Amelia was looking for a volunteers to post something about feminism and coincidentally at the time I was looking at various sex toys online with a friend. She came to the section of "Sex dolls," something that I've never seen or looked at outside of "Lars and the Real Girl." The first entry was "Big Babe Bella," who is a "petite chubby [that] can’t wait to meet the chubby in your pants!" What stuck me most about the description is not only is "Big Babe Bella" given objectifying characteristics, the reviewers act the same way. "Big Babe Bella" apparently "takes it and takes it good." The doll serves as a completely submissive version of a woman, one that has "2 welcoming entries for supreme orgasms so choose her vagina or her anus."
Next we looked at "Wrap Around Lover Doll," a doll that can wrap fake limps around the penetrator. Like "Big Babe Bella," the doll is treated as if human, her description stating, "This sexy slut wants to wrap her long silky legs around you!" It concludes by saying, "She’s gotta have it hard, fast, and right now!" This casts the "Wrap Around Lover Doll" as a sex-craved woman, who wants it hard and fast. While the link between objectification of women and pornography can be shady at times, this seems like more of a direct line. They literally are objects in the form of a woman that exist entirely for whatever sexual pleasure the user wishes to inflict upon them.
We did find male sex dolls, but often they had an anal or oral passage, implying use by men. They also varied in their descriptions, such as "Mr. Stud Love Doll," who "is your perfect lover! His go the tool to satisfy your hot steamy fantasy," (Yes, there were grammer mistakes in the description) which lacks the feel of "submissive slut" that the descriptions of the female dolls had.
Here is a link to the website should anyone desire to explore for themselves: http://racy.com/love-dolls.html
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I can't say I know anything about sex dolls besides what I have read about them (mostly about RealDolls) on feminist blogs, but the difference you point out between descriptions of male and female dolls is interesting. It really just points to the fact that in this society it has become troublingly easy to objectify and demean women (and representations of women) without fear of consequences.
I am definitely for sex toys suitable for all genders and sexualities, but the idea of dolls kind of bugs me because shaping the toys like humans (many of which are female) lends itself to the horrid objectification of women as you describe in your post.
Now I know there have to be ways to create sex toys for male-identifying people that do not have such qualities. I am interested to see what other options are available, if any.
Thanks for the post, Tasha. :)
I'm curious..
How do you objectify an object?
You can't really objectify a sex doll, it's already an object.
It's not a woman deserving of rights and respect, it's a sex toy.
Well, Anon, I find it troublesome that you do not see this as objectification of women. It quite literally taking the female form and turning it into an object meant for the pleasure of men. That is objectification, and is extremely problematic because it promotes the idea that women are objects and it is okay to treat them as such (especially if one takes the time to consider the fact that the male dolls are not discussed in the same way).
I am an owner of Racy.com and the goal of this business is to help clean up, organize, and make people feel comfortable with themselves and the "objects" needed to help them. Some people need this. Just as some people need someone of the same sex. I do see some issue with the text on our site that you wrote and I don't want to keep you up at night bothered by our site.
If there is a better way to describe these products I am all for it.
Jon,
First of all, neither Tasha or I was trying to say that sex toys in and of themselves are bad. The idea behind this post was to point out the very different and sexist ways your website allows dolls of different genders to be described.
We did not try to challenge the statements you made that "Some people need this." The biggest issue was with the descriptions. Explicit discussion of the value of the products themselves was kept to my own musings in the comments.
Just want to clear that up.
As far as how to make these descriptions better/less harmful, I will have to get back to you after I think about that for a while.
Thanks for commenting.
Post a Comment