Why Can't Men Play With Sex Dolls? (Or, Why isn't MY sex-toy empowering?)

Have you ever read or heard an account of a man going to a porno shop to buy himself his very first Fleshlight (NSFW)? Was it a powerful experience that left him flush with confidence? Did he walk out of that porno shop with a brown paper bag and the swagger of independence?

Not much a realistic narrative is it? Okay, try this one on for size: a mouth-breather in a heavy overcoat slouches into Babylon to a chorus of fake moans echoing from the jerk-off booths where a mustached man idles against his spunk-mop. Pit-stained and nervous, the man enters the shop, buys his Fleshlight, averting his eyes from the bored punk chick who takes his money as if it expects to be sticky, and slinks out of the store and into the night to watch ANAL ANNIHILATION 3: The Quickening in his dingy studio apartment.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Contrast with this:

The staff members who work at the store left me pulsating with a sense of sexual liberation, feeling that there was no shame in any interest or fetish that I might have locked away. The saleswoman lead me around Babeland describing different products, asking me if I liked anal stimulation as casually as an employee at Banana Republic would ask if I want a rewards card. With each object she offered, she gave an informative explanation coupled with an open understanding of the good it can bring into people’s lives. Having a bizarre-looking stick described to me as if it were a family photograph or beloved tchotchke transformed the process into something much more normal and inviting.

“If you treat something as your ugly toy, then you will think it is ugly and never want to use it,” she explained and I realized how true that was. Before coming into the store, part of me looked at toys and fetishes in a negative light, but I was so wrong. What started off as a trip to buy a vibrator turned into a realization that everyone has a different way of pleasing themselves and that knowing what mine is will only make my life better.

If only my masturbatory habits were so life affirming!

A funny thing happens when you try and talk about sex toys and men. Masturbation is an assumed habits but if you use something like a plastic poon-tang, you are an aberration-- a real man goes out and gets laid; you want sex toy, buy a Mustang.

A dildo is a form of independence from male dependence; a fleshlight is a loser's security blanket. What's worse if it you add the notorious Real Doll to the equation:

Just ask Salon:

For a cool $5,000, scrubs of all shapes and sizes can obtain unlimited access to all three orifices on a bootilicious bombshell fashioned from high-grade silicone flesh.

Sure, your local porn palace offers any number of disembodied vaginas sculpted after those of adult film vixens, and the plastic blow-up doll has been around for decades. And Abyss Creations has a number of competitors: Triple-X-Sextoys, for instance, offers a silicone love doll modeled after pornstress Chasey Lain for $259.

But Realdoll is the Cadillac of the club. With five anatomically correct body types; nine head styles, including a Japanese cutie named Mai; and a wide choice of characteristics including eye and hair colors as well as breast size, the company has gone a long way toward fulfilling the promise of that prescient 1975 flick, "The Stepford Wives." You know, the one where a cabal of yupper-crust executives take over a Connecticut town and replace their wives with oversexed androids who dig housework.

Well damn.... buy a dildo and it's rainbows, lolly-pops and You-Go-Girls rolled up in plastic phallic form; buy a Real Doll, it's a patriarchal conspiracy.

Continued:

Crikey, what have we come to? After all, $5,000 can buy a lot of trips to the local brothel for sex with an actual woman, not a lifeless puppet. Apparently some guys would rather own a trailer than rent a penthouse.

Hear that, ladies? Why buy a ninety dollar vibrator when you can go out, get drunk and fuck a random dude in your local dive bar? Ahem. Excuse me: I mean, fellas, why buy a sex toy when you can fuck a hooker? Ladies? Carry on.

Well, screw the biased (and male) writer of this article-- Where's The Pants is about the feminist/masculine conversation; what does a feminist scholar have to say about this?

"Obviously, I don't think it'll make women obsolete," says M.C. Sungaila, an attorney and writer in Southern California specializing in feminist issues. "But reducing a woman to an inanimate object in order to relate to her in the most intimate way is kind of disturbing."

