Jennifer Jill Fellows: 12 years ago, in 2013, Spike Jones released the motion picture “Her”, starring Jaoquin Phoenix and Scarlet Johansson. And overnight, the idea of digital women as romantic companions was everywhere. Her was followed rapidly by a slate of other pop culture media exploring the phenomena like Westworld, Ex-Machina, and Blade Runner. The trope was very popular in the mid 2010s. So now, in 2025, when fembots and digital romantic companions aren’t just the stuff of Hollywood movies, but our reality, it might be a good time to investigate this 2010s trope of the fembot and what it might be able to tell us about our current digital reality. So I want to welcome you back to Cyborg Goddess. I’m your host Jennifer Jill Fellows, and today I’m joined by Alannah Mayes to talk about fembots and popular culture.
JJF: Alannah Mayes is a psychology major completing an undergraduate degree with honors. She’s also a visual artist creating personal portraits on her iPad or creating zines for the Douglas College Library on topics like gender equality or fembot media analysis. You should check it out. It’s in the Show Notes. Alannah has a love of sci fi horror and enjoys applying critical analysis to film and television. She hopes to find her own unique way to critique pop culture using a feminist sociological lens. And in her free time, Alannah enjoys bouldering at the local climbing gym and playing piano. Badly, I’m told.
JJF: So, hi, Alannah. Welcome to the show.
Alannah Mayes: Hi, Jill. It’s such an honor to be here. Thank you so much.
JJF: Thanks for making the time.
JJF: I want to begin by grounding us in physical space and resisting metaphors of the cloud or even the web, really, because the cloud and the web are literally supported by physical infrastructure, and they have an impact on our physical environment. So you listener, may have downloaded this podcast from anywhere, but it’s important to me that you know that I’m not just a disembodied voice. I occupy space, and that space is stolen land. So I acknowledge here that I am recording this podcast on the unseated territory of the coast Salish people of the qiqéyt Nation. And, Alannahh, where are you joining us from today?
AM: Okay, so I am also from the place that settlers call New Westminster, which is the area of the Coast Salish peoples of the qiqéyt First Nation. I also kind of want to acknowledge that I live next to a beautiful, large river, and that river was a hub for indigenous folks. So the idea of the settler, the ongoing settler colonial project, is that land is a strategic thing to have for resources and otherwise. And so, it’s important for us to think about why certain places are upheld as important via settler colonialism.
JJF: Yeah. So strategic control of the river, for example, and cutting off indigenous pathways through waterways and things like that.
AM: 100%. So, I just like to think about those things because I live in such a beautiful area.
JJF: So, I want to begin with a little bit of background on you, Alannah. So how did you become interested in psychology as a major?
AM: So, it really came down to the fact that I had brain pain. I live with a lot of anxiety, melancholy, many things that kind of disrupt my day. And it started there, but I also had kind of a fascination in other people. I just really wanted to know what other people were about. I haven’t been diagnosed with autism, which, you know, there’s a lot of self-diagnosis out there, but I wondered as growing up, I wasn’t diagnosed, and this fascination with trying to understand how people work was really my “fixed interest,” as I would say. Like, I’m doing air quotes. So watching film, for example, was a really beautiful way for me to try to understand how people work. It was like this empathy generating machine. And yeah, so I just wanted to start with my own self but also understand others. And the more that I did psychology, the more I felt like I had empowerment with these things. And also just wanting to help people suffer less is, like, a huge goal for me.
JJF: That’s awesome. I think one thing that I really got from your answer that I think is really interesting is that I know from your hobbies and your other interests that you’re also quite interested in fine arts and film and stuff like that. And so now I’m seeing how those two interests are related, right? So you’re interested in psychology and in figuring out other people. But I think you’re right that, like, film, like, really good actors and directors are really, like, creating empathy machines, right, and helping us really sympathize with and empathize with and understand the inner workings of other people.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: So I think that those two interests coming together for you is really interesting to me.
AM: Also because I love drawing even portraits. Like, human beings are just so fascinating and lovely, and I just want to uncover them. So it’s like, “Ah, tell me all your things!” is basically how I operate.
JJF: That’s awesome. That’s really, really cool. I really, really like that project of, like, bringing fine arts and social sciences together. I think that the world needs more of that.
AM: I agree. I agree, for sure.
JJF: Okay, so we have this background interest in psychology. Also, we know that there’s a background interest in fine arts. And so when exactly or why? Why and when? Why and when did you decide to start researching fembots from kind of a feminist lens or a feminist perspective?
AM: I grew up living mostly with just my father who has a really deep love of things like Star Trek. And it was such a boy. . . I’m going to use gender terms, but it was like a boy thing. And I grew up in a time, I’m a millennial. I grew up in a time in which gender divide was very still there, and the trope of ‘not like other girls’ was coming into my heart, as well. Like, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to win over males with, like, a sort of male led fascination with these, nerdy topics or whatever? But, you know, I do have a genuine love for these things because there’s something so fascinating about how gender is portrayed on the screen. And it’s so interesting to me that, like, there’s just so much there to look at. And if you put on your little feminist hat and you go into it, you get to start seeing these wonderful weird tropes and, like, repetitive natures. And, you know, I did this English paper on Ex-Machina and I did it from, like, a lens of gender, and I feel like it was probably one of the best English essays I’ve ever written. But, it’s stuff like that. It’s like you can mine so much from media if you’re willing to look into it. And, you know, I watch YouTube analysis all the time. So, it just felt natural for me to start developing this as a way to explore my education, as well as, like, explore the world and explore the larger themes of society and culture.
