Love and Sex with Robots_The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships

by David Levy

  A French circular describes the articles as follows:

  “Woman’s Belly or Artificial Vagina

  “Giving the man the perfect illusion of reality and procuring for him sensations as sweet and voluptuous as those from the woman herself. Outwardly the appliance represents the belly without the thighs. The secret parts, the mount of Venus, covered with abundant and silky hair, the greater lips, the smaller lips, and the clitoris offer themselves to the covetous gaze with rosy colors and temptations as delicious as the pussy of a woman herself.

  “In the interior the vagina has wrinkles or folds which embrace and provoke the ejaculation of sperm. The contact is soft and agreeable and the pressure is regulated at will by a pneumatic tube. There is also a lubricating apparatus that is filled beforehand with a warm and oily liquid, and which, under pressure floods the vaginal interior in the same way as the feminine glands secrete at the psychological moment.

  “The woman’s belly, with lubricator, it is the only apparatus representing exactly the generative organs and capable of giving the effect of reality.

  “It can be inflated and deflated at will, and can be folded up and placed in the pocket as easily as a handkerchief.

  “The complete apparatus: 100 francs.

  “Superior quality: 150 francs.”

  Other advertisements offer to furnish a complete rubber man, with member of any size desired, and with clockwork mechanism which enables it to perform as desired. Also a woman’s torso with generative organs as described in the circular just quoted; also, an entire woman. The latter is made to order, upon receipt of a photograph and measurements, color of hair, and other details, and a perfect likeness is guaranteed, as follows:

  “Complete Body, Artificial Man or Woman

  “All moves, arms, legs, buttocks, head, eyes; a perfect likeness of the person whose photograph is sent. The body in action moves like a living being, pressing, embracing, changing position at will by a simple pressure. The mechanism which gives life to the apparatus is very substantial and cannot get out of order. The complete apparatus, guaranteed against breakage, man or woman, 3000 francs.

  “This apparatus can be fitted with a phonographic attachment, recording and speaking at will—man, 3250 francs; woman, 3500 francs.

  “In sending photographs of the subject, be sure to give us the height, details of the figure, size of the breasts and buttocks, color of the hair, with sample if possible, and in a word all the information necessary to enable us to complete the figure in an irreproachable manner.”

  The articles referred to are sold generally throughout Europe, and the fact that the circulars noted come from Paris does not indicate that the French have any monopoly on the traffic. The great bulk of pornographic articles and literature and obscene photographs sold in Europe come from Germany and Austria, the latter country furnishing the most artistic and expensive varieties and Germany, as usual, the cheaper ones.

  The popularity of these primitive sex dolls in Europe gave some well-off men the idea of having a doll made in the image of their own lover, past, present, or hoped for. This idea appealed to a few of the surrealist and avant-garde artists of the 1920s, one of whom was Oskar Kokoschka, who had conducted a difficult three-year affair with Alma Mahler, wife of the composer. After their relationship ended, Kokoschka had a life-size doll made in Alma’s image by the Munich doll maker Hermine Moos, to whom he had provided a detailed description and some drawings of how he wanted the doll to be made:

  On my drawing I have broadly indicated the flat areas, the incipient hollows and wrinkles that are important to me. Will the skin—I am really extremely impatient to find out what that will be like and how its texture will vary according to the nature of the part of the body it belongs to—make the whole thing richer, tenderer, more human? Take as your ideal…Rubens’ pictures of his wife, for example the two where she is shown as a young woman with her children. If you are able to carry out this task as I would wish, to deceive me with such magic that when I see it and touch it imagine that I have the woman of my dreams in front of me, then, dear Fräulein Moos, I will be eternally indebted to your skills of invention and your womanly sensitivity, as you may already have deduced from the discussion we had.11

  Kokoschka bought dresses and lingerie from the best shops in Paris to clothe the doll, and he revealed that when the trunk containing the doll arrived and was being unpacked, his butler became so excited that he had a stroke. But whether Kokoshka actually used the Alma doll for sexual relief appears extremely doubtful, as the doll apparently failed to fulfill his erotic and sexual desires and in the end became no more than a kind of still-life model that in his frustration he destroyed by decapitating it in his garden during a party. He wrote that a Venetian courtesan asked him if he slept with it, but his writings did not answer the question.

