New Technology, Same Old Stigma: Media Narratives of Sex Robots and Sex Work

This qualitative study examines how sex robots and sex work are constructed in relation to one another in mainstream news media. While existing research examines how sex robots are broadly represented in fictional narratives, to date no study examines the relatively prominent association between sex robots and sex work. Via an analysis of 166 news media articles on sex robots and sex work, we reveal how non-sentient robots are regularly imbued with human subjectivity by the very actors who often deny sex workers' sexual subjectivity and agency. At the same time, we demonstrate how sex robot users are constructed as abusive and exploitative "clients" of workers rather than consumers of sexual commodities. Finally, we reveal how both abolitionist and pro-sex robot coverage denounces and stigmatizes sex work-often arguing in support of eradicating both sex robots and sex work, or for sex robots' displacement of sex workers. Drawing on sexuality and sex work scholarship, we expose the limits of the above framings and argue that such narratives reify sex work and sextech stigma. We invite future research on the sex work/sextech nexus to include sex workers and sextech consumers and to further examine the potential socio-legal implications of this study's findings for sex workers, sex work clients, sextech creators, and consumers.