For years I have bored my friends with talk about an idea which I am certain would be worth billions if it could be pulled off. They all think I’m totally insane. So, I am here to lay my proposal before SD, so that the scientific, legal, and ethical feasibility can be judged. Just please remember:
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
My idea is this: monkubines.
Sex is the primary drive of all the higher primates, including humans. Unless you are an oil billionaire, keeping a harem just isn’t feasible. What to do? Like a king of old, you too can keep a harem of beauties! MONKUBINES!
Take one of the higher apes, like a bonobo, and subject it to cosmetic surgery until it resembles a three-foot human supermodel. File down the teeth, straighten and stretch the legs, fuse the spine to make it walk erect. Depilate the skin, bleach it to whatever colour is desired. Bonobos are almost constantly horny, and would not object at all to being a sex object. You could keep a whole harem in your garage for the cost of a bunch of bananas.
Would you have any moral objection to having your own personal Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, or Summer Glau at your sexual beck and call? Is it possible with modern medical science? And would it be legal?
Moral, no. Medically possible, yes. Cheaper than hookers and blow, no.
Subjecting a pet to arbitrary surgical interventions for your gratification would not be legal under any Western jurisdiction, I’m sure.
Having sex with an animal is not legal under any Western jurisdiction either.
[OT aside] Is this the same fiercely “assertive” SmashTheState we’ve seen in other posts recently? Actually asking for special treatment and gentleness? It is to boggle.
I think you’ll find sex with animals is legal in Nevada (because never been made illegal) and there is a ‘ranch’ there specialising in it. I have nothing against it but I’m in deep doo-doo for admitting to a lady I got on well with that if she can’t enjoy it, neither can I, and that is whole lot different from just wanting anything to provide a screw/wank. My thrills derive from her thrills, not from ‘service’.
Seems like the primary question being asked here is a moral one, which is better suited for IMHO than GQ. The factual answer to the medical question is “definitely not.” There may be a factual answer to the legal question, but this will probably vary a great deal with jurisdiction.
All things considered, I’m going to send this to IMHO, though I think it could end up in GD.
I don’t think it would work; in fact I expect the result would be firmly in Uncanny Valley territory. You’d have creatures that looked physically human, but acted like apes. That sounds more creepy than erotic.
In any case, it’s absurd. Nobody wants to fuck a monkey. It’s not THAT HARD to get laid. And even a really hideous and disgusting sonofabitch can still pay for it if he’s that desperate.
I’m trying to figure out if the OP is trying to make some kind of point, or political or social analogy or something…I’m not seeing it.
I’ll go a little further than Der Trihs and say that I suspect the resulting monkubines would be deep in Uncanny Valley territory physically as well as behaviorally. I have extreme doubts that even the best cosmetic surgery currently available could take a grown bonobo and make it look at all like, say, Summer Glau. Heck, plastic surgery on humans (even movie stars, who presumably can afford decent surgeons) often triggers an uncanny-valley-ish “Why on earth did she do that to herself? She looked so much better before!” feeling. Wouldn’t a bonobo be that much harder?
As an aside, I gotta say, SmashTheState, this thread is exactly why I’m glad you’re on the SDMB. You post some of the most interesting questions. This is somewhat similar to the whole “When we finally figure out artificial intelligence and can put one into a cloned human body, or can create robot bodies that are close enough to human to have sex with, will it be ethical to program an artificial intelligence to love having sex with you?” debate … but better because it involves the term “monkubines.”
By Gad, sir, you are a character. There’s never any telling what you’ll say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.
[/Kasper Gutman]
The OP has got to be taking the piss, for whatever reason, but just to play along and consider the practicalities, a couple of immediate problems I see with it are that a) one has to think cosmetic surgeons willing and able to crank out altered apes in assembly-line fashion are rather thin on the ground; b) hiring the occasional human concubine is surely going to be far less expensive than buying and maintaining one of these things, and one might think, for most clients, just the tinest bit less, er, weird.
Well, I was assuming better plastic surgery than we have now, surgery good enough to actually pull it off. Using present day medical technology would probably result in something out of a horror movie.
I really thought this thread was going to be about Tony Shalhoub, with whom I would gladly be intimate, even without massive plastic surgery. But a bonobo? Surely there are humans who look a little like bonobos, who would be grateful for free cosmetic surgery . . . and wouldn’t actually need as much as a real bonobo. The problem, of course, is that they might not feel so much gratitude that they’d hand themselves over as life-long sexual toys.
Wouldn’t it be easier to modify yourself to look like a bonobo, and go live with them?
Could you re-phrase that? (having nothing to do with monkubines, of course)