New Technology Increases Sex Doll Appeal

Everyone buys sex dolls for some purpose, but also to meet some needs of people. While sexuality may be the primary purpose of doll users, other functions are also common. In addition, there is a relatively new technological aspect of sex dolls. New technologies often encounter social anxiety in media and society in general, especially when technology invades areas such as emotions, intimacy, women, and childhood. Modern technological solutions challenge traditional ideas about how society is structured and functioning, which leads to anxiety about new technologies and views technological solutions as secondary and problematic. These kinds of anxiety about sex dolls are normal after a new thing is born. Academic literature rarely discusses the potential secondary or contradictory effects of sex dolls and sex robots, instead making an either-or distinction where the effects may be good or bad but always primary. This can be understood as a reflection of the general public discussion of sex dolls and sex robots in the media today, such that including sex dolls in their sheer impact on society, for better or worse, leads to a range of effects. Since much of the research has focused on the ideological, philosophical or legal aspects of sex dolls, the academics also called for "public debates and media representations about sex dolls and sex robots" and "society's attitudes and reactions to sex dolls and robots" , they revealed "stereotyped gender roles, heterosexuality, and concerns about sexual and emotional intimacy" as their main findings. This study is yet another attempt to conduct an intermediate analysis, albeit providing a critical perspective on public media discussions about sex dolls.

1. Theoretical point of view

According to ethicists' analysis of sex dolls, radical theories about sex must be able to identify, describe, explain, and condemn pornographic injustice and sexual oppression. Furthermore, it is claimed that such theories need to be based on detailed descriptions of human sexuality in contemporary society as well as historically in order to fully understand how sexuality is constructed and evaluated. This is especially relevant in the case of sex dolls, as sex dolls are not a recent phenomenon, although they are structured as such in current media discourse. The ethicist also laid out why some sexual acts are negative while others are celebrated.

Some people associate childish play and pretense through sex dolls. Since most of the users who buy sex dolls are male, there may be some connection between maleness and childishness. Masculinity and gender play an important role in how media discourse understands sex dolls as objects of desire and partners in intimate relationships. The ideal man should have a mature couple relationship with the opposite sex, and maturity is the key word that defines masculinity and relationships. The opposite of this is the immature person who refuses to grow up and take responsibility. Men who buy sex dolls may be people who escape reality and are unwilling to face the problem. Some people attribute these escaping emotions to these people who buy sex dolls because they lack the courage to take responsibility.

2. Does the development of sex dolls lead to the objectification of women?

Another gendered aspect of the sex doll phenomenon is that some feminists see the doll as an objectification of women. Some scholars who oppose sex dolls believe that sex dolls are constantly developing more lifelike, especially with the application of some advanced technologies in this regard, so that sex dolls become more blurred and the boundaries between real people. Men who have sex with sex robots develop a feeling that women are seen as things. These men may treat living organic women based on their insensitive experiences with sex dolls. Sex dolls are constantly evolving, and some have suggested that they are too similar to real people and may contribute to the Uncanny Valley effect.

3. Analysis of the definition of sex doll

In fact, the real focus of sex dolls is not the real sex dolls themselves, but as a phenomenon, but the panic and anxiety about technology invading people's private space. Sex dolls have become too lifelike these days, and some scholars believe that such sex dolls may blur the line between people and dolls. The first is to emphasize the non-doll nature of people. Some articles emphasize the similarities between syntheses and organisms. On the one hand, dolls are very similar to humans, but on the other hand, they lack the important features that make up organic life. They become uncanny because they are too lifelike to be truly alive, and they lack cultural acceptance or social rituals to house them. In some performances there is a clear line between the stage and the audience. So there is no boundary between the sex doll and the audience, or it is intimate. Should sex dolls be considered dolls, i.e. sex toys, human, or something in between, or even both? Some criticize sex dolls as being marketed as replacements for women, and dismiss sex dolls as sex toys, and the definition of human beings is not limited to discussions of synthetics and organisms.

Some media follow the normative logic of heterosexuality, emphasizing that sex dolls are a kind of heterosexual imagination. This assumption is first and foremost based on the idea of a heterosexual relationship as an ideal relationship, so the ideal is distorted. Second, it is based on the concepts of sexually active males (organic) and sexually passive females (synthetic). The expressive spirit is rarely used when describing synthetic humans, and there does not appear to be any explicit and repeated use of modalities and transitivity in the subject. On the one hand, this makes it difficult to analyze these few brief mentions of synthetic men, but on the other hand, the lack of itself defines a synthetic woman as heterosexual in response to the man she is supposed to please. In the discourse about sex dolls, certain expectations of humans are clear: humans are heterosexual.