“I Don’t Date Men Who Yell at Alexa”

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When Jeremy barked orders at his personal assistant, she didn’t flinch, but I did. Something about the sound of his sharp, commanding tone—directed not at me, but still, at a woman—repulsed me. In the few weeks we had been dating, he had never spoken to me this way. But could he? Hearing Jeremy make ungrateful demands didn’t make him seem powerful or important. He sounded entitled and difficult, like someone who enjoyed commanding for the sake of commanding. He would ask her to do things he could easily do himself, almost as if to prove that he could. Surely, it would take less time to reach out and hit the light switch by the door than to bark “ALEXA. LIGHTS ON” every time he entered the apartment.

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One thing that is already clear: The way people speak to Alexa, Cortana, and Siri already changes the way I see them. It matters how you interact with your virtual assistant, not because it has feelings or will one day murder you in your sleep for disrespecting it, but because of how it reflects on you. Alexa is not human, but we engage with her like one. We judge people by how they interact with retail and hospitality workers—it supposedly says a lot about a person that they are rude to wait staff. Of course, waiters are more deserving of respect than robots—you could make or break a worker’s mood with your thoughtlessness, while Alexa doesn’t have moods (she only cares about yours). But the underlying revelation is the same: Who are you when in a position of power, and how do you treat those beneath you?

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Will the kind of man inclined to take out his anger on the feminine voice at home, snapping at Alexa or Cortana because she doesn’t snap back, get used to treating women again like docile punching bags? With or without female smart homes, many men already feel a dangerous sense of entitlement to women’s time and attention. Online forums exist for angry, rejected men who think women are supposed to do their bidding and become bitterly enraged when they do not, often with deadly consequences. How much worse might their ability to dehumanize women become, how much more entitled their masculinity, with a compliant, submissive robotic female in their lives? A “joke” video on YouTube drives this association home: A man asks out his Alexa and then calls her a stupid bitch when she politely declines. (Why don’t girls like nice guys like him??)

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