These past months on the internet there was a spate of sensationalist summer silly-season web-journalism stories about so-called “sex doll brothels”. Friends, I spurned those stories, because the concept is risible. A brothel is a workplace for sex workers, not a collection of jack-off booths with sex-toy rentals. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with the latter notion, it’s disrespectful and dehumanizing to sex workers to borrow their terminology for your no-humans-involved business concept.

Wait, did I say there was nothing inherently wrong with the notion of a public jack-off booth with sex-toy rentals? Yeah, but I meant “wrong” in a moral sense. Practically speaking, I think it’s dumb. Some things make more sense at home. You don’t trust a minimum-wage employee to wash your sex toys after a stranger has used them. Moreover, given the inherent stigma that sex toys in general and sex dolls in particular still carry in our repressive societies, you don’t queue up to use them in a public place. From these axioms, it follows: you don’t rent. You buy. This is the same logic that doomed the coin-op video-booth in sleazy downtown sex shops, as soon as everyone could buy their own VCR and porn tapes to take home. So too with sex dolls: You take discreet truck delivery, you play with them in your own house, you handle your own cleanup. It’s just a better situation that way.

Which is where a slick sex doll shopping site like SexDolls.com comes in. I’ve posted about sites like this before, although never about one quite so pretty as this one:

There seem to be more than sixty different doll-models on offer at SexDolls.com, and that’s before the customization options kick in. We’re talking — and I can’t swear that all these options exist on every doll, but extensive spot-checking suggests most of them are available for most dolls — sixteen different hair styles, eight eye colors, twelve different fingernails colors, three different nipple sizes, four different nipple colors, four different vagina hair styles including “none”, and your choice of removable “easier to clean” or built-in vagina. Whew! That, my friends, is a metric fuck-ton of choices to make before they can build out your sex doll and put her in the crate to send her on the truck toward your address.

Although perhaps I should not be so hasty to assume that “her”. Indeed, what about male sex dolls for women? As you can see, there’s a category for that, although sadly at the moment of my writing there’s only one sex doll on offer in the category. Curiously, his description calls him “one of our top rated gay male sex dolls.” I won’t open the can of worms that is gender and orientation when ascribed to sex toys, but I can’t help wondering why the lone male doll in a category labelled “sex dolls for women” is described as gay. I also noticed that he’s better described for the convenience of penetrators than penetratees. He’s provisioned with numerical statistics for things like his anal depth and oral depth, but his description is oddly silent about whatever genital arsenal he may come equipped with. The category description assures us that all of the male sex dolls offered “are packing some serious heat below the belt” and “come with detachable penises” but in specific terms, customers wanting to be penetrated are left to wonder “by what?” Customers intending to penetrate, by contrast, get specific numerical answers for every doll.

I want to close by observing that somebody has put an almost obsessive amount of skill and energy and heart into dressing, posing, lighting, and photographing the dolls for sale on SexDolls.com. I realize that making the female form look attractive in photographs is a highly developed profession, but it must be an added challenge when your model is made out of assorted plastics. There is some truly lovely photography on display here!