  Another sad ex-lover who did use a lifelike doll as a sex surrogate is amusingly described by Hedy Lamarr in her autobiography. Lamarr was an Austrian-born film actress whose second film, Ecstasy, which she made in Czechoslovakia in 1933, shot her to stardom at the age of twenty. This was not because of her acting performance but because she appeared in a nude swimming scene, creating an immediate sensation in Europe and promptly getting the film banned in the United States. Louis B. Mayer was so impressed with her looks that he called her “the most beautiful girl in the world” and took her to Hollywood in 1937, where she embarked on a series of affairs and six marriages that contributed to the considerable unhappiness of her private life.

  In Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman, Lamarr describes how, when she had discarded Sam, one of her rich lovers, he fell into emotional desolation because their relationship had ended, and had

  a full-sized plastic-rubber doll made to look exactly like me—nude!…

  The hair looked real, the coloring was accurate (even to the make-up). It had nail polish on the toes as well as the fingers. The figure had obviously been contoured with exquisite care. There was an indecent accuracy to the breasts.12

  Lamar goes on to explain how she witnessed Sam using his doll, which he named “Hedy-the-Inferior,” a use that seemed to provide him with some measure of sexual comfort:

  Sam laid Hedy-the-Inferior on the bed, right in the blue spot.

  “Do you love me, darling?” he asked, moving right onto it. He touched those lifelike legs, and didn’t stop there. I tell you, his master craftsman had included every part of my body.

  Sam commenced moving up and down. “Am I hurting you?” he breathed solicitously, “does it feel nice?”

  Insane as it was, I couldn’t take my eyes off the blue spot!

  He was panting, in rhythm. “I love you, I love you, I love.” Faster. “I love you,” he exclaimed one last time—“do you love me?”

  I blushed in supreme embarrassment. I knew what was going on the instant he asked that question…

  And then he was just quivering and whispering to the doll in the blue light.

  Finally, he collected himself. He kissed those lips, “Thank you darling, you were wonderful. I hope I didn’t mess your hair. I know you want to go out tonight…”

  Despite speculation that the Germans and the Japanese manufactured sex dolls for their armed forces during World War II, no genuine examples appear to have been documented during that period,* but in the mid-1950s a sex toy for men was marketed, under the name “Bild Lili.” Based on a lewd cartoon character that was popular in Germany at that time, Bild Lili is said to have inspired Ruth Handler in her design for the original Barbie doll.

  Sex Dolls for the Twenty-first Century

  By the early 1980s, blow-up sex dolls were becoming quite big business in some countries but were viewed as obscene in others. In 1982 David Sullivan, a British sex entrepreneur,† attempted to import from West Germany a consignment of inflatable rubber dolls. When inflated, these became life-size replicas of a woman’s body, complete with the usual three orifices to provide male customers with sexual gratification. The dolls were
seized by the British Customs and Excise as “indecent or obscene articles” and their seizure was upheld in the condemnation proceedings before magistrates and on appeal to the Crown Court. But Sullivan’s company, Conegate, then appealed to the High Court in Britain, and, having lost that appeal as well, Conegate appealed yet again, this time to the European Court of Justice, where finally the company won the case in 1987. It turned out that the English law prohibiting the importation of the dolls, which dated from 1876, had been superseded by Articles 30 and 36 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the document signed when the European Economic Community was created. Under the terms of the treaty, restricting the importation of the dolls into the United Kingdom would have constituted an arbitrary barrier to free trade, and it was free trade that the treaty was specifically designed to promote. The major consequence for the British government of losing this case was that all import restrictions on “obscene or indecent” items had to be lifted!

  The paucity of published information on the history of sex dolls makes it extremely difficult to date the launch of the first products that appeared on the market in commercially interesting quantities, though the Conegate case indicates that it must have been no later than 1982. Since the mid-1990s at least, various grades of sex doll have been manufactured, ranging from inexpensive inflatable welded-vinyl models, whose looks leave much to be desired but which incorporate an artificial vagina—the main purpose of their customers—through midpriced products made of heavy latex and with convincingly molded hands and feet, imitation eyes in glass or plastic, and styled wigs adorning their mannequin-like heads; up to the top-of-the-line products that in 2006 cost in the region of $7,000, such as the market leader in this price range—RealDoll.

