Legal and Moral Implications of Child Sex Robots

Abstract

This chapter considers the legal and moral implications of creating sex robots that look and act like children. It does so by addressing the analogy between child sex robots and virtual child pornography. Entirely computer-generated child pornographic images are prohibited in many countries on the ground that (the majority of) people find them morally objectionable (legal moralism). If child sex robots were to be developed, they would (likely) be banned for the same reasons. Virtue ethics and (anti-porn) feminism explain why people find entirely computer-generated child pornography morally objectionable and why they would think the same about child sex robots. Both flout our sexual mentality based on equality, because they are respectively incomplete representations and replica of sexual relations between adults and children, which can never be considered equal.