Sungaila grants that individuals have the right to pursue their own fantasy lives but objects to Realdolls' larger message.

"Knowing that it's out there and that somebody thought this was a good idea -- to make money off the complete objectification of women -- is discomforting to say the least," comments Sungaila.

You'd think Sungaila never Jilled-off with a Feeldoe (and I find myself wondering whether, if she did, was it to Martin Luther King speeches and Betty Friedan Audiobooks?).

I believe we've moved on from the antiqued image of the 70s, second-wave feminist and the "All Sex Is Rape" strawman, but there is a lingering cultural threat from male sexuality-- specifically, male masturbatory habits.

In the use of porn, we reduce women to objects- we dehumanize; in the use of sex dolls, we only seek to perfect the patriarchal project, with perfectly submissive, perfectly docile sex holes in vaguely feminine shapes.

We shoulder the guilt of the long-standing stereotype that man is a beast with a penis and woman is a complex work of art: remove the penis from a man, you have safe sexuality; remove the personality from a female, you get pale imitation.

I don't solely blame the old-thinking feminists for this perception: no, I blame the lingering sexist attitudes of men for most of the issue.

Women are the competition and the prize. A woman's value is in her vagina and a male's virility is in how much value he's accrued in the plunder of said vaginas. If a male uses bought and paid for, toy vaginas... well, the question becomes, is he a real man? It is aacceptable for a man to remove himself from the competition for sex?

Ask most men and the answer is no: refusing the compete is to admit failure. The very definition of "Loser."

I recognize that I come at this from a male perspective: if you ask a woman about her objection to the idea of realistic sex dolls (as I've gathered from the comments sections of these various articles), the question then becomes one of relationships.

Can a man who has invested his sexuality in a silicon girl with a fixed smile ever be emotionally rehabilitated? And if one has voluntary chosen to "love a synthetic human", are they mentally disturbed and in need of psychiatric help?

The (full) documentary, Guys And Dolls, delves into the lives of men who have used these toys to varying degrees and purposes: we have Davecat who considers himself on the forefront of a new kind of sexuality, "Organiks" loving "Synthetiks"; we have Everette, the photographer who has found his perfect subjects; Gordon, the liver-faced, angry misogynist loser we've come to expect. And then we have Michael, who uses his 6 Real Dolls the way a woman would use a variety of vibrators and sex-toys-- something to hold him over until he finds himself a real, flesh and blood woman.

Michael finds his woman, Jody, someone he openly talks about on camera as "the one." She knows he has a secret and it bothers her that he won't share. So he shows her his doll collection. On his birthday.

She leaves him a week later. So much for honesty....

Two of these men are simply lonely; one has a fetish; the last is someone you wouldn't want in the gene-pool anyway.

What's wrong with these men? They're human.

They have problems. They have idiosyncrasies. They don't fit in very well. Or they're just plain disgusting. And most well-adjusted women wouldn't give them the time of day.

To quote Everette, "There are worse things in life than living with dolls, really. Like living alone."

So why shouldn't disgusting people be happy too? Is it so wrong to be QuirkyAlone?

It all comes back to a piece of M.C. Sanguila's quote: "individuals have the right to pursue their own fantasy lives," full-stop.

Part of sexuality is objectification: it is breasts and abs and detachable penises.

Part of modernity is isolation: the disintegration of traditional communal ties, the re-ordering of society along more niche, individualist lines.

Industrial societies are becoming more physically alone, while increasing their interactions through objects. Flirting through texts, selecting dates from the content of their essays, falling in love through font.

That is modernity. Get used to it.

So if a girl can name her dildo Long John Silver and still find herself, if she so chooses, a mate-- why can't John screw his Real Doll until the right Jane comes along? Or not?

Why can't men play with dolls?

If They're So Fatale, Why Is No One Actually Hurt?

Thanks to Daniella for giving me the heads up on l'Homme Fatale-- sadly, she might disagree on my reading of it....

