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‘Synthetik Love Lasts Forever’: Sex Dolls and the (Post?)Human Condition

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Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures

Abstract

The sex doll—an artificial representation of the human body for sexual usage—has a long and somewhat secret history. After briefly recounting this history, this paper examines the realistic modern sex doll and the motivations of its users. The doll embodies the complex interplay of the human desires for the fantastic as well as the realistic. It then looks at the sex doll as a product of commodity fetishism, the fear of female sexuality, and the fragmentation of human relationships within the socio-economic reality of late capitalism. It then reads the sex doll as what Baudrillard would call a ‘mythological’ object, reproducing and thereby perpetuating the ideology it is a product of, at the semiotic level. Later sections will outline a genealogy of the taboo surrounding sex dolls, from a historical and psychological perspective, examining the ‘uncanny’ affect it produces. A final section will consider the phenomenon in the light of posthumanism, asking whether its use is ‘cyborgic’, and whether it heralds a post- or transhumanist future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am grateful to Anthony Ferguson for his thorough and well-researched book on the topic of sex dolls, The Sex Doll: A History (2010). Ferguson’s book is largely a history intertwined with cultural critique, examining the sex doll both in reality and as represented in literature and film, as one of many related instances of the patriarchal domination of women in contemporary culture. While I have touched on many of Ferguson’s conclusions, particularly in early sections of this chapter, I have taken my analysis in new directions, examining, for instance, the philosophical and ontological implications of sex doll use, the taboo surrounding users, and the doll vis-à-vis posthumanist criticism.

  2. 2.

    For a more detailed history of anthropomorphic fornicatory devices, see Ferguson (2010: 9–56).

  3. 3.

    I use the masculine pronoun ‘he’ because sex doll usage remains a predominantly male, heterosexual phenomenon (Valverde 2012: 12, 16). Abyss Creations (USA), and Orient Industries (Japan) report that males between the ages of 40 and 65 are their primary customers and that their most popular item is a female doll (pgs. 14, 12). This chapter, frequently discussing doll usage as a metaphor for the subjugation of women within patriarchy, will continue to discuss the phenomenon as a predominantly male one, although the broader points I make regarding the ontological and psychological implications of the practice can apply to any kind of doll usage irrespective of the user’s gender and sexual preference.

  4. 4.

    See ‘Taboo: Strange Love’, YouTube. Uploaded 9 August, 2014. Web. 11 Jan. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxaOssr6ljA; also, Bates (2015), Samhita (2010), Jessica (2007).

  5. 5.

    Freud’s theory of fetishism forms the basis of later theories in psychology. The Freudian explanation for sexual fetishism is typically phallocentric: his argument is that the fetish is a substitute for the mother’s castrated penis (1927/1950: 152–157).

  6. 6.

    The Christian framework is structured around a deep schism between mind and body, and a rejection of the flesh (Dollimore 1998: xiii).

  7. 7.

    For instance, a recent worldwide poll, ‘The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism’, conducted by WIN-Gallup, showed that “religiosity worldwide is declining while more people say they are atheists” (Havertz 2012).

  8. 8.

    All citations in this section from Freud’s The Uncanny (1919) are from the translation into English by Alix Strachey now available freely online at http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf (accessed 6 January 2015).

  9. 9.

    Interestingly, in Ferguson’s survey (2010: 112–120), a question asking if doll users would like their dolls to be able to move elicited mixed responses. Challenging the argument of Saygin et al. (2010), four out of five surveyed responded ‘yes’. However, in two of the four cases of ‘yes’ (anonymous users A and C), the reasons were purely those of convenience. These users merely wanted a doll that did not have to be carried around. The other two (B and D) gave no reasons for their preference of movement. Only E outright rejected the option of movement, following the ‘uncanny valley’ hypothesis, and saying “We don’t want her to be too lifelike” (Ferguson 2010: 118).

  10. 10.

    It is not my intention to equate women with nature. I rather imply domination over natural processes such as ageing and death.

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  1. Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Prayag Ray

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  1. California Institute of Integral Studies , San Francisco, California, USA

    Debashish Banerji

  2. Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor of English, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Makarand R. Paranjape

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Ray, P. (2016). ‘Synthetik Love Lasts Forever’: Sex Dolls and the (Post?)Human Condition. In: Banerji, D., Paranjape, M. (eds) Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures . Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3637-5_6

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