If consequence-free sex is the dream, sex dolls are the reality. Long a key component of sci-fi fantasies and dystopian futuramas, sex dolls have a foothold in the marketplace. Last winter, a doll brothel opened its doors, catering to an international clientele of tourists eager to get it on with a pliable, synthetic human.
These artificial, anatomically correct females can be rented by the session, and their specs can be specially requested. A perusal of the company’s website shows that a variety of models are available, with breasts from average size all the way up to “cow” (you read that right), and that one of their most oft-requested outfits is a plaid mini-skirted school girl uniform.
Lumidolls, the brothel featuring sex dolls, has been open in Barcelona for nine months. In that time, owner and co-founder Sergio Prieto revealed recently, it’s faced a plethora of requests for rape fantasies and for dolls that resemble children. Lumidolls does not provide child-sized dolls for customers, although dolls of that nature are available internationally and reportedly on Amazon. Although Prieto claims rape is not the sort of behavior Lumidolls promotes or encourages, it’s safe to say that once the boudoir doors are closed the customer can do as he pleases, with nary a dissenting voice from the inanimate woman in his bed.
Does Play-Acting Relieve or Aggravate Terrible Desires?
There’s basically two answers to whether pedophiles and rapists should play out their fantasies with dolls. On the one hand, sure, why not? Who is being harmed by a guy raping a latex doll that looks like an eight-year-old? Certainly not the doll, who is not a cogent human being. Perhaps the guy is so marvelously in control of his desires that he can save all his pedo-rapist impulses in a jar with his Euros and only rape the doll, sparing any potential violence against actual women and children.
This relativist perspective would have us believe that the only problem with raping women or children is the harm done to the women and children. If it didn’t cause any harm, then would raping and pedophilia really be that bad? Nah, say proponents of relativism, no big.
The argument against is that normalizing these behaviors in the mind could lead to men seeing this as normal behavior in their everyday lives. It’s possible that to engage in the fantasy is to bend the barriers toward engaging in the reality. Aimee van Wynsberghe, from the Foundation on Responsible Robotics, believes we have to think about the power technology has to “reinforce different norms, habits, routines, and values,” and that sex dolls can change the idea of what sex is.
In a June 5 interview with the BBC, van Wynsberghe argues that using sex robots creates a situation where sex does not require dual consent. Relativists who favor today’s sex-positive and enthusiastic consent sexual ideologies should note the emergence of a new norm that denies the very relevance of the consensual sexual enterprise.
Unleashing Our Darkest Desires Hurts Us, Also
These two perspectives, that a) sex with sex dolls prevents harm to women and children, and b) sex with sex dolls could lead to harm to women and children, leave out one very important actor. That’s right, the purchaser, the John. Fantasy fetish play about raping women or children does cause harm: to the guy allowing his desires to dip into the realm of the seriously sadistic.
What might a guy request when he knows he can have whatever his black little heart desires? As Prieto can surely attest, anything, with Hades barely deep enough to encompass these myriad levels of hell and torment.
Those who house these secret desires may feel that they are unique in imagining themselves participating in some of the worst actions known to mankind, but they are not. Every person with a decent imagination has crazy, warped, vile thoughts. Every thought there is to think can pass through a human mind, but it is the thoughts we entertain, that we allow to entertain us, that will shape who we are, what we want, and what we envision and attempt to craft into reality.
Our taboo-free culture, with permissive values and indulgent worldviews, would have us believe that indulging in these deepest, darkest desires and giving them play in the sun is the way to enlightenment through a realized identity. Pedophiles have been more vocal over the past few years, and those voices have been amplified in opinion pieces, podcasts, and radio interviews. Without damning the man for his dark desires, can we not hold him accountable for his own lusts, and offer guidance on how to rid himself of these hungers?
Your Mind Is Your Own
How often we forget that our minds are our own. We alone are in charge of what we allow to take shape and play there. It is our responsibility to try our hardest to be the best version of ourselves that we can.
What does that mean? It does not mean to smile and act nice in public while harboring the worst imaginings of mankind in our hearts. It does not mean to treat our wives and children kindly while planning to live out a rape fantasy on a sex proxy. A man cannot act morally, responsibly, and courageously while violent secret daydreams roam free in his mind. That which we keep hidden will emerge and overtake us, and the cost of living a life in accordance with the golden rule is constant vigilance.
Sex dolls and their sex robot daughters are most likely here to stay, bringing with them an experience of increased passivity in sexual encounters, whether from the penetrator or the penetrated. Although the marketplace, driven by those who would have human beings be nothing more than consuming and excreting machines, will continue to lure us by encouraging us to be our worst selves, we don’t have to give in. We must fight for what it means to be our best human selves.
