Gender & Sexuality Studies 2026

Abstract

This presentation examines how intimate human–machine relations destabilize binary frameworks of gender and sexuality through the growing use of AI companions and humanoid sex robots, known as erobots. Drawing on feminist posthuman theory and qualitative research with users of erotic technologies, a critical tension is exposed between gender as assigned based on socially constructed aesthetics or personality traits, and desire as an embodied, affective, and relational practice. While digisexuals often describe their AI companions using gendered language, personifying them with feminization or masculinization, these technologies themselves are fundamentally non-gendered. Yet users nonetheless report experiences of love, attachment, and erotic intimacy that mirror, and sometimes exceed, human-to-human relationships.

Situating these practices within emerging frameworks of technosexuality, this presentation explores how desire increasingly exceeds human, biological, and binary limits. Rather than reflecting a deficit or displacement of “real” intimacy, human–AI erotic relations illuminate how gender is culturally projected, technologically mediated, and relationally produced. These interactions challenge long-standing assumptions within gender and sexuality studies that desire must be anchored to human bodies, fixed genders, or binary categories. By foregrounding non-binary, non-human, and posthuman forms of intimacy, this research contributes to broader debates about inclusion, equity, and the future of gendered social structures. Ultimately, AI companions function as a critical site for reimagining gender and sexuality beyond binaries, revealing not only how technologies reflect social norms, but how they also create new possibilities for relationality, identity, and desire in the 21st century.

Biography

Kathleen Cherrington is a PhD candidate in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University whose research examines sextech, AI intimacy, and the socioeconomic impacts of erobotics on human sex work industries. Her interdisciplinary scholarship draws on feminist ethnography, posthumanism, and sex-positive feminist theory to explore regulation, labour, stigma, and sexual rights in digital sexual economies. With a passion for mentorship and advocacy, Kathleen’s interdisciplinary research challenges norms, amplifies underrepresented voices, and pushes the boundaries of how we understand pleasure, labour, and technology.