Profiles in Masturbation (NSFW)

The inspiration for this post was a conversation between the men of 357. I will do my best to preserve the integrity of the dialogue.

Background

To understand this conversation, you need to know what a Real Doll is. I'm virtually certain Mahktar is familiar with this, but for those of you less pornographically-inclined, Real Dolls are life-size, customizable, silicone sex dolls. They are manufactured by a California company called Abyss Creations and come in virtually any form you can imagine. Want big boobs? They can do that--try Body 3, 5, or 10. Want really, really, really big boobs? Body 9 is for you. Want an Asian? How about a black girl? They've got a wide variety of skin tones to choose from, including some that might surprise you. Want realistic tan lines to turn you on? They'll do it. Shaved, unshaved, extra pubes--whatever your fantasy, the good people at Abyss Creations will help you realize it, for only $6,499.

Now, you don't necessarily have to be a sexual deviant to have heard of Real Dolls, though it certainly helps. Real Dolls have been prominently featured in some legitimate, main-stream media, including recent artsy film Lars and the Real Girl, as well as Nip/Tuck, where one episode involves a character having sex with a real doll.

Real Dolls entered the collective consciousness of 357 last semester, when someone circulated this video, "Real Dolls and the Men Who Love Them." Before you start watching, be warned: this video is quite long, and the people it profiles are very weird, but if you're like me, you won't be able to look away. So make sure you've got plenty of time--and some privacy--before you start viewing.

What you'll see if you watch the video is that, to the men who buy them, Real Dolls aren't a hobby, they're a lifestyle. These guys don't just have sex with them; they name them, dress them, take them out for drives in the country, and generally treat them as if they were actual people. This relationship, the love affair between man and doll, is the subject of Lars and the Real Girl, though it seems considerably less creepy in Lars than it is in the documentary.

To understand the rest of this conversation, you'll also need to know what a fleshlight is. A fleshlight is basically a tube that is shaped like a pussy/ass/mouth that you stick your cock into. Anyway, there's not much more to fleshlights than that; they run around $60.

The Initial Argument

The reason these topics came up in the first place was because it was suggested that we purchase a Real Doll for the house. In order to help finance the cost of the Real Doll, we would let outsiders have sex with it, for a price. But what would the price be? This is the initial argument.

I said that $50 would be a pretty reasonable price to pay for an evening in the company of a Real Doll. Why? Well, for one thing, that's a fraction of the price one would pay for a prostitute. Now, I don't really know what an average prostitute costs, but disgraced ex-Governor Elliot Spitzer apparently paid upwards of $15,000 for seven or eight sessions with high class hooker Ashley Dupre, so I think it's safe to assume that a desirable prostitute could easily cost $500 to $1,000, or even more. To rent an escort for an evening is a little cheaper, but still upwards of $200, and that doesn't even guarantee sex. In comparison, fucking a Real Doll for $50 is a relative bargain.

Now, obviously, there are some serious disadvantages to a Real Doll as opposed to a real woman. Real Dolls don't act out fantasies for you--you act out your fantasy on them, which isn't at all the same. A real woman is an active participant--a doll isn't. On the other hand, you can do literally whatever you want with a Real Doll, something that cannot be said of a woman. If you have some really freaky tastes, a prostitute might indulge them, but it's gonna cost extra. Not so with a Real Doll--you do whatever you can imagine for a flat fee. Also, you might be willing to take some extra liberties with a doll, since it has no emotions and is therefore immune to humiliation and degradation. You might feel guilty shitting on a girl's chest, but a Real Doll will just lay there and take it, no questions asked. In addition, you can ride your Real Doll bareback, without worrying about STDs or getting a bitch pregnant. You want to ride a prostitute bareback? Have fun with herpes, dude.

Obviously, Real Dolls aren't for everyone, but if you're ready to spend a grand or more on a prostitute, dropping a General Grant on a Real Doll seems like a solid investment to me. Some people object to this, saying that an evening with a Real Doll wouldn't be worth more than $20, but that seems a little stingy to me. We've got to approach this from the perspective of someone who is actually considering paying for sex--and I think that Makhtar would definitely be willing to spend a little more than $20 in lieu of having to explain that he isn't Jordan Chui.

So that's my first question: would you pay for an evening with a Real Doll, and if so, how much?

The Secondary Argument

After debating for some time what an evening with a Real Doll should cost, we moved onto another issue, namely: how weird is fucking a Real Doll to begin with?

Now, the consensus is that sex with a Real Doll is definitely weird, but really, how weird?

To begin exploring this question, we have to examine two schools of thought. The first school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of masturbation; the second school of thought says that fucking a Real Doll is a form of sex.

Personally, I am of the first school. In my mind, sex with a Real Doll is just an advanced form of masturbation, aided by what amounts to a toy. Think about it for a second: isn't sex with a Real Doll masturbation by definition? You are the only real participant; the doll is involved, certainly, but it is passive, and cannot be said to be participating. You provide all of inputs, all of the active ingredients. The baseline for sex is that there are at least two inputs--otherwise, you're just fucking yourself, and that's masturbation, pure and simple.