A few years ago, Katherine, an actress in her mid-20s who lives in Park Slope, was cast in a play by a theater director several years her senior. He wasn’t particularly attractive. In fact, he was almost effeminate. But he was intelligent and not too forward, and he was always surrounded by beautiful women—which, Katherine admits, she found intriguing.

“He seemed like the antithesis of all the jocky guys I went to high school with,” she said. (The women in this story agreed to discuss their romantic pasts only if identified by their middle names.) “He was sensitive, funny, supersmart, not athletic at all and not physically imposing. But there was something that was so charismatic—a gentleness and gracefulness and a confidence.”

Katherine and the director began a weeks-long courtship. There were late-night rehearsals in a dark theater that turned into surprisingly intimate later-night conversations. But then summer came. They both left New York for a while. And every time Katherine tried to reach him, he never returned her phone calls and ultimately disappeared altogether.

“People told me he was trouble, but I really thought he was too evolved and sensitive to hurt me the way he did,” Katherine said.

Katherine’s director was an Homme Fatale—a genre of man that New York women have come to know well. Often the creative type, he projects a deceptive vulnerability, while maintaining an appealing confidence. He’s usually not the best-looking guy in the room, but he is the smartest; he turns these traits to his advantage, playing up the contrast with the typical hot guy or womanizer (physical inferiority, emotional evolvement). His courtship begins with a rushed sense of intimacy and, yet, a disarming lack of forward physical advances; a first date might involve a game of Scrabble or perhaps a cup of tea; his target usually leaves wondering if in fact it was a date at all. And yet the story always has the same ending—he grows distant, stops calling and eventually disappears with little explanation, if any.

There's so much here, I don't know where to begin-- but a good place is this idea of "deceptive vulnerability" and being "too evolved to hurt me."

You find yourself dating the sensitive "perfect man," the kind that romantic comedies assure us are hiding under every rock but, lo and behold, he does the unthinkable: he grows quiet. He grows distant. He leaves you.

And that leaving hurts.

Has this happened to you? Congatulations, you've just gone through a break-up. It happens. But why is this, a normal occurance, somehow sinister under the "Homme Fatale?" The author never says he did anything except for not call. Katherine's sense of betrayal comes from herself and the reason is simple: she expected, because this man was "sensitive" and "evolved," that he was just another nester stereotype. That all sensitive men are the boyfriend type-- this sensitivity of theirs assures her some measure of control and security.

Surprise! It doesn't. Katherine's betrayal came from buying into a stereotype and centering her expectations around it. It's painful, yes, but where exactly is the Fatale to these Hommes?

Dangerous femme fatale heroines, as portrayed by Rita Hayworth in Gilda or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, are nearly extinct or have been reduced to tragic cougars while their male counterparts have only proliferated; now they can be found roaming the halls of magazines, publishing houses and the better English literature Ph.D. programs by day, and frequenting ironic dance parties in cramped Boerum Hill apartments by night. And unlike the typical womanizer, whose game is laughably easy to detect, the Homme Fatale’s modus operandi is more emotional and controlling than it is physical, leaving a wreckage that is, in the end, more disastrous.

(We pause here to note that the Homme Fatale, while related, is not the same as the oft-bemoaned indie rock or emo boy. While he may exhibit similarly sensitive qualities, an Homme’s emotional side is a learned part of his manipulation, not an authentic sentimentality.)

The Noir-era Femme Fatale character had particular traits, besides being beautiful and manipulative: they wanted something. They wanted a husband killed. They wanted some material object, some great and terrible favor. The love they elicited from men was of the obsessive kind, the kind that only a noir film could create: nihilistic, cynical, empty.

Often, those who wrapped themselves up with a Femme Fatale... actually died (if not that, went to jail or had some other terrible end).

The deadliness, in that era, was where their power came from: the allure was in the fact that these women were independent, blatantly sexual and always angling for themselves. That is what is fatal about the Femme Fatale.

