Wednesday, May 03, 2017
House of Dolls
Would you believe there is a brothel in Barcelona staffed by sex robots? I had to pinch myself when I saw this article to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. (I have yet to awake from a dream after pinching myself – maybe it’s time to replace that old saw with biting your toe or something.) The Spanish company behind this venture is called Lumidolls, and they are planning to open a similar establishment in the UK, where brothels containing flesh-and-blood women are illegal. They hope to attract customers by advertising the following features:
• a wide selection of “totally realistic” girl robots, with “angelic faces” and “penetrative gazes”;
• the opportunity to enact fantasies you “would not dare to do with a woman”;
• the use of “special antibacterial soaps” to disinfect the robots after they have entertained their clients.
The key question for potential customers is in what sense these simulacra are “robots” rather than just “dolls”. To the naked eye, they look like dolls – I can’t detect any moving parts and the expressions on their faces are decidedly fixed. Maybe they emit squeaks when you squeeze them, like children’s toys, but I doubt that will satisfy punters looking for an interactive experience.
Naturally, I forwarded the article to the manager of the safari camp, hoping to be enlightened by his take on the robots/dolls, but he was more concerned about what they were charging for using them:
“82 pounds an hour!” he exclaimed. “That’s almost as much as a real woman costs!”
“But you are ignoring the advantages they have over real woman,” I replied mischievously. “They won’t laugh at men who whinny like horses and go cross-eyed when they climax.”
“Have you been talking to my wife?” he asked suspiciously. “I could tell you a few things about her.”
Even if the brothels were to lower their fees, they would not be popular with everyone. Feminists argue that men who use sex robots will get into the habit of treating women like objects. This may well be true in some cases. Other men, however, may suffer from the opposite delusion. I remember reading an article about a sad old codger who had fallen in love with his sex doll. The poor fellow was convinced she was a tender creature who loved him dearly. He might well have left her everything he had in his will – I suppose the money could have been used to repaint her skin or replace parts that had lost their elasticity. Or maybe he gave instructions for her to be buried with him. Sex doll or not, you have to be sorry for a girl who suffers that fate.
What can one say about these psychosexual dilemmas? I don’t pretend to have the answers. There are no sex dolls in the jungle, and if there were they would be torn to shreds by the baboons. All one can do is observe the foibles of humanity and record them faithfully for posterity. There is no hero but the truth, as Tolstoy said.
Labels: Barcelona, brothels, sex dolls, sex robot
