Laura Bates’s new book The New Age of Sexism claims that violence against women is being ‘coded into the fabric’ of our future. But sexism has deeper roots than new AI technology argues Sarah Bates
Laura Bates is scared. She’s looked at the “glittering new world” of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and found it to be a particularly fertile breeding ground for sexism.
Her latest book, The New Age of Sexism, argues that harassment and violence against women are being “coded into the fabric” of our future.
In lots of ways, she’s bang on the money.
AI chatbots spew out sexist lies, software is used to stop women getting jobs and a wave of new apps make it easier to harass women.
Bates is absolutely correct that the scale of scope of AI is vast. One often overlooked effect of that is how it is used as a tool to target women, particularly young women and teenagers.
For instance, she investigates how some apps can seamlessly impose a naked body onto a picture of a face. The implications are obvious—supposedly “nude” photos can be shared around within seconds.
“Deepfakes”, digitally altered videos, are another example. “Deepfake pornography is a new form of abuse, but its underlying power dynamics are very, very old,” writes Bates.
Bates shows how deepfakes are often presented as a future threat to democracy.
London mayor Sadiq Khan was a victim of a deepfake last year when he appeared to be on camera calling for a “one million man Palestinian march” instead of Armistice Day commemorations.
But that’s not the reality for the vast majority of deepfakes already swirling around the internet.
Instead of men in suits making proclamations from a lectern, they are generally manufactured to put women in pornographic material.
“Research suggests that 96 per cent of deepfakes are non-consensual pornography, of which 99 per cent feature women.
“Over the past few years, deepfakes have proliferated exponentially, with the number of such videos online doubling every six months,” writes Bates.
“Just one of the most popular websites gets around 17 million different visitors a month.”
As Bates shows so well, deepfakes aren’t some abstract threat, but a tool already readily employed to abuse, degrade and humiliate women.
The “metaverse” is another example. This is a virtual reality world where users can build 3D rooms where they can interact.
Women do come under real harm in these spaces—experiencing verbal and sometimes physical abuse. Because, to a degree, it feels real to the users.
But as powerful as Bates’s descriptions are, there are limits to her wider analysis.
For instance, a central argument of Bates’s work is that the more lifelike these various technologies become, the more emboldened men will be to unleash violence on real women.
One example she uses are lifelike, plastic sex dolls in a Berlin “cyberbrothel”.
Here, men pay an hourly rate to wear a virtual reality headset and have sex with a doll.
Actual and virtual reality combine to make it a more convincing erotic experience for the user.
Bates asks, “What does it mean to manufacture an illusion of consent in a situation where it doesn’t really exist?
“And what will the knock-on effects be for the real-life women who will later encounter these men who have been interacting with robo-dolls?
“These robots are only going to be more and more realistic, closer and closer to being seen as human by their users and abusers.”
Bates herself talks about feeling a degree of empathy with the sex doll she visits. “When I leave, I fight an absurd sense of guilt for abandoning her there… I realise how hard it is for me to remember that she is a doll and how easy it must be for the men fucking her to imagine she is not.”
At one point she describes how people are “raping and abusing” the dolls.
But sex dolls are not people and cannot be raped. It can appear a minor linguistic point, but it’s important to be concrete about the differences between actual harm and the potential for violence.
And it’s worth thinking about the political framework that produces such an analysis.
Where does sexism come from?
In the 1970s and 1980s, some feminists who campaigned against pornography used the slogan, “Porn is the theory, rape is the practice,” to outline their position.
They meant that pornography normalised sexual violence so much, it drove men to commit acts of violence.
But a sexist culture—with new opportunities to abuse—does not create violence against women and girls.
As disgusting as the details are, men have not been waiting for virtual reality headsets, vibrating sex dolls or reactive chatbots to abuse women.
These developments in AI, like sexist advertising, stiletto heels and Barbie dolls before them, are cultural constructs of a sexist world.
They’re not progressive. They’re not a challenge to a society that harms and oppresses women—they’re a symptom rather than a cause of sexism.
Men abuse women because they live repressed, alienated lives in a world that enables and sometimes encourages violence against women.
Most people live unfulfilled lives where their basic needs often go unmet.
They may have enough food on the table. But are they getting access to nature, deep social connections, time to rest, opportunities to create and so on?
These unmet needs are also shaped by women’s oppression, and in particular, the capacity for violence, control and abuse.
Instead of people being given opportunities to meet their own needs—including sexual—in healthy, non-violent ways, they have commodities marketed towards them that further distort their relationship with sex.
It’s no wonder then, that “we are building a whole new world, but the inequalities and oppression of our current society are being baked into its very foundations”, as Bates argues.
But, here’s the thing. We can only understand the role of AI with a fuller appreciation of the society in which it’s built.
In the last century we have seen the advent of erotic movies, video technology at home, Playboy, internet pornography and sex phone lines.
Violence against women and girls predates any of these developments. And it continues to be experienced overwhelmingly within the institution of the family.
Sexism is a long-running feature of class society because of the vital role it plays in justifying women’s labour within the family.
The secrecy and the hierarchy of the capitalist family is why this continues today.
The material conditions of society shape our relationships, including when that world is built from pixels and code rather than bricks and mortar. This is why online spaces are so riddled with every type of oppression.
For instance, “AI girlfriends”—essentially chatbots with an avatar—are wildly popular. One app, Replika, has been downloaded 50 million times. Another app Xiaoice, has 660 million users worldwide.
But for all the millions of downloads, they have one thing in common—they are all women. Bates writes, “There is no AI boyfriend.
“There is almost no demand from women to degrade and abuse men in the same way they routinely degrade and abuse us, and therefore no profit for the tech companies that provide these apps in creating such an option.”
Replika’s free version has some 25 million active users—and this version of that app doesn’t have an erotic element.
In other words, tens of millions of people use this app to seek company, connection and friendship.
Solutions
Bates argues strongly for stricter moderation to put responsibility on the shoulders of the tech companies.
“This would require concerted efforts, technological infrastructure and innovative execution, with equality and safety at the centre of all virtual planned and creation.
“That’s not impossible. But none of it is happening, because it simply isn’t a major priority for tech companies.
“We have a fleeting moment of opportunity to define whether they will create a world that is full of new possibilities,” she writes.
A world that is “accessible to everybody, or a world in which existing inequalities are inextricably embedded—a dazzling future that drags women and minoritised groups backwards.”
The issue isn’t that we’ll “miss the moment”—the issue is that building this world sits directly opposed to the interests of tech billionaires.
Metaverse founder Mark Zuckerberg and others are not necessarily driven by personal malevolence, as odious as they may be.
Instead, their virtual reality world is shaped entirely by capitalism’s competition for profit.
Asking Zuckerberg to argue for genuine scrutiny is like asking an oil baron to call for a fossil fuel ban.
Any attempt to challenge this “new world” would mean a direct confrontation with the capitalist forces building it.
Republished from Socialist Worker UK
