Recently, tech company #Realbotix unveiled Harmony, a life-sized sex doll with a functioning vagina. Equipped with Artifical Intelligence that allows her to adapt to your personal needs, and even respond to your touch, she is being billed as a “life companion.” As expected, the internet went nuts! Some people went so far as insinuating that a man having sex with a doll was akin to rape. Others dismissed the dolls as a depraved level of perversion. Emotions aside, assessing the climate of dating, relationships, and the projection of women in popular society, are plastic dolls really that big a stretch?
Let me explain.
For the past decade or so, as the world has grown closer together due to globalization of the internet, the image of an “attractive” woman has become more monolithic and, quite frankly, artifical. Go to any social media site and hashtag #badbitch, then watch your screen become flooded with images of women with fake asses, fake hair, fake breasts, fake eyes, fake lips (some of them may not even BE women), fake camel toes, fake eyelashes… damn near everything is fake. We live in a culture that celebrates artificial beauty! Therefore it should come as no surprise that an artificial sex doll has garnered serious interest. (Not to mention, for decades, women have gotten their pleasure off by using dildos and vibrators.)
As a result of social media, there are a lot of people that are suffering from lack of human interaction. People text their conversations, they message their emotions, they email their business contracts, they send pictures instead of actually meeting people. Today, there is minimal human contact compared to just 20 years ago. This sets the tone and allows a seed to be planted for people to be receptive to artificial contact. (I even wrote an article a few years ago about how social media has affected relationships.) A society of people that swear by surgical enhancements, coupled with a culture of communicating through electronic devices. This is a recipe for sexbots to cook!
Additionally, relationships have gotten ill. With women trying to “outman” men (sexing and dating like “men”, lying and cheating like “men”), and men trying to “outwomen” women (gossiping and pillowtalking, wearing blouses and Coach bags, getting weave in their hair, etc) some people may feel like they can skip all the games and jump right into the pleasure – albeit artificial – since that’s what most of modern relationships are based on anyway. There are a plethora of reasons why people would resort to sexbots. Instead of judging and condemning the would-be users, I believe this should be a time for us – women and men- to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves some serious questions, like, “Are we this messed up that people are trying to replace us with a doll?”
In closing, for the record, I personally think it is profoundly sick for humans to have to resort to artificially enhanced sexbots to appease a natural desire intended to be quenched with the other billions of people on the planet. However, I will also concede that we live in a profoundly sick society, one that is striving to make the unnatural the norm. How low will the level sink? Only time will tell. For now, sex dolls are not THAT crazy, all things considered. What do you think?