Interesting and informative piece on digisexuality from CTV (Canadian TV) News, with a variety of perspectives including the ‘founder’ of digisexuality Neil McArthur (himself a Canadian).
But with these developments, we’ve also seen swift backlash against sexual technologies, McArthur said, and he fears moral panic will only grow more intense as more digisexuals come out of the closet.
“We go through this pattern of stigmatizing a marginal sexual identity, realizing we shouldn’t have done that, feeling bad about it,” he said. “Why don’t we just skip that whole cycle and just not stigmatize them in the first place? Here’s one where we have a chance to do that.”
Canada has already seen a crackdown on sex doll rental companies. Two such establishments appear to have been shuttered in Toronto after municipal officials started investigating violations of city bylaws for adult entertainment parlours in 2018.
One of these so-called silicone brothels, Aura Dolls, tried to set up shop in the nearby suburb of Mississauga, Ont., but the proprietors are due to appear in court on Jan. 30 after the city laid charges accusing them of operating an unlicensed adult entertainment business and violating zoning regulations.
Another Canadian company, KinkySdollS, tried to open a robot bordello in Houston, but its plans were thwarted in 2018 after city officials updated a local ordinance to specifically ban individuals from having sex with an “anthropomorphic device” at a sexually oriented business.
The move aligns with the goals of the Campaign Against Sex Robots, a group fighting to ban humanoid machines, arguing they contribute to the sexual objectification of women and reinforce power relations of inequality and violence.
While he believes that sexbots will be an overall boon to society, McArthur shares skeptics’ concerns about current trends in the industry that promote an “unhealthy image” of women as passive sexpots.
Not only does this betray a lack of imagination for the new kinds of sexual experiences this technology could bring, but McArthur also sees this as a missed opportunity to appeal to the biggest consumers of the multi-billion-dollar sex toy market — women.
For more of the latest stories on digisexuality and future sex tech in general, be sure to join the Reddit community r/digisexuals
