESEARCH CTR., DIGITAL LIFE IN 2025: AL, ROBOTICS, AND
THE FUTURE OF JOBS 19 (2014), http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/08/Future-of-
Al-Robotics-and-Jobs.pdf (quoting Stowe Boyd, lead researcher for GigaOM Research,
predicting that robotic sex partners will be commonplace by 2025), with Ian Yeoman
&  Michelle Mars, Robots, Men and Sex Tourism, 44 FUTURES 365, 366 (2012)
(predicting displacement in the sex trade by sexbots by 2050).
     3.    539 U.S. 558 (2003).

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