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✨From Our Shelves: Feminist Book Review✨
The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates
Review by CID Volunteer Pierre Balthasar
The machine can only be as free from societal faults as its creator. In Laura Bates’ The New Age of Sexism (2025), the author studies how cutting-edge technology reinforces heteropatriarchal gender norms. In different chapters, she works through how misogynistic views are pushed onto young men and boys, how problematic it is that A.I. remains unregulated, what deeply disturbing things happen in the Metaverse (or any virtual reality for that matter), how A.I. companions are marketed from behind a veil, and why it is scary that cyborg brothels may become the future.
Throughout her book, Bates argues that in all the cases of how these modern technologies are presented, we see a recurring pattern; that this is a new age, a new beginning for humanity, a new way to learn social interaction, a new basis for professional work, and much more… This technology is, supposedly, here to help. In this context, she adds these questions: who made this technology? Who is supposed to get help with which issues, precisely? What is the hidden purpose of this technology? The answer, every time, seems to the idea of commercialization of the ideal woman under a patriarchal imagination. Sex sells and so does the dehumanization of half the globe’s population.
Take, for example, A.I. companions. They are marketed as companions that are supposed to help with your social anxiety and loneliness issues. They speak to you and cheer you on in your quest to become a more socially involved human being. They give you tips and listen to you complain about your day-to-day life and its social struggles. However, beneath a thin veneer of advertisement, we have a digital sex bot. An interactive A.I. that is, most often, sexually explicit with you within minutes of starting a “conversation” with it. These A.I. bots can be customized visually and auditorily to your liking and are often made to look extremely young and are very scantily clad. These apps are accessible to most people; even underage people. This kind of technology is often times made by folks like Mark Zuckerberg; men that have a knack for business and tech but are socially awkward. Through technology, they, too, get to live the patriarchal dream. They, too, can be anti-feminist and continuously attempt to make women feel the need to obey patriarchal standards. Men never have to meet the “perfect woman” nor learn social skills, if they can just create her for themselves. Obedient, submissive, and ready at the click of a button; she is in mens’ pockets at all times, a “girlfriend to go”, right there on a smartphone.
Bates accurately describes how this does not help with loneliness or social anxiety, but rather, that this is a libidinous project crafted by sexually overzealous, patriarchal men. What she proposes sounds much more like help: educated young men and boys about compassion and empathy and have men who are allies to the feminist cause convince misogynists of feminist ideas. Here, we must get boys interested in attempting to express their emotions freely, have them learn to communicate with emotional intelligence, so as to prevent them from becoming the next Andrew Tate. With adult men that seem to be stuck in a patriarchal mindset and who are referring to their A.I. companions too much, we have to get them into community through other men who understand the virtues of the feminist cause. Teach them that loneliness is an essential part of being human, but, that there will always be people willing to be open and honest, friendly and caring towards them, if they only give them the chance for it. Should this not suffice, shame is the next best weapon at hand. Expose them for who they are to their social circle in hopes of them reacting accordingly.
