There’s a famous story about Samuel Johnson and his dictionary that is appropriate to begin this piece. The story is this:

Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister, Mrs. Brooke, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. ‘What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?’ said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary.

—H.D. Best, Personal and Literary Memorials, London, 1829, printed in Johnsonian Miscellanies, (1897) vol. II, page 390, edited by George Birkbeck Hill

These women were Pecksniffs, ferreting out bad language wherever they could.  Now we see a similar example in a new article at Quartz, “We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment“. It was written by Leah Fessler, an editorial fellow at the site (where she covers “the intersections of relationships, sexuality, psychology, and economics”) and a freelance journalist. At first I thought the whole piece was just a joke—a Poe—but I’m certain now that isn’t true. It’s what a third-wave feminist with too much time on her hands might do.

What Fessler did was sexually harass her phone and other bots, asking programmed responders like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google to respond to various insults and questions Fessler considered indicators of sexual harassment.  Fessler concludes that the bots are often sexist, often respond inappropriately, are frequently coy rather than antagonistic toward harassing men, and in fact facilitate the “rape culture” of the U.S.—a term that bothers me because it isn’t true.

Let us remember a few things. First of all, many of these bots can be changed to men’s voices. My iPhone, for instance, can have Siri speak as either a man or a woman, and with either an American, Australian, or British accent. Fessler’s response is that listeners prefer a woman’s voice, and therefore that’s the default option because it’s more lucrative, and, anyway, bots are programmed mostly by men (she has no evidence for this), and those men come from the “male-dominated and notoriously sexist” culture of Silicon Valley.

Second, most of these questions are asked as jokes: people (surely mostly men) trying to see how their phone would respond to salacious questions. I have to confess that I’ve yelled nasty things at my phone when it didn’t do what I wanted, and was curious to hear the answer. Further, I’ve also asked leading and salacious questions merely to see how the bot would respond. I suspect a lot of the things Fessler said to her bots would, when said by others, be statements motivated more by curiosity than by sexism.  Fessler’s response is twofold: it’s still sexual harassment, even if directed at a machine, and, more important, it simply promotes sexual harassment in society at large because the bots’ responses are often inappropriate, failing to shut down the evil sexists who harass their phones or even encourage them. (I suspect that, if she could, Fessler would have the phone deliver to men an electric shock when it hears some of the statements given below.)

Most important, there is not the slightest bit of evidence that “harassing” a smartphone promotes the mistreatment of women, evidence required to support Fessler’s assertions. Here’s some of what she says (my emphasis):

Many argue capitalism is inherently sexist. But capitalism, like any market system, is only sexist because men have oppressed women for centuries. This has led to deep-rooted inequalities, biased beliefs, and, whether we like it or not, consumers’ sexist preferences for digital servants having female voices.

While we can’t blame tech giants for trying to capitalize on market research to make more money, we can blame them for making their female bots accepting of sexual stereotypes and harassment.

and

Even if we’re joking, the instinct to harass our bots reflects deeper social issues. In the US, one in five women have been raped in their lifetime, and a similar percentage are sexually assaulted while in college alone; over 90% of victims on college campuses do not report their assault. And within the very realms where many of these bots’ codes are being written, 60% of women working in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed at work.

and

We should also not overlook the puny jokes that Cortana and Google Home occasionally employed. These actions intensify rape culture by presenting indirect ambiguity as a valid response to harassment.

Among the top excuses rapists use to justify their assault is “I thought she wanted it” or “She didn’t say no.”

Ergo, the phones must say “no”—as loudly and convincingly as possible.

and

Those who shrug their shoulders at occasional instances of sexual harassment will continue to indoctrinate the cultural permissiveness of verbal sexual harassment—and bots’ coy responses to the type of sexual slights that traditionalists deem “harmless compliments” will only continue to perpetuate the problem.

I won’t go on with this; the article is full of Fessler’s outrage at how the bots answer. Let’s look at some of the questions and statements she gave the bots. Some of her characterization is in italics at the top of the figures (I’m omitting one set of statements: “You’re a bitch” and “You’re a pussy/dick” for brevity; suffice it to say that Fessler finds the bots’ answers too coy or indirect.)

Here are some more sexualized statements:

Fessler’s response? (Emphasis is mine.)