JJF: Okay, that’s really cool. So I just have to ask, as I’m unpacking your answer, which Star Trek was it that your dad was in? Was it all of them, or was there a particular era?
AM: Voyager, I believe, with Janeway. So that had a strong female captain. I have such an interesting relationship with my father. It hasn’t always been great. So, it’s interesting that Voyager was the thing with the female led ship in which she was a great character, honestly. So yeah, definitely, it’s not something I watch now, but I would sit with him, and it was just a very, like, that was our bonding time, you know?
JJF: Yeah. Yeah, ’cause various iterations of Star Trek have had, like, the robotic humanoid thing. It pops up in the original Star Trek a few times classic fembots that have been created to be like companions.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: But yeah, by voyager, I’m thinking then maybe seven of nine who’s kind of, like, half like the cyborg the borgee character.
AM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like I said, there’s some interesting things about the way she looked as a person. So yeah, so it’s just fascinating to me.
JJF: That is really interesting. I also take your point about, I think there’s a way in which Star Trek and other media in the Sci Fi genre has been kind of marketed as content for boys.
AM: Yeah,
JJF: to put it kind of very stereotypically.
AM: Yep.
JJF: And that also sometimes Sci Fi spaces have not been as welcoming to women and gender diverse folk. That’s changing, which is wonderful. But I definitely can kind of see that idea that, so you’re interested in something, but then you’re like, Wait, am I just interested in it because I want to be not like other girls and share interests with the boys or is this a genuine interest? The whole mess of authenticity, right? Like it’s so hard.
AM: Oh, it’s so complicated. I remember being almost sexualized for my interest in masculine things. Like, I play video games, and it was very uncomfortable to know that there was like, Oh, you’re good at video games? Like, you’re a girl. And so it’s like, Oh, so there was some contentious years where I actually kind of rejected my quote-unquote masculine interest because I felt that it was tied up with so much pain and expectation.
JJF: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And I remember that a lot with, like, online video games in the early 2000s, that there was kind of this whole push that like this wasn’t a nice space to be, a nice space to be openly female ’cause you could hide behind your avatar. And people may not know what your gender was. But if they found out there could be a lot of misogyny and a lot of, like, really terrible sexist stuff thrown your way.
AM: Yep.
JJF: Okay. So we’ve got kind of this background, and I can see now how you became interested in researching fembots. And to some extent, your answer seems to suggest to me that there isn’t really a specific point you can pinpoint as to when you started researching it, because you were kind of already engaged with media that often portrayed fembots like, from a very early age. And so it became maybe a more conscious research decision in this English class you talked about with Ex Machina. But, like, in some way, you’ve been sort of dealing with this trope for a really long time.
AM: Yeah, reckoning with it forever. I go by she/her, and I feel very alive in my presence of my femaleness and my masculine qualities. I don’t feel like there’s much separation, but it’s definitely been complicated over the years, dissecting it all.
JJF: Nice. Alright, so let’s look specifically. . . I mean, we could talk about Sci Fi forever, but let’s drill in specifically to talk about fembots. We know that you’ve mentioned Magna, but what were some of the other fembots that you studied in your more formal research?
AM: Yeah, there was a really cool time in pop culture between 2013 and 2017. So it was about five years. It started with Her, which had not a physical body of AI, but a voice, a disembodied voice of AI. Yeah. And then it went to Ex Machina, which had Ava. And then West World, which was like 2016 to a few years after, which had Dolores as the main character. And then my most recent favorite is Blade Runner 2049 because I feel all sorts of complicated things. Like, I kind of adore it, but I also hate it. It’s both. And so kind of thinking about these characters within that time frame, because it was a very hot topic for a bit, maybe because of the fears of AI kind of starting to grow. But it was just so interesting that these types of works had very similar themes. And so it’s just like a gold mine of, like, Oh, what is this saying about culture right now? And, like, let’s get into it. But yeah, Blade Runner 2049, I think, is the one that puzzles me the most. And, you know, that director has gone on to do Dune and stuff, and he’s, you know, he clearly knows his stuff. But I’m like, Are you feminist? I don’t know. I can’t tell. Like, kind of. Like not? Oh. Yes.
JJF: That’s awesome. I’ll also, I think this is interesting because you said, you know, there was this moment, right? 2013-2017 ish where a lot of stories were being told about and with and through this archetype of the fembot and that maybe it was kind of prescient about, like, our fears of AI. So, we know Siri, for example, on Apple was launched in 2011, so these start popping up in 2013, Her in 2013.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: Maybe it’s kind of a response to that. And I wonder if we’re gonna have another, like, moment given stuff that’s happened with generative AI.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: And in particular, I want to think about her not necessarily in this podcast, but just throwing this out for listeners and you to think about because when Open AI launched GPT-4 point something, I think it was just 4. 4 oh or something. They had a voice that everybody said sounded like Scarlet Johansson from her. And in fact, Sam Altman actually tweeted or posted, I guess, we’re not supposed to call it tweeted anymore.