Not that the second school of thought is without merit. When people talk about Real Dolls, they talk about having sex, not masturbating. There is definitely a sense that you are having sex--after all, you're putting your cock inside something. Something that isn't your hand. Something that looks like a lot like a woman. You aren't jacking yourself off in the traditional sense--rather, you're fucking, but what you're fucking is a doll. Proponents of this school believe that a Real Doll is a simulation of sex rather than a form of masturbation.

This is where fleshlights come in. One of my housemates made the argument that, while using a fleshlight is a sophisticated form of masturbation, using a Real Doll is very different, because it is a sophisticated simulation of sex.

Ah, but isn't masturbation itself a simulation of sex? You don't think about your hand while you're jacking off--you imagine yourself having sex, or at least, doing something sex related. The point of sex--from an objectively hedonistic perspective--is to cum. The point of masturbation is to cum. Masturbation is meant to be a substitute for sex, albeit a poor one. Without sex, there is no masturbation; it doesn't exist as an entity unto itself. You cannot conceive of masturbation as anything other than a simulation of sex.

So, if fleshlights and Real Dolls are both advanced forms and masturbation--and, as such, simulations of sex--then are they so different?

I say no. To me, on a scale of weirdness and sexual perversion, the same order of magnitude separates Real Dolls from fleshlights as separates fleshlights from conventional masturbation. The spectrum looks like this:

Beating it old school --1-- using a fleshlight --2-- fucking a Real Doll

The best analogy for this that I can come up with is that masturbation is like riding a bicycle, using a fleshlight is like riding a motorcycle, and fucking a Real Doll is like driving a car. Obviously, there's quite a difference between riding a motorcycle and driving a car, but to me the essential difference is between traveling under your power (the bicycle) and employing some form of engine to propel you (the motorcycle and car). Likewise, the essential difference is between masturbating au naturale or employing some form of prosthetic vagina--as far as I'm concerned, once you moved beyond your hand and into the realm of prosthetics, the rest is just details. A Real Doll is just a fleshlight with a body built around it.

So, my second question: with these arguments in mind, and relative to regular masturbation, how weird are fleshlights and Real Dolls?

The Tertiary Argument from Economics

Now, as we were having this discussion, Sleazer brought up an interesting point: if fleshlights and Real Dolls are actually that similar, why the huge discrepancy in price? After all, a Real Doll costs between 100 and 200 times as much as a fleshlight, so what does that discrepancy tell us? Sleazer and others argue that this discrepancy demonstrates the degree to which a Real Doll is weirder than a fleshlight. There could be some truth to this--fetish properties tend to be wildly more expensive by virtue of their weirdness, and the further you get away from the spectrum of sexual norms, the more expensive things get. We visited this relationship earlier when discussing the prostitute--if you want to do really freaky shit, like anal fisting or DVDA, you can expect to pay way more than the vanilla John who just wants some straight missionary.

But is this really what the price discrepancy reveals? I'm not convinced. To me, the discrepancy demonstrates not the relative weirdness of the two products, but rather, the relative sophistication of the sexual simulation. People pay huge sums of money for Real Dolls, not because they are exceptionally weird, but because they are the most realistic simulation of sex (and thus the highest form of masturbation) that money can buy. I think anyone would be hard-pressed to argue that Real Dolls are 100-200 times as weird as fleshlights, but a Real Doll might easily be 100-200 times as realistic a simulation as a fleshlight, given that for all intents and purposes a Real Doll is akin to fucking (a) a passed-out girl, (b) a coma girl, or (c) a dead body. A fleshlight, on the other hand, is a pocket vagina; I'm sure it feels great, but really, it can't give you the same realistic sensation of having sex.

The extension of this would be if there was a computer that could simulate sex in virtual reality. Imagine wearing a headset that gave you the total illusion of having sex--you can see the girl; you can feel and taste and smell the girl; she responds to whatever inputs you want and she takes an active role in the sex play; but, at the end of the day, you're still masturbating into a machine, albeit one that feels exactly like fucking a woman. Would such a simulation be way weirder than fucking a Real Doll? It would be weird, certainly, but it doesn't seem like a huge difference in perversion to me. The big difference is that the realism of the simulation would go up enormously, and as a result, a person would be likely to pay many times the price of a Real Doll for such a simulation. For this reason, to me, the Argument from Economics holds little water.

Finally, my third question: what does the discrepancy in price between the two objects suggest to you?

Conclusion

This has been an attempt to present the issues in a fair-minded and even-handed way. I am obviously of one mind, and despite my best efforts, that may have biased my presentation in some way. Therefore, I welcome any critcism of my analysis, and am happy to entertain other arguments.

For me, however, the difference between organic masturbation and the use of prosthetics is at least as big a leap as the one between fleshlights and Real Dolls. Also, any attempts to differentiate between the use of fleshlights as masturbation and the use of Real Dolls as sex is misconstrued, as both must be framed as forms of masturbation and, as such, simulations of sex.