Modes of embodiment of artificial intelligence, including humanoid robots, call attention to the artifice and mutability of gendered identities. Yet, cutting-edge technologies are deployed (in Japan and elsewhere) to recuperate the binary construction of the sex-gender system and to reinforce heteronormative conventions of being in the world.

Jennifer Robertson is Professor of Anthropology and the History of Art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has a non-budgeted appointment in the Department of Women's Studies and in the School of Art and Design. She is also a faculty associate in the Anthropology/History Program. Robertson is a former director and member of the Center for Japanese Studies, a faculty member of the Robotics Institute, and a faculty associate in the Science, Society and Technology Program.