The Silicone Self: An Ethnography of the Love and Sex Doll Community
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Date
2022-10-04
Authors
Hanson, Kenneth
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation is an empirically grounded study of the love and sex doll community. Conducted over 14 months of digital ethnographic research, this dissertation draws from participant observation, in-depth interviews, content analysis, and mixed methods to analyze the interactional dynamics of love and sex doll owners in digital spaces. Drawing from the sociology of sexualities, deviance, symbolic interactionism, and new media, this dissertation examines how technology can become a central part of people’s sexual lives. The concept of the silicone self is put forth as a way of understanding how people become socialized into doll ownership as a collective group. The silicone self is employed in three situations. First, the self-ing process whereby people reflect on their previous sexual and romantic experiences before deciding to become a sex doll owner. This reflexive process reveals shifting ideas about the centrality of marriage for heterosexual men in contemporary society. Second, the silicone self is employed to show how sex doll ownership requires material considerations specific to this sex practice. Because sex dolls are relatively rare objects, interested owners must learn from one another how to use their dolls properly. Investment in the community is shown to refract into other interest, such as erotica photography. Finally, the silicone self is used to explore the role of play and personification. Sex dolls are unlike other sex toys because they approximate an entire, rather than partial, human. As such, sex doll owners imagine their dolls as having personality traits which they animate via social media and other creative faculties. These experiences are theorized to provide outlets for heterosexual men to escape the strictures of heteronormative masculinity. The dissertation concludes by way of critically interrogating a central tension in the human-robot interaction—whether sex dolls are just sex toys or represent something more. Implications for generating a social, rather than technologically deterministic, theory of futuristic sex toys are discussed.
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Keywords
digital ethnography, digital sociology, love dolls, sex dolls