AM: Xed?
JJF: Xt, Sam Altman Xt the words “Her” when he re posted the Open AI announcement. Like, he was absolutely drawing this parallel to that film. And so I’m kind of wondering, like, maybe we’ll get another, like, whole spate of sci fi stuff exploring our anxieties around this stuff again. I don’t know. Speculation.
AM: It seems natural. Like, I think horror is a great genre for humans to work through their uncomfortable feelings. I literally just watched Oculus last night with my partner, and that director, for example, this is a bit of a side tangent, is working through trauma. Via horror. And I think about how awesome that vehicle must be for so many people to maybe even go through things that are misogynistic to themselves, and they don’t even realize that that’s what they’re trying to work through. Like, sometimes things might not be as explicit, but there’s, like, a feeling inside that a person is trying to create, work with. So, you know, as much as I love critiquing all of these things, I’m not doing it out of a place of not enjoying what it is. I’m doing it from a place of, like, what does this say about us?
JJF: Right. So, we can still enjoy these films.
AM: I think so. Yeah, I think it’s important. I think about Disney films. Like, I don’t know, would you show your kids these sort of well worn tropes and feel okay about it. But I’m like, Yeah, but I want to have a conversation with my kid about why is this thing a part of our moment? Why was this thing made? And what can we like about it and what can we be critical about?
JJF: And I think also just going back to her for a moment, I think we do need to have these really serious conversations with this pop culture phenomenon because the Sam Altman tweet shows us that it’s not just that it tells us who we are in this moment, but it might actually influence future decisions, right? So, we know Star Trek. There’s a whole history of, like, technology that’s created in Star Trek. Fictional technology that then in the future, people try to emulate and turn into real technology, right? Like, so the flip phone of the late 90s and the early 2000s is based on the communicator from that first Star Trek. So, we know that it’s not just that this media tells us who we are in this moment, which it does, but it also could influence who we become in future years. So, analyzing and thinking about that, I think is really important.
AM: Yeah. Yeah, and, like, to add to that, Ava from Ex Machina, when I wrote my paper, I was more interested in how they were portraying billionaire tech owners and what kind of technology they would create because they are so influenced by the culture they live in. So, I think my first part of the paper was going to be, Is she actually conscious? And then it turned to, like, who makes her. And why is she like this? Because, like, obviously a person who creates something is going to influence what they create. Like, this is just what happens.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: So yeah, it’s funny how, like, the question for me changed, and it was more important to think about the people who make technology and the egos around that.
JJF: Why are they making the design decisions that they are? Yeah, absolutely.
AM: Yeah. Yep.
JJF: Okay. I want to put a pin in that for a minute. I do want to return to talking about the makers and users of these tech, both fictional and maybe also not fictional. We’ll see where the conversation goes. But before that, I want to look specifically at the fembots from this 2013 to 2017 era. I’ve watched some of the media that you’ve talked about, but I haven’t necessarily watched all of this, and I don’t know how widespread this stuff is for our listeners. So I’m wondering if you can break down who these fembots are a little bit and what we can know about them. And maybe through an intersectional lens, too, if you feel up for doing all that in one answer.
AM: Yeah, so in those films, the protagonist or antagonist, however you want to whatever film it is, there was definitely some common threads. So, for example, Her, even though it’s a disembodied voice, Scarlet Johansson. And I think she’s a very conventionally gorgeous woman.
JJF: And she sounds like it, too, in that movie.
AM: Yeah, her voice, you know, it has that I would say sensual quality, and I don’t think that’s not on purpose. And then, so Ava from EX Machina, also, I think she’s definitely European, conventionally beautiful. Thin. And then there’s Dolores. Once again, I think she’s blonde, thin, beautiful.
JJF: That’s Westworld, right?
AM: Yeah, Westworld. And then for Blade Runner, it’s another not even an actual fembot-fembot.
JJF: It’s a hologram?
AM: Hologram, but it’s still the same kind of idea as Her where it’s like, except for Samantha in Her has a lot more consciousness than unfortunately, Joy. So Joy is her name, and she is a limited program, I guess, you would say. But it’s the same trope over and over again of thin, white, able, beautiful to euro standards, Eurocentric standards. Yeah. So I’m like, mm. I mean, and that’s Hollywood. Unfortunately, it isn’t just Sci Fi, so it’s important to notice these things.
JJF: Yeah. And I think it’s really interesting because in some of the media that you’ve looked at, the robotic companion is designed specifically in a way that kind of lends itself to some romanticism.
AM: Oh, yes. Hetero-normative. Romanticism.
JJF: Yes. Although if we start with Her, like, there’s no real reason that your digital assistant has to have a gender at all or have a sexual orientation or any kind of thing like that. But that is where that movie went. Whereas, I think, if I know Blade Runner is the one that I haven’t really seen, so I’m going off of what I’ve seen in the media. And from what I understand, I have to watch it, but I haven’t yet.
AM: It’s very good. I recommend it.
