I think that gendering robots is a reflection of how cultures gender people. In Japan, robots are made to have very thin, feminine voices. I don’t think that that resulted in women in Japan talking in very thin, feminine voices but quite the opposite; Japanese women’s language has existed long before the idea of humanoids did. I think that this Japanese women’s language affected how female Japanese robots were created and gendered them to be hyper-feminine just as the women in real life actually were and still are.

An interesting idea that was in the “Becoming Unmanned: The Gendering of Lethal Autonomous Warfare Technology” article by Mary Manjikian was the interdependence of automated warfare and gender roles. Manjikian talks about how there is always an allusion to gender when talking about warfare and politics. I use allusion because the meaning or connotation is not so explicit however direct the words may be; people usually won’t link two-and-two together, but I believe that a lot could be said by the unsaid. She gives an example of when George Bush was discussing the war in Iraq and he said that they need to “protect the innocent woman and children.” From this sentence, we can draw on that he puts America out as the protector (masculine) and Iraq as the protected (feminine; hence why he specifies women and children because they need protecting), therefore reinforcing gender roles within warfare. Manjikian says that when we use robots in warfare instead of people, we can finally get rid of those roles that are enforced. As neither men nor women would be in the battlefield, that would get rid of the whole “protector/protected” idea of how men are the protectors and the soldiers and women are the ones being protected, as now both men and women would be protected by those robots. I thought this was extremely interesting and it shows the interrelationship of gender and robotic warfare very clearly. She also mentions cyborgs and how there are already people who use technology to enhance their capabilities, so to use technology and robotics in warfare to strengthen a woman’s upper body, as Manjikian states as an example, the physical strength aspect of the requirements for warfare would no longer be an issue for women and, in turn, allow more women to enter the battlefield. I don’t completely agree with this because while it is hopeful, it’s not very probable, because sexism and the gendered division will still exist even if women enhance their abilities to participate in warfare activity. I think Manjikian’s point when she says that the soldiers will be “seen as controlling the technology, subduing it in the ways in which man has traditionally utilised and subdued nature and thus, in this way reinforcing a binary distinction between that which dominates and that which is dominated” is a more probable thing to happen, unfortunately. Since it has been something that has been reinforced for such a long time, I think most men will always think they are dominant, if not all, and will keep striving to prove that no matter what is done to prove otherwise. While those enhancements by technologies may help in spreading a new, altered image, I don’t think it will change societies’ collective perceptions of traditional gender roles alone.

What particularly interested me about the movie is how strong the thirst of power in humans is and how well that was displayed in the film. The woman initially created this golem to fill the void of losing her son. She then noticed that this golem helps protect her and whoever she holds close to her, which would be the villagers. That protection he provided gave them power, more so her than the rest. She was supposed to kill him as the old woman had told her, but when she actually created the golem, she couldn’t because she was attached, and I think that a big part of the attachment was her sense of power; that with that golem, she could do as she wishes, get rid of whoever she wants to. Killing him would get rid of that immense power she held, and I feel like that played a huge part in her resistance of his destruction. Not only this, but that she actually succeeded in creating a whole other creature also made her feel very powerful, because the actual success in creating the golem is not always promised or can happen every time. The idea of how people value power in this movie was what I was most interested in.

It’s very interesting to  think about how people always want to test their limits in any way, namely in how they try to play the role of God. That is, of course, in terms of creation. Scientists are always trying to create the closest thing to the most complex of beings that God has created; a human. In that sense, they always want to have something to have more power over, just as God has power over us. And even though that power may be unattainable, we still want to have that same power He has, and that’s why we always try to find ways, through alchemy, for example, to achieve that or the closest thing to it. It feels a lot like greed, though, that we always want more and are never satisfied with whatever power we may have – we always want more, we always want to be more superior than we make ourselves to be. We are always trying to go beyond whatever limits we have because the idea of being limited in any way is the most unappealing thing to us as humans.