I, 'Mobot

A brief history of gay androids

01_gaybots.jpg
OPEN TO NEW EXPERIENCES? Wall-E
An opera version of Brokeback Mountain. Same-sex marriage in California. Madonna's new album. America is, by any reasonable measure, getting its gay on. And nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to robots.

Take Wall-E, the new movie about an ostensibly male robot's romance with an ostensibly female visitor robot. Seems hetero enough, sure. Yet, on a closer inspection, Wall-E's story of overcoming isolation and social awkwardness in a new, fast-moving cosmopolitan world seems like a classic coming-out tale.

Of course, film and television provide a rich history of androids, most of them far more fey than Wall-E. Below, Radar dusts the glitter off its homometer and gauges the gayness of some of America's most beloved (and sexually ambiguous) robots.

HOMOMETER
0: Asexual
1: Steak and beer
5: Bisexual
10: Flaming


First Up: C-3PO and R2-D2

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