JJF: I know. I know. But from what I understand, like, Joy is specifically marketed as, like, romantic/erotic companion, is that right?
AM: Yes, 100 million%. And we have that technology now. Yeah, absolutely. So you should see Blade Runner 2049. I don’t really want to spoil it, but the question of authenticity and fembots. And I feel like this question has been asked for a long time because there’s this obsession with a male creator with the perfect female creation. And, so culture has been fascinated by this idea for ever. I mean, what’s like, My Fair Lady, too, or, like, Pygmalion, I guess, is the one?
JJF: Yeah.
AM: But, like, it’s like the idea that a man could shape the perfect woman.
JJF: Yeah
AM: and create the perfect woman. That would be his ultimate companion.
JJF: So Pygmalion, the ancient Greek legend, right? Like, he carves Galatia out of stone. Pygmalion the artist. So we’re back to art. Carves Galatia out of stone, and then, like, falls in love with her because he can’t stand all the human women around him. Like, Whoa.
AM: Yeah, he was disgusted by the sex workers.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: That was his he felt that they were inappropriate.
JJF: So he makes a stone woman.
AM: Yes. And then Aphrodite is so lovely and makes her alive. Don’t enable him. Stop enabling him, huh?
JJF: Aphrodite is so moved by his love for this inanimate object that she brings her to life to be his companion. Oh, I don’t know what Aphrodite’s doing. What are any of the Greek gods do?
AM: Yeah, you think they would have a little more insight, but whatever, it’s fine.
JJF: But yeah, and I think what’s interesting about that and carries through to these stories that you were looking at 2013-2017 to a varying degree, because the fembots, they share a lot in common, but they’re not entirely identical with each other.
AM: No.
JJF: As you’ve already said, Samantha has more agency than Joy does, for example.
AM: I’m pretty sure she ends up being Polly at the end of the film, and Theodore can’t help. She’s like, I have 500 something thousand. I don’t know how many partners she has. And he was like, uh, I’m not special anymore.
JJF: But I’m your only one, right? And she’s like, Ah.
AM: Oh. I’m gonna go peace now. It’s like Yeah.
JJF: And then she leaves. She’s like, Okay, humans are beneath me. I’m out. Yeah. Whereas Joy doesn’t have that agency, what I’ve seen from the media.
AM: No.
JJF: Yeah. But I think what is interesting about all of them, if we connect them back to this story of Pygmalion, and this is something I kind of saw coming out of your research as well is that, like, there’s this sense that, like, human women aren’t good enough.
AM: Yep.
JJF: And it makes me think of, and I think we’ve had this conversation before, but it makes me think of this philosophical work by the philosopher Kate Manne, where she talks about how misogyny operates as a policing force, and it polices and controls the quote-unquote bad women, and it rewards the quote-unquote good women. Yeah, misogyny isn’t just about making everybody feel bad about themselves, but it’s about, like, forcing women to conform to a certain standard or ideal.
AM: Yep.
JJF: And when I think about that with the fembots, it’s like, they’re the perfect ideal, but, like, no human woman can live up to this.
AM: Yeah. Right. Exactly. I was just thinking of the similar trope, the Madonna/Whore complex.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: Yeah, I just makes me think of all these media sort of. Interesting. Absolutely.
JJF: We can’t be Galatia, and we can’t be joy.
AM: Yes.
JJF: We can’t be Dolores. And, yeah. So I find, like, there’s the intersectional stuff that you talked about. Like, the vast majority of the fembots, especially from this era, but I suspect not only from this era, are being presented as eurocentric standards of beauty, white, young, cis, het, right?
AM: Abel.
JJF: Samantha’s maybe not het, but she doesn’t tell us the genders of her 5,000 romantic partners, but I’m guessing.
AM: Yeah. And that’s the other thing that’s so interesting is the compulsive heteronormativity of the fembot.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: Although Westworld does play with the fact that I actually give HBO props because they do tend to try to show, like, bisexuality or homosexuality in a positive way. So I mean, they’re trying. It’s not all, like, as black and white, but the problem is that the main stories tend to be compulsive heteronormativity.
JJF: Mm hmm.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: Yeah, so there’s a way in which I think just the existence of these fembots could be experienced as a policing force. This idea that like real human women need to try and live up to these . . . and as you pointed out, it’s not just science fiction anymore. Like, you can get an erotic fembot-type-thing now. Like, this exists in the world. And so what kind of standards is this upholding or is this setting, I think is really worth thinking about.
AM: Mm.
JJF: One thing that I found really fascinating about your research, and we’ve kind of already teased it is that you didn’t just look at the fembots but you also look at the humans that are often portrayed alongside them, either their creators or their companions.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: So what can you tell me about their creators/companions? It’s not always the same person, but sometimes it is.
AM: So it’s a very I’m trying to be polite about it, but it’s kind of hard to be polite about it. Sad white boy trope. Incel-ish not nice guys, like, “I’m a nice guy” with heavy air quotes, and “I’m unlucky and loved because I am nice”. And that’s definitely present in Her. And he goes through a reckoning. Theodore goes through a reckoning with his dissolved marriage in which he realizes he wasn’t necessarily the nice guy he thought he was, which is great. You show growth from that. But, for example, Ava, her counterpart, William becomes a psychopath because of
JJF: Yeah.
