A man is sad because he wants his children to have his surname. He wants it so much that he wrote an article in the Telegraph about it. I’m not sure this is the traditional way to solve an argument with a loved one, but if that’s what we’re doing now then I’d love a column in which I can explain to my Mum why she’s wrong about which way the knives go up in the dishwasher.

Anyway. He is sad because traditionally kids take the name of the guy in a relationship (and because traditionally of course relationships consist of one man, one woman, some kids and a dog called ‘Bunty’), yet because of the rapid erosion of patriarchy, and the towering inferno of feminist rage that is currently decimating our society, he has NOTHING LEFT TO CALL HIS OWN NOW. All he’s asking is to give his kids his surname. Please will we just let him have this one little thing that’s really important? Is it too much to ask? IS IT?

Let’s explore.

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Imagine a club in which all the doors are five foot six. You’re six foot tall, so you have to duck to enter. On your way to the club, you had to get out at the train station and hop onto a crowded shuttle bus. There was a person standing with a sign directing you to it:

“Shuttle bus for people below five foot six this way!”

When you walked past them to step onto the bus, they didn’t exactly tell you to leave, but a fair few people gave you weird looks.

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If you’re not yet up to date on Channel 4’s uncanny-valley AI drama Humans, then please note that this blog post contains spoilers up to episode 5. 

Never one to shy away from the big questions, this week I had a fairly heated debate with a gentleman about the issue of whether robot sex is cheating. I know, it doesn’t really seem relevant, right? After all, this is far-into-the-future shit that we won’t have to deal with for hundreds of years yet. How close are we really to creating a fuckable robot?

Well, depending on your definition of ‘fuckable robot’, one already exists. Sure, we’re still in the early days, but there are many cool techy pleasure toys on the market (I’m thinking fucking machines or masturbators with some kind of mechanical/buzzy element, toys designed with wifi/bluetooth apps, that kind of thing) but realistically we’re getting pretty inventive. There are toys which you can pair together over long distances (like this Kiiroo masturbator, which twins with an insertable vibrator, and aims to wank you off in time to the vibrator use). We also have fairly realistic-looking sex dolls, which – if twinned with this kind of technology – would create a passably robotic lover.

It is well exciting.

I’ve talked before about robot sex, when a bloody strange opinion poll reported that only 17% of people said they’d have sex with a robot. My answer to this question is ‘hell yes,’ especially if the robot is pretty good at sex. But what prompted the debate the other day wasn’t whether or not either of us would do it, but whether doing it would count – to either of us – as ‘cheating.’

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I’ve seen and read a lot of stuff in my life that was shocking. From the mild things that made me feel a bit queasy, to the more extreme stuff that has given me the shakes or prevented me from sleeping. However, I’m lucky enough that I don’t have PTSD, or any other significant issues that would cause me to be seriously affected by this. The worst I get is anxiety, and that’s more related to my to-do list than my reading habits.

So. Lucky me.

If you’d asked me five years ago whether we should print trigger warnings on books, films, and other media, in order to warn people who could be seriously adversely affected, I’d probably have accused you of trying to sneak in some censorship. What’s more, as a sex writer I’d have told you that my sexual fantasies are sometimes dark, and that you should take that as read when you read this blog.

Surprise! I was wrong.

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