I wouldn’t call holodeck sex cheating. To me, cheating implies that there’s another person who is now a “competitor” for affections and who might threaten the relationship. A holodeck lover can’t leave to go outside, can’t marry you, can’t have children with you, etc. So it’s still too limited to be a real person.
However, that doesn’t mean I think it would be OK in a relationship. Maybe used in a limited sense for masturbatory/pornographic purposes… But there were two holodeck “relationships” in ST:TNG that would cross the line for me. The geeky guy who used caricatures of the ship’s crew in his fantasies, and Jordi’s simulation of the warp drive engineer. The series says that both of these were non-sexual but I’d still call them totally inappropriate either way, both for using real people and for the amount of simulated relationship that went on.
One thing that occurs to me, though… the holodeck might be a great way for couples to fulfill fantasies together without real-life problems. For example, have a threesome without the complication of involving a real third party. Or fulfill BDSM desires using the computer to essentially modulate the pain to the levels desired by the sub.
The Holodeck is based on transporter/replicator technology, which can transmogrify base stock material into whatever you want: the ship does not have a larder, it uses a replicator to generate food as needed (and presumably also handles the waste stream). Hence, it is entirely, um, conceivable that a woman having a dalliance on a holodeck could end up conceiving, if she is incautious with the setup, because the device can create real stuff.
How many people would really have “affairs” though? I sort of imagine it would be used much more for the hanging out in the holodeck man-cave, and the pizza-delivery person turns out to be holodeck-Christina Hendricks, and it plays out like a cheesy porno, only you’re starring in it.
I don’t think cheating can be adequately defined outside of a specific relationship. Trying to define it via group-think or individually, without the frank discussion, sets you up for two different definitions of where the line is in one relationship. It’s cheating if you’ve agreed not to do it and do it anyway.
Besides about every third time you use the holodeck it causes a significant threat to the user, the ship, the current solar system, or the entire galaxy. That would be my primary concern in a romantic partner using it all the time. “Just do the neighbor’s softball team. Last time you wanted a gangbang the house got destroyed.”
Is there canonical answer to the question of whether you can get pregnant in a holodeck?
I suppose the simulation could be that detailed. I have a hard time imagining that they’d waste the processing capacity giving each person in a simulation a real genome, but plenty of things in the Trek universe are taken for granted that way.
As an engineer, I don’t see any reason for the environment of the holodeck to be simulated below the threshold of human perception. A holodeck human would only be skin deep - only the parts directly observable by the holodeck user get simulated, everything else is faked at rapidly simplified levels of abstraction.
So you might hear a holodeck character breathing. The passage of sound through their lung cavity is being simulated, and the expansion and contraction of their chest. But, mathematically, their lungs are merely a computer modeled volume only accurate to the level of detail needed to simulate those standings - nanoscale and microscale detail like the individual alveolar sacs isn’t relevant. Instead of modeling every single cell in the alveoli, it just treats it as a surface with a certain surface area and a certain coefficient of gas exchange.
Of course, if you were to dissect a holodeck human, and examine their lungs in a microscope, the simulation would automatically load and simulate the larger levels of detail required because a player is observing that structure.
TLDR, semen isn’t functional because a human can’t tell the difference when enjoying their porn simulation.
Also, it’s canon that holodeck matter “ceases to exist” when removed to the outside world; we see it happen at least once. If I were willing to admit to having read the TECHNICAL MANUAL (which of course I’m not :-)), I’d add that that ridiculous document describes holodeck matter as being able to move because it’s being manipulated being by tractor beams obviously not present elsewhere, and certainly not inside a woman’s body.
I wouldn’t consider it cheating. But to use a holodeck to have sex with someone I knew from college demonstrates a real lack of imagination. I was thinking that my girlfriend and I could have some really hot 3-somes, or 4-somes, or however many we wanted, and without all the messy human relationship problems. Why limit it to humans? Or anything that exists IRL? Tentacle sex! A woman reduced to a vagina on legs, a la R. Crumb. The man of a hundred penises. A woman the size of a cat, but accommodating. A thousand things I haven’t imagined. If I know my girlfriend, she’d be up for this stuff, every bit as much as me. What fun we could have dreaming up new holosex experiences! Surprising each other on our birthdays with special creations. Transparent lovers. Sentient plants with voluptuous animated flowers. Robotic sex machines straight out of Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D… The possibilities boggle the mind.
When you’re a vulcan going through pon farr and your wife is most of the galaxy away, it’s not cheating, so long as the hologram is one of your wife.
Otherwise, cheating or not, it’s just hella creepy. Like visiting a prostitute, just without the chance of venereal disease (hopefully, assuming the proprietor washed down the holosuite between visitors.)
It’s also canon that replicators can’t actually create living biomatter (hence neither Dr Crusher or the EMH couldn’t replicate organs, and why holographic gagh is so inferior to the real thing).
The rational underpinning for considering extra-relationship sex to be “cheating” is the harm it does to the cheater’s relationship with his/her relationship partner. The cheater becomes dis-invested in the primary relationship to the detriment of the other partner’s interest. That dis-investment is the harm.
Addictions of various sorts are similar in the harm they cause to the other partner and/or the relationship.
So ultimately the question, IMO, turns on whether the holodeck user can avoid transferring interest fromtheir SO to the simulated partner. Much of the evidence of ubiquitous porn nowadays indicates the folks inclined to use tools like that are already in effect looking for a mechanism to disinvest in the relationship.
My conclusion is *if *the future is populated by much better people than we are, they might well be able to holosex up a storm without disinvesting in their real world relationships. But if the future is populated by schlubs like me/us, that wont’ work. And as a necessary result, holosex will be considered cheating. Or on a par with visiting a disease-free whorehouse. Which might be held to be better or worse than cheating.
As somebody upthread said, different relationships will define different boundaries. Some folks will consider this to be just fine. But my previous point stands as my opinion for the mainstream.
Isn’t the relative disinvestment/starving the other partner the real harm? If my partner is spending a lot less time with me and not having sex with me as much, I might be just fine if I had another partner to take up the empty time/provide the missing sex.
The partner is “cheating” because of the lying - if they were honest about their actions, it would be the same as giving me a green light to get me some extra action myself.
At least that’s the theory. Wife swapping, quad relationships, etc, are supposed to be organized ways to have your cake and eat it too. Wonder why they aren’t commonly practiced…
It would be cheating in the same way the looking at porn is cheating, which some people do really regard it as such. But it can’t be more than that. Holodeck characters are, as a rule, nonsapient, so if you develop an actual relationship with them, you’re running into a mental health problem (one they actually dealt with on the show–twice.) What you are doing is just fancy masturbation.
And, no, cheating is not about deinvesting yourself from the relationship, nor is porn. Cheating is about breaking promises. Porn (done solo) is about handling a discrepancy in sexual drive in an acceptable way–specifically because the mainstream does not see porn as cheating unless you’re in a place where porn itself is considered wrong.
Moriarty, The Doctor, and Vic Fontaine would beg to disagree. If it can happen to a fictional character, an emergency medic, and a lounge singer, it can happen to a sex program, surely.