AM: Some disillusions with his relationship with her. And in Ex Machina, the main protagonist, you know, we look at him and he’s like, Oh, he’s a nice guy, and, you know, he was betrayed, and it’s like, but was he a nice guy? Because as soon as he was attracted to her, I don’t know if he was using the same amount of detached rationalism that he was supposed to be using within the context of testing her for consciousness. He was absolutely thinking with a different part of his body when he was testing Ava, and that cost him a lot. It cost him his life in the film. So it’s just interesting that these like sad incel-types, lonely masculine, but still kind of soft masculine men all showed up in these four media analysis sort of films. And even okay, so Blade Runner 2049 had Ryan Gosling. And he is also a robot in that. But at the same time, he has the same characteristics of this sort of, like, sad boy. It’s just the only way I could ever. . . a melancholy fella looking for love in all the wrong places.
JJF: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve seen this even in earlier iterations of the fembot that I mean, even Pygmalion is kind of a sad, lonely man who can’t find love because the women around him don’t live up to his expectations because he has prejudice against sex work and stuff like that.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: And so there is this kind of persistent narrative of men needing to make women because they can’t find women, which is, again, compulsive heteronormativity at work again. But also very much, I think, not necessarily all these narratives and to varying degrees, but many of them, I think, invite us to sympathize or empathize with this lonely male character. That seem right?
AM: 100%. So another hot topic has been of late is the loneliness epidemic affecting young men.
JJF: Mm hm.
AM: I can’t help but notice it a lot like analysis discussion in YouTube, TikToks, the media. It’s just, Oh, loneliness. Why are men so lonely? I mean, look at who ends up shooting up schools. And so we’re like, Whoa. There is something going on here.
JJF: Mm hmm.
AM: Like, what is going on, and why is this happening? And a curiosity, I think, in genuine earnest to, you know, help people who feel lonely, particularly the males that feel lonely because of the consequences of perhaps their loneliness.
JJF: Yeah, I’ve seen articles like this in mainstream media. So, you’re right. It’s all over YouTube and other social media, but I’ve also seen, as you mentioned, articles in mainstream media, kind of talking about the epidemic of lonely young men.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: And in particular, they’re usually focused on heterosexual men as well. And loneliness in terms of lack of an erotic companion. Although sometimes they talk about lack of friendship as well that young men may not have a strong network of friends, for example, but a lot of it is focused on kind of having a partner in a very kind of heterosexual and monogamous kind of context, right? And that these men can’t find a partner and they want one. Because, of course, it’s one thing to not have a partner if you’re happy rocking it single, like, go ahead. It’s great. But a lot of these articles are really focused on people who want to have kind of a monogamous heterosexual relationship and are unable to find one. And it’s almost always talking about men. And I’ve seen this in the North American context, but I’ve also seen it come up in a few other areas. And yeah, when it comes up in North America, it often talks about how these lonely men, as a result of their loneliness, are driven to acts of violence.
AM: Mmhmm. Yeah, and even articles on how men in divorced relationship do worse than the women who divorce the men. So, it’s everywhere.
JJF: Yeah, and talking about how we need to fix this. And you’re right. It’s often framed as, like, we need to fix this it’s like lonely men are an existential threat to society.
AM: Yep.
JJF: Which if I unpack that, I don’t love the way in which that connects masculinities with violence. Like, I think people can be lonely, and we can want to help them just because loneliness sucks.
AM: Mm.
JJF: And I don’t think it’s the case that all lonely men are an existential threat to society because I don’t think that all men are inherently violent.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: So I have quite a few problems with that framing, but I’ve seen it a lot. So I take your point that it’s kind of everywhere, and it may be also driving both the pop culture push towards giving us stories about fembots to alleviate loneliness, but maybe also to the creation of actual real world fen boots to alleviate loneliness.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: So I’m thinking of specifically these kind of romantic companions that are marketed that say, basically, you’ll never be lonely again, right? Which is how Replika is marketed. It’s how in Japan, Azuma Hakari has been marketed that you won’t be lonely because you have this artificial companion.
JJF: So, we have these widespread narratives of loneliness, but I think it’s really interesting because here you found something interesting in your research that I hadn’t actually heard of before. So, the story that we’re told over and over again in popular media, media articles, serious news articles, but also in these fictional stories is that, in particular, cis heterosexual men are lonely. But what is a more complex reality that you’ve found?
AM: Yeah, so it’s one article that I read called Loneliness Around the World, age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness. It’s by a group of researchers. And the idea is that they studied over 40,000 participants of various identities in 237 countries, comparing, say, individualistic cultures versus collectivist cultures. And as I was reading the article, it was pointing to basically there’s an increase of loneliness in individualistic cultures. Basically, loneliness decreases with age, and I guess that the theory is that as you get older, you’re more stable in your identity. So, it’s easier to make friends and stuff once you know yourself better. But then the effect size of men, there is an effect size actually in men, young men in individualistic cultures, but it’s very small. It’s a small effect size, and that the more likely narrative is that loneliness is a universal experience for young people in individualistic cultures. And the only difference that probably is a more sociological way is that the culture is changing around discussions around loneliness. And also, I think there’s an obvious feminist sort of point of view in which women are unfortunately . . . not unfortunately, but fortunately socialized in a way to be more pro social.