And L'Homme Fatale, the so-called counterpart is... being sensitive as a trick? Well, what's this rotten bastard angling after, anyway? Sex?

The Homme Fatale has also slyly insinuated (as is to be expected) his way into popular culture. Take, for instance, the Aaron Rose character played by John Patrick Amedori on the teen drama Gossip Girl, the young downtown artist and RISD grad with the unfortunate goatee. In the six episodes in which his relationship with the glamorous, blond Upper East Sider Serena van der Woodsen has progressed in fits and starts, he has yet to actually have sex with her.

Okay... he's not trying to get laid? What makes him so terribly suspicious, then?

And for a somewhat nebbishy, shy person, he seems to have a suspicious number of beautiful female friends hanging around at all times. When Serena is justifiably confused by the other “muses” in his life, he simply says, “I could explain who Tamara is and why she was at my apartment last night, but the fact is, you feel something or you don’t. If you’re looking for an excuse to keep us apart, that’s fine.” It’s a classic Homme Fatale move: come on strong, then, when confronted with evidence that points to a lack of commitment or deception, turn it around so the woman feels like it’s her issue.

Again, we return to the problem of expectations. He's sensitive, he's shy but... he's surrounded by beautiful women? How dare he! That's Frat-boy behavior!

It's as if to say, if the guy doesn't walk like a Jock, quack like a Jock and fuck around like a Jock (and the funny part it, he doesn't seem to be fucking like a Jock at all), he's deeply betrayed someone by associating with a lot of women.

Let's just recap here a moment, shall we?

Femme Fatale:




























:L'Homme Fatale.
































The article later goes into a complete misreading of the Pick-up Artist stuff (I'll be writing about that at some point, I assure), making our "Homme Fatale" more sinister through association, despite the fact that the tactics of the two (PUA and HF) are clearly opposite. The manipulation meme is strong here-- how on earth could a man be sensitive and not be using that vulnerability as a way to emotionally manipulate women? Especially if-- gasp-- he leaves?

The article itself can't even answer that question as, in the end, it starts to contradict itself about how manipulative these Fatale Hommes are:

In my opinion, being an Homme Fatale is more of an affliction than a conscious course of action. I think you’re in love with the feeling as much as you are with each of those people. The Homme Fatale is not a slut, but the interest is both in the person, and even more so, in the feeling it gives you.”

Worse than a monster, then. A Romantic.

The Homme Fatale is neither a womanizer nor a sociopath—though these categories might overlap a bit.

“The Homme Fatale is a different, possibly more modern condition than a sociopath— he is not as aware of his actions. My understanding is that sociopaths are more clever and conniving. Maybe this is my personal bias, but I think the Homme Fatale is a slightly more sympathetic character,” said James. “The empathy is there, but people who do the most harm are people who don’t know what they want, and Hommes Fatales don’t know what they want.”

Gasp! Worse than a Romantic! He's the stereotype of a woman.

That's wrong of me, perhaps, but to this day I'll still hear that it's the right of every woman not to know what she wants.

So, too, is it the right of every man.

This article is emblematic of the Male Definition Problem: women have a expectations of behavior and feel betrayed when they are not met. And instead of blaming the female expectations, the males are blamed for exhibiting the exact same traits a female would bristle at being criticized over. All because no one knows what to expect of a "Man" anymore anyway-- emotion is encouraged yet, when displayed and someone is left hurt, it is then manipulative emotion, not true sensitivity. These expectations are tied into traditional gender roles: the more a male acts like a "female" (the article itself calls these hommes "almost effeminate"), the more he is expected to indulge in female-expectatant behaviors. And when he has "male-expectatant" behaviors, like emotional distance or haremizing? He's Evil and Wrong and Must Be Stopped.

No woman has the right to feel betrayed by a sensitive man who promises nothing, just as no man has the right to feel betrayed by a woman who doesn't give to him sexually. It's her right to choice to say no; it's his right to not know what he wants.