Galatea and Repliee

Two new links in the sidebar – to David Byrne and Insert Credit, the Pitchfork of video game sites. Their thematic joint – android girls. On August 17 (you gotta scroll down – no permalinks) David posted about Hiroshi Ishiguro’s android woman and compared them to Pygmalion and Galatea. I want to address Ovid’s preface:

Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried.

I don’t think loving an android would entail hating women. Unless an android had a distinct personality – we’ve written them as servile but strong, which means that’s how they’ll be when they arrive – falling in love with one would be a boring fetish, mere displacement. I think the desire for robot girls is a desire for a fourth sex – a category without exhausting baggage.

See, I told you I’d come back to android girls.

Aphrodite animates Galatea (Edward Burne-Jones )