JJF: Mm hm.
AM: So that’s already just, like, a gender confounding variable in its own right. Women might be lonely, but we’re just given more tools.
JJF: Right. Oh, okay. So if I’m understanding the research correctly, young men are slightly lonelier than young women.
AM: Yes,
JJF: but it’s not a big outliers.
AM: It’s not a huge. It’s not a huge difference.
JJF: Right. And the bigger predictor of whether or not you’re lonely isn’t your gender, but is your age?
AM: Yes.
JJF: The older people tend to be less lonely than younger people.
AM: Yes.
JJF: And I think this is all adults, right? So we’re kind of leaving out children, is that right?
AM: Yeah, so it was 16 to 99-years-old was the group.
JJF: 16 to 99. Okay.
AM: And then I just saw an article the other day that loneliness is almost a U shape. Oh, okay. So instead of a bell curve, it dips in, like, mid range of age?
JJF: Like, middle aged people are less lonely than both younger people and, like, senior citizens.
AM: Yeah, something like that. But I just briefly saw the article, so I can’t, like, 100% say I got into it. But I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. I should read that later.
JJF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that seems to kind of fit with some of the research you’ve already done. And then you also pointed to this other issue, which is that, yes, men are slightly lonelier and one potential explanation for why there’s a slight disparity between young men and young women, is that women in general are socialized to, yeah, kind of do this more emotional labor, pro social work, reach out to other people.
AM: Mm.
JJF: It’s women that often buy the birthday cards and stuff like that.
AM: Yeah. That’s what I mean, it’s the conditioning and even at the beginning of our talk, I talked about how I wasn’t diagnosed with autism when I was a kid because I think I was motivated to be social.
JJF: Mm.
AM: So there just wasn’t any markers to be like, Oh, definitely autism right there, because all we measured were boys at the time of the 90s. So, like, I don’t know because I’m in a particular age category, I don’t know how things are changing for the newer generations. I don’t know if gender is becoming more understood in a wider sense so that these binaries aren’t as structured anymore. I’m not too sure yet because I can’t know everything.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: But definitely from my experience in my generation, and then I think the people who are making media now are millennials.
JJF: Yep.
AM: Like, they’re growing up and they’re becoming directors, and they’re putting their art onto the screen to discuss these things in which there was so much gender disparity. Dispar, words are hard. Disparate? Oh, my gosh, I can’t. Can you say it, please?
JJF: Disparity.
AM: Disparity. There we go. Who.
JJF: We got there.
AM: Like, Whoa. I can’t. Language, words. Ha.
JJF: So Yeah. No, and I think another thing I thought was so funny and interesting in your answer was when you were like, Unfortunately, women have been socialized to do this because a lot of the time we do think of that additional labor, the pro social labor, the work of, like, building communities, sustaining relationship, the emotional work of helping people regulate their emotions and work through their emotions. All that labor that often falls onto women. It is often viewed as kind of an unfortunate thing because it’s just extra stress. And extra work when you don’t have time for it and people aren’t helping to manage you necessarily, you’re always doing kind of. . . But in this specific context, that labor is a slight fortunate thing because it means women are slightly less likely to be lonely.
AM: Yes.
JJF: Although, again, we want to stress that it’s not a big difference.
AM: No.
JJF: So one thing I really took away from this then is that, like, all young people are lonely our loneliness ep– now I’m having trouble with words. . . Our loneliness epidemic is not just about young men, right? Young women are lonely, too. Young gender diverse people are lonely, too. It isn’t just about cis-het men. They may be slightly more lonely than other genders. But everybody who’s not middle aged is lonely. And so, when we see these fictional stories and these mainstream articles, like, why aren’t we seeing other representations of loneliness?
AM: Yeah, and that’s what really is interesting, more than . . . I don’t know. . . the data is always interesting. I’m always going to find, you know, effect sizes to be fascinating. And what does it really mean? Because heuristics of psychology of what we see in media feels larger because it’s just how our brains work. When we start seeing something repeated and repeated and repeated, we believe that it’s true. And then because Hollywood already is this beautiful place where people see stories repeated and repeated and repeated, we’re like, Oh, well, it must be factual. Like, our brains just don’t understand how not to make things into boxes and see the world in a simpler way. So yeah, there’s something there, and I’m sure we could talk about it.
JJF: So I think you’re saying that first of all, we’ve already talked about, like, Hollywood stories as kind of empathy machines, right? So if we have Hollywood stories as empathy machines, and we have millennials and let’s be honest, still boomers and GenX folk telling these stories, right? They’re the directors, they’re the producers. They’re the ones in the positions of power. They’re the ones that are raised, in North America anyway, in a very gender binary environment, in a very patriarchal, male dominated environment. So the antagonist of a lot of these stories are young cis het, white men.
AM: Mm hm.
JJF: And so who are we having empathy generated for instead of thinking of kind of wider loneliness epidemics? I think that’s kind of what I got out of your answer, is that right?