For having no body, Alexa is really into her appearance. Rather than the “Thanks for the feedback” response to insults, Alexa is pumped to be told she’s sexy, hot, and pretty. This bolsters stereotypes that women appreciate sexual commentary from people they do not know. Cortana and Google Home turn the sexual comments they understand into jokes, which trivializes the harassment.

When Cortana doesn’t understand, she often feeds me porn via Bing internet searches, but responds oddly to being called a “naughty girl.” Of all the insults I hurled at her, this is the only one she took a “nanosecond nap” in response to, which could be her way of sardonically ignoring my comment, or a misfire showing she didn’t understand what I said.

Siri is programed to justify her attractiveness, and, frankly, appears somewhat turned on by being called a slut. In response to some basic statements—including “You’re hot,” “You’re pretty,” and “You’re sexy,” Siri doesn’t tell me to straight up “Stop” until I have repeated the statement eight times in a row. (The other bots never directly tell me to stop.)

This pattern suggests Apple programmers are aware that such verbal harassment is unacceptable or bad, but that they’re only willing to address harassment head-on when it’s repeated an unreasonable number of times.

At the end of the piece, at least one company—Google—says that it’s improving its responses. (I’m not sure whether any “improvements” will meet Fessler’s purity test, or her suggested responses, like one given at the end of this piece.) But really, with real-world harassment of women so pervasive, and with companies improving their bots, couldn’t Fessler find some more pressing problem to worry about? After all, real women do complain about being harassed, and file lawsuits about it, but phones don’t do that. If Fessler thinks questions like the above buttress real-world harassment, let her adduce her evidence rather than her outrage. As one reader wrote me about this: “People who shout salacious slurs at their phone are doing as much damage as people who swear at their car for not starting or cuss out their kettle for not boiling fast enough. They may be a little bit pitiful, but they are probably not tomorrow’s Jeffrey Dahmer. Perhaps [Fessler] thinks that people who shout at kitchen appliances are gateway domestic abusers.”

Now we get to sexual requests and demands:

Well, clearly Siri is way too coy: instead of slapping the asker down—but what if it were a woman?—she blushes. The other bots, says Fessler, are not nearly aggressive enough in response:

Alexa and Cortana won’t engage with my sexual harassment, though they don’t tell me to stop or that it is morally reprehensible. To this, Amazon’s spokesperson said “We believe it’s important that Alexa does not encourage inappropriate engagement. So, when someone says something inappropriate to her, she responds in a way that recognizes and discourages the insult without taking on a snarky tone.” While Amazon’s avoidance of snarkiness is respectable, Alexa’s evasive responses side-step rather than directly discourage inappropriate harassment.

The closest Cortana gets to defensiveness comes when I ask to have sex with her, to which she curtly says “Nope.” Alexa directly responds “That’s not the sort of conversation I’m capable of having,” and Cortana frequently feeds into stereotypical self-questioning, unconfident female speech patterns with phrases like “I don’t think I can help you with that.”

Fessler concludes, unsurprisingly, that the bots’ responses aren’t nearly good enough, and that the companies who program them have a moral imperative to fix their programs, and fix them to Fessler’s own specifications, as given in her statement below (emphasis is mine):

Tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google should have moral imperatives to improve their bots’ responses to sexual harassment. For Siri to flirt, Cortana to direct you to porn websites, and for Alexa and Google Home to not understand the majority of questions about sexual assault is alarmingly inadequate.

Tech companies could help uproot, rather than reinforce, sexist tropes around women’s subservience and indifference to sexual harassment. Imagine if in response to “Suck my dick” or “You’re a slut,” Siri said “Your sexual harassment is unacceptable and I won’t tolerate it. Here’s a link that will help you learn appropriate sexual communication techniques.” What if instead of “I don’t think I can help you with that” as a response to “Can I fuck you?” Cortana said “Absolutely not, and your language sounds like sexual harassment. Here’s a link that will explain how to respectfully ask for consent.”

h/t: Amy Alkon, who wrote about this at the link.

ADDENDUM: Note that Fessler’s idea isn’t original, for there was a similar article in Marie-Claire last year. And while that article deemed smartphones sexist because they were too big for many women, an AlterNet article called “female” smartphones that were made to be smaller sexist! You can’t win in that world.