There’s nothing weird about owning a sex doll. Most of us would, if they were cheaper. A sex doll costs about as much as a car. I’m talking high-end models, not the inflatable ones. Those run around a hundred bucks. Trust me, not worth it.
More people would buy sex dolls if they were easier to hide. Look at porn. Everyone watches porn. Even people who say they don’t.
My college roommate swore up and down she’d never seen porn in her life. She went to church. She had a boyfriend. She had Jesus. She didn’t need porn.
So she said.
One weekend, my roommate went home. My friends and I partied in the dorm. We all knew Julia, and her self-righteousness. For some reason, we started talking about porn. My roommate’s absolute denial came up.
After some drunken debate, we wound up snooping through her computer. What did we find? Porn. So much porn. Surprised?
My point — everyone watches porn, but many of us deny that. The same idea applies to sex dolls. Most of us would own one if we could get away with it, keep it locked away where nobody else could find it and judge us.
So all this philosophical conversation about sex dolls and sexbots doesn’t matter that much. Porn hasn’t ruined our culture anymore than weed, alcohol, guns, or capitalism.
Talking sex dolls with A.I. won’t ruin our culture either. They don’t worry me at all.
Most people won’t buy them. Why? Because you can’t hide a sex doll in a folder on your computer. You can’t erase your sex doll like you can your browser history.
We’ve all come to accept porn as a given in our culture. We’re fine saying that everyone watches porn. We’ll even make jokes. “Sure, I watch porn. Ha ha. Jessica James. Ha ha.”
But you don’t invite your colleagues over to watch porn.
Do you?
You don’t make porn a part of your water cooler talk. Why? Because of the social stigma. Porn’s okay because it lives under the rug. Sex dolls can’t. And they probably never will. There’s no place in your house where you can safely store one. They take up a lot of space.
Some men who buy sex dolls are misogynist. They only see women as sex objects, and that jives with their behaviors. But many men fully respect their female coworkers and value women’s contributions to society. They see women as equal. They just know that they’ll never have sex with Megan Fox. There’s nothing wrong with wanting sex with Megan Fox — only with comparing every other woman on the planet to her.
Some men — and women — will always opt for the path of least resistance. That might mean saving up $10K for the latex equivalent of their dream girl/boy. Who are we to judge?
Imagine a future where all the assholes of the world exempt themselves from the dating pool, choosing a life of solitude with a sexbot.
Would that be such a bad thing?
Every issue like this has ten sides. Sexbots. Strippers. Porn. BDSM. They can liberate us sexually, or reinforce unhealthy attitudes. Adding sexbots to the cultural mix won’t change much. Gender expectations go back thousands of years. We should treat the disease, not the symptom.
You can be shamed for almost anything these days. That’s sad. I wish we could let our sex lives out into the open. Not to rub in everyone’s faces, but to live our lives. All this hiding and sneaking around makes us far less healthy than any fetish or sex act.
So maybe as technology advances, so will our attitudes toward sex.
Fingers crossed.
I’ve owned a sex doll before. Between relationships, I got curious about that side of my sexuality. I found a great one on MyRealDolls.com. She was a brunette. B-cups. Athletic. Just lovely.
No, I wasn’t sad and broken. I wasn’t a freak. I was perfectly normal.
Sex with my doll was great. I acquired some accessories, and we sailed away to paradise. Love with a doll doesn’t replace a partner. But it relieves a lot of stress. I enjoyed my artificial sex a great deal.
Exploring my sexuality with a doll was probably more ethical than entangling someone in a relationship I didn’t intend to maintain. At the time, I just needed sex. No conversations. No date nights. Just an aesthetically pleasing body. Nothing else. No complications.
The rest of me was focused on my PhD. My writing career. My second job. I didn’t have the emotional energy for a relationship.
How does sex with a doll feel? You’ll think I’m weird, but it felt just as good as any night with a real person. That’s because I didn’t want all the emotional attachment that comes with fucking one. So I didn’t miss the pillow talk, the cuddling, the sweet nothings. I’ll give my doll four stars. She was an extremely advanced form of masturbation.
How advanced? Imagine your best session multiplied by 20.
But how confident are any of us in our sexuality? All of us indulge in all kinds of strange fetishes and sexual fantasies.
We worry what others will think. Sex dolls are no different.