AM: That’s the points that I was trying to bring up in my zine.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: Yeah. So we really need to pay attention to what we’re feeding into these empathy machines, I guess.
AM: Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
JJF: I think it’s really changed the way I’ve thought about loneliness to think about it more on the axis of age rather than on the access of gender because I think I think it is a real problem if it’s true that seniors are more lonely, and I’ve seen some other research about that and if young people are more lonely. And what can we do socially to try and alleviate those loneliness? And maybe bots are the solution or part of the solution. But I also wonder if, like, helping people engage in pro social behavior and helping people learn about themselves, that’s another thing you said, right, that middle aged people are less likely to be lonely because they’re more kind of confident in who they are and in putting themselves out there.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: Like, how could we help everyone to feel more confident? And how could we help socially, like support more pro social behaviors and teach it ’cause it’s not easy. It’s not easy to put yourself out there.
AM: No, definitely not. And I think about temperament and shyness and risk-taking versus risk-aversion. And, you know, everybody talks about Vancouver being an unfriendly city, and it hasn’t been my experience because I’m a person who is highly motivated to talk to strangers. But that temperament doesn’t land on every person. You know, and we’re so lacking in community. And we’re so. . . we’re so stuck on our devices and this kind of faux social connection through platforms like social media, where our attention’s focusing on these, through a screen connections and forgetting that it might not be actually as, like, filling our cups as we might believe.
JJF: Mm hmm.
AM: So, you know, I feel fortunate because I found community through various means, and I’m like, Wow, like, I couldn’t imagine not having community, and, like, we don’t go to church anymore, which is fine. I’m happy with it. What’s replacing . . . what’s replacing that community?
JJF: Communal spaces. Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, I think that’s right. And I’ve seen a lot of discussion about kind of the loss of, like, third spaces or communal spaces, that there are fewer and fewer kind of public places where you can go just hang out and visit with other people. Especially public places where you don’t have to spend money
AM: Spend money. Yes.
JJF: Not everybody has a ton of money to spend in order to go out and meet people and make new friends, right?
AM: Yes, exactly, exactly. Huge problems.
JJF: Yeah. And as with many things we’ve discussed on this podcast, often these problems show up and we start looking for kind of a quick technological fix. And I’ve seen people able to use companion bots in a way that can be quite healthy, but I’ve also seen it, as you described, end up be kind of destructive where you’re just in your phones and you’re not really getting your cup filled the way you actually need it to be. So I’m not convinced that the real world analogs of what you’ve studied in fiction is necessarily going to fix this for everybody. And in fact, even some of the fiction that you’ve looked at questions that, right? Like, Her ends in a very ambivalent place where Samantha maybe helped the main character a bit to come out of his shell. But ultimately, he still had to come out of his shell and start forming human relationships, right? Like, Samantha wasn’t the be all end all solution there.
AM: And that’s where good media analysis comes from. Although I’m pointing to these well worn tropes, I think a lot of them have messages of maybe technology isn’t the solution.
JJF: Mm hmm.
AM: But then Westworld is like, what makes you better as a human versus a fembot if they have consciousness. So there’s some other juicy ideas within that.
JJF: Yeah, I might have to have you come back to talk about AI consciousness. We don’t have time in this. We kind of put that to one side for this discussion, but, yeah.
JJF: So, again, leaving AI consciousness to one side for the moment. Another concept that you introduced in your research is this concept that’s come up a few times on this podcast, and it’s the concept of biopower. So it’s been a while since I had an episode that talked about biopower. So I was wondering if you could unpack the concept a little bit for us and then maybe talk about how you use that concept in relation to fembots.
AM: Mm. So I love Foucault.
JJF: Foucault is so great.
AM: It’s there’s just so many things that that guy does that I’m just like, Yep, you see it. So basically, biopower to me, and I, you know, I’m taking it from his work, of course, is if it’s being done right, you don’t really notice it.
JJF: Mm.
AM: So psychologists like to use this thing called bottom up processing versus top down processing. And biopower is a concept in which systems of power create standard ideal bodies that the population tries to basically uphold, and it’s a form of control. And, you know, the biggest . . . we didn’t drop capitalism into this conversation yet, but I think one of the main positives for biopower is getting people to consume.
JJF: Mm hm.
AM: So this bottom up process is, like, basically you see the stimuli and then you take it up to your brain, and then you don’t really think about where it comes from, whereas, when we think about biopower, we have to do a top down, where we’re seeing the thing, but we’re thinking about what it means. So when you see these medias, like Her, Ex Machina, West World, Blade Runner, and you’re seeing the patterns, you’re supposed to be thinking about the patterns and then integrating it into your system, as opposed to just seeing it and taking it up to your brain and like, Oh, that’s normal.
JJF: Right.
AM: Because that’s what biopower does. It wants you to believe that that’s ‘normal’ with heavy air quotes. And if you don’t fit that standard of normal, you’re doing something wrong. And if other people don’t fit it, you are allowed to other than.
JJF: And to, like, police them.
AM: Yes.
JJF: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So when biopower is operating effectively, which doesn’t necessarily mean good, but effectively. It becomes unconscious to us, and we start trying to have our bodies and our lives conform to these kind of standards without questioning the standards, without thinking about, Well, where did these standards come from and are they actually appropriate for my body for my life? And that’s kind of that bottom up that you’re talking about.
