Guess you can't write a good text when your premise is wrong from the absolute beginning. I want to expose some of her premises and how this leads to the impoverishment of her text.
First of all, she seems to have a pretty distorted view of masculinity in general, as other feminists are known to have, the opinion that men are aggressive beasts by nature, that aggression is their default.
The consequences of this mean men are being taught that their abusive behaviour is standard, reinforcing their low opinion of women.
And she adds:
Incels dehumanise women by creating misogynist archetypes of perfection in their heads which real life women will not amount to.
I guess you could say the same about what she did above. It's the creation of a feminist archetype of male imperfection (supposed aggression) on her head, and that this is done through some sort of education and the spread of "misogynistic ideas" on Reddit and Incel forums, as it seems to be the case. Note the first period of this phrase, where she defends the regulation of technology, stated after a paragraph citing a massacre made by an incel redditor:
Technology has grown faster than the ability to regulate it. There is a view that giving incels the freedom to abuse AI women is a good thing that will “allow women freedom from creepy men” and “make them leave us alone.” However, the abuse of AI women will also translate into the abuse of real human women, as seen with deep fakes.
Again it comes the idea of education/intervention, this time made by feminists to contain the "violence". "Giving men the freedom to use technology as they wish leads to the inevitably abuse of woman, therefore it needs to be regulated, recive a feminine intervention". This idea will latter appear on the end of the text:
Wired has reported that only 12% of AI researchers are women. Therefore it is not surprising to see hegemonic gender relations and misogynistic attitudes reflected in technology made by men for men.
It is as if men will constantly taint what they touch because they promote "hegemonic gender relations". What she's doing is putting all men into a single archetype and forcing them to follow it, something that not only men wouldn't do, but it's simply unrealistic.
Though there is the definition of what's evil, is also true that she can't come to exactly define what's good, but hints through her "argumentation" that the right thing to be done is to control everything, from the internet to people's behavior. Now this is what I call violence, the active imposition of one against another.
The other wrong premise of her is the dehumanization of incels in particular. This appears when she calls incels as "creepy mans" and treat the idea of them "leaving us alone" as a supposed great idea (and the most absurd part: that this can't be achieved JFL).
Instead of adopting a nuanced standpoint and treating incels and men in general as part of society, she's pretty much rejecting us. In fact, her problem is the same as society's as a whole, as she rejects the impact of loneliness on individuals, be it male or female, specially on people who were rejected. For instance, let's see an article cited by her. She writes that
Incels can code their AI girlfriend to never say no, allowing them to freely live out their abusive fantasies to a docile submissive recipient.
And links this to an article (
View: https://medium.com/@illyism/ai-girlfriends-loneliness-cure-or-connection-barrier-fd636cf4991f
). Not only the article didn't say anything about incels coding chatbots to be highly submissive (making it an empty statement and ignoring content policies being implemented by mainstream chatbots), that article brings two cases of AI chatbot usage as benefical. Since she linked this article, I will assume that she read it:
Database administrator Harold Beltran, 37, became an early adopter of an AI girlfriend app last year after his divorce.
“I work long hours and have very few friends anymore after what happened with me and my ex. Candy [the AI app] is always there to talk when I need company.”
“I’d been wheelchair-bound for over a decade since my accident. I couldn’t get to art classes, and became very withdrawn,” says Janet Willoughby, 46. She claims her AI art instructor reignited her passion for painting. “The positive feedback was so encouraging. I’ve made my first real friend in years by sharing my paintings online.”
So we have two examples of people rejected by society that found companion and acceptance by using AI, feelings that weren't present when trying to interact with society. I wonder why she didn't brought this two examples nor concluded that receiving a few "yes" from people or AI can be good to one.
By bringing distinct genders cases and people in different conditions, the Medium article suggests that chatbot usage isn't limited to one gender and that it's a response to being unable to connect with people. Furthermore, there isn't any violence being produced by using AI services: the man feels less lonely and the woman started making art, which is incredible and a huge fight against the restrictions imposed by her disability.
Rather than users creating a submissive partner, it really seems that users are in search of a bilateral relationship: a friend, a person who can substitute an ex-wife. But ignoring this, the feminist author proceeds to frame AI as a stimulant to abusive male behaviour. That's probably due to the fact that the Medium article says something about AI excessively agreeing with it's users, but regardless of that, she commits a huge distortion.
She don't give a fuck about incels or loneliness though, as her main concern are her own concept of "women" and it's rights and feminism. As we see here, even though she acknowledges the incel loneliness, she doesn't makes efforts for resolving this problem, simply blaming incels instead.
Incels hatred of women stems from their inability to communicate with them. This leads them to blame women for their despair and loneliness. Despite stemming from a desire for women, many of the views incels have are about “making women obsolete.”
Why she instantly frame incels as the culpirits? And she also don't let any alternatives for incels nor a solution to resolve a huge societal problem, and not only for incels. Well, we can't resort to AI, we can't talk to women properly due to our "abusive behaviour" and we are to blame for our unrequited desire for women. What can we fucking do about that?!!!!
That's why I think she views things through the lens of rejection rather than a balanced point of view. By denying mens needs (affection), behavior and internet freedom, accusing them to bring "hegemonic gender relations", she's practicing the idealization of a violent authoritarism over the male population by not addressing their needs and rights, but bestializing them and putting us on a "pacific jail".
Rather than categorically denouncing or embracing AI simulated romance, we must thoughtfully examine what societal elements drive segments of the population toward synthetic companionship. In doing so, we may cultivate greater empathy and solutions for loneliness rooted in our shared humanity.
The above quote is the Medium-published article's conclusion, but instead this feminist writer goes on the opposite way and blame everything that doesn't fit into her distorted ideals. JFL
thenewfeminist.co.uk