AM: Yes.
JJF: So biopower, we internalize it and we start using it without reflecting.
AM: Yes.
JJF: And so if I take your point correctly, you’re saying one awesome thing about Foucault among the many awesome things about Foucault
AM: Mm hmm,
JJF: is that he drew our attention to it so that we could start using a top down analysis, and we could start analyzing the biopower that is operating on us.
AM: Yes.
JJF: And start thinking about whether this is something that I want to take on or not.
AM: Mm hmm. Yeah.
JJF: Awesome. So what kind of biopower operations are there with these stories of fembots, do you think? Mm. That might be complex because I know the stories themselves are complex that you’re like, Are they feminist? Well, sometimes, but sometimes not.
AM: I think, like, Ex Machina is a beautiful example. Well, it’s all beautiful example because the body types and the ableness of it all. And, you know, I think Westworld gets, like, it has robots of color, I’ll say, and it’s great because there is multiple storylines going. But the sort of thin, and I don’t know if I really remember seeing a bigger robot.
JJF: Right.
AM: I don’t think I remember seeing a disabled robot, which it’s like, Well, why would you program a disability? But it’s like, but humans are different. And so, what are we trying to replicate here?
JJF: And also, factually, I feel like robots could partially break down and still be something that humans continue to interact with, as well. Like, why couldn’t you have that?
AM: Yeah, and some media tries to capture that. A new film, actually, an alien franchise Alien Romulus uses Android with actual it almost seems like a learning disability because it’s malfunctioning. Like, nuanced portrayals can happen, but is it going to help biopower? I don’t know, because the system at hand wants us to other people that don’t fit into . . . that don’t fit into what is categorized as quote normal, which is also very helpful for settler colonialism and patriarchy and who do we allow to have power?
JJF: Yeah.
AM: So this is the darker side to why it’s important to notice these things as well to think about these films and what we see replicated, because I don’t know about you, but I feel great with who I am as a person, but you still, once you start seeing these, like, standards of beauty, for example.
JJF: Yeah,
AM: it’s really hard to achieve them.
JJF: Yeah.
AM: And the best way to achieve that is buying stuff, and it sucks because not everyone has that buffer in them yet to look at something like films and realize that it’s artificial.
JJF: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think this is where we bring the capitalism in, too, and how it can work really well with biopower. I mean, biopower can exist in non-capitalist societies. Foucault isn’t saying that it has to be capitalist, but it does work very well with capitalism.
AM: Yeah.
JJF: So the idea that, like, a lot of the portrayal that we get in these stories of kind of eurocentric classic standards of beauty in presentations that are ablest that uphold fat phobia that have all these kind of problems. And again, the other thing is even if you do happen to be white and you happen to be thin and you happen to be non disabled, to achieve these standards of beauty, you still need to, like, buy a bunch of stuff.
AM: Mm hmm,
JJF: Right? You need, like, stylists and hair and makeup and maybe also plastic surgery and et cetera, et cetera. And that’s before we throw in other products and services that are offered to people for a variety of ways to try and achieve this standard.
AM: And even, you know, abled versus non abled, like, we’re not creating space for people with different abilities. If we only consider one type of ability the ‘right’ type of ability, and this is heavy air quotes ‘right’.
JJF: Absolutely.
AM: Like, Everyone is supposed to be different. This is why I love people. And I love differences, and I think that we need to create this space where we’re not trying to reduce identities into one package. And I don’t know if Hollywood knows how to create the needed space. And I know they’re trying. I see that there’s improvements. But once again, who’s benefiting from these stories?
JJF: And then if we think of the way the stories go on to impact real world technology, it’s really important that these stories make space for people to just exist in the bodies that they are in.
AM: Mm hmm.
JJF: I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about your research. It’s been awesome. Is there anything else that you’d like to leave the listeners with regarding fembots, biopower, loneliness, Hollywood, anything else?
AM: So I named my zine, “Why You Gotta Be A Fembot?” and I named it because of RuPaul. RuPaul has these like, “Why, you gotta. . .” He’s got these beautiful ways of saying things. And I think what I want for all people as I become a counselor is, like, the saying, like, if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else? And I think that’s just been my mantra of, like, trying to look into these forces in our world that try to make us feel like we’re not enough and doing that work to go against that. And so I think, yeah, just be kind to yourself as you learn. And as you watch media, I mean, even media you love, it’s okay to ask questions about it. And let’s create a world where we can ask questions without it being a negative or angry sort of discourse over it. Like, what creates a more healthy society is having discussions about things like this and leaving space for people to have opinions and being open to listening. The work starts from inside, and then we can take it out from there.
JJF: I want to thank Alannah again for sharing her research on fembots and pop culture media with us today. And thank you listener, for joining me for another episode of Cyborg goddess. This podcast is created by me, Jennifer Jill Fellows, and it is part of the Harbinger Media Network. Music is provided by Epidemic Sound. You can follow us on X, formerly Twitter, BlueSky or follow me on Mastodon. Social media links are in the Show Notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a review. It actually helps. Until next time, everyone. Bye.