  It was in 1996 that Matt McMullen, a California sculptor, revolutionized the sex-toy industry when he launched Nina, the first of a line of products sold under the RealDoll brand name by his company, Abyss Creations. McMullen had previously worked in a Halloween-mask factory, making innocent sculpted female forms in his spare time as a sideline. These were mostly small figures, about twelve inches tall, made of resin and sold as models. With time he began to make larger dolls and to use materials that were softer to the touch. He also designed a skeleton in order to allow his dolls to have limbs that could move.

  When McMullen started to advertise his dolls with photographs on his Web site, he received several inquiries from people who believed his products to be sex dolls. When he explained to them that they were wrong, the inquiries changed to ones asking him if he would manufacture sex dolls, a group of visitors to his site offering him three thousand dollars each for ten dolls. So he quit his job at the mask factory, developed a silicone material that could be employed to make the doll’s genitalia durable and feel right, and by 1996 he was in business.

  The RealDoll products are lifelike in appearance as well as being life size and close to life weight. The nine different body sizes advertised on the RealDoll site in early 2006 ranged from five feet one inch tall to five feet ten; they weighed in at between seventy and one hundred pounds; they offered busts from 34A to 44FF, waists from twenty-two to twenty-six inches, and hips from thirty-four to thirty-eight. Other available options included fourteen different female heads, each with its own name: Amanda, Angela, Anna Mae, Brittany, Celine, et al.; seven shades of hair coloring; six different colors for the eyes; fair, medium, tanned, Asian, or African skin tones; and red, blond, or brunette pubic hair that can come shaved, trimmed, or “natural.” The dolls are based around articulated skeletons made of steel, have artificial elastic flesh made of silicone, and they come with three functioning “pleasure portals”—vaginal, oral, and anal. Each female doll is thus custom-made, with the buyer able to choose from more than 500 million permutations of these various options.

  In addition to the fourteen female models for sale early in 2006, one model of a male doll was also available. It was named Charlie—five feet ten inches tall, with a forty-four-inch chest, a thirty-two-inch waist, and a stocky body. Charlie was priced at $7,000 plus shipping charges and could be provided with “anal entry if desired, plus one size of penis attachment,” size not specified. The female RealDolls at that time were slightly less expensive, at $6,500 dollars, and the company was talking of sales in the region of 300 to 350 per year.

  RealDoll is by no means the only American brand on the market. A rival California company, CyberOrgasMatrix, uses a different body material—an elastic gel that the manufacturers claim is stronger and more realistic than silicone, as well as being less expensive. Their principal product is the Pandora Peaks model, which, like RealDoll, comes with numerous options. Customers pay according to which options they choose, so that, for example, while vaginal and oral entries are standard, anal entry costs an extra $250. Yet another California manufacturer is SuperBabe, whose doll is modeled on the porn star Vanessa Lace.

  The number of sex-doll manufacturers is increasing steadily, as are the Web sites that sell them.* And not to be outdone by the growing band of American producers, companies in China, Germany, and Japan have been getting in on the act. In Nuremberg, Germany, an aircraft mechanic named Michael Harriman claims to have created the world’s most sophisticated sex doll, called Andy, with skin made from a silicon-based material employed in plastic surgery, an artificial heart that beats harder during sex, in time with the doll’s harder breathing, and internal heaters to raise its body temperature—apart from its feet, which stay cold just as in real life. Andy can be made to move by remote control, wiggling her hips under the sheets and making other suggestive movements, all at the touch of a button. The price is similar to that of the RealDolls, but there are additional charges for special modifications, such as extra-large breasts. Harriman claims that his dolls “are almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing, but I am still developing improvements and I will only be happy when what I have is better than the real thing.”

  A wide assortment of Chinese offerings is available online and in sex shops, at prices ranging from $50 to $250, as described by Meghan Laslocky:

  Sweet Spot: A Taste of Things to Come, a catalogue from Hong Kong, lists nearly 70 different models of blow-up doll, including saucy Sondrine, whose hair, nipples and genitalia glow in the dark; Betty Fat Girl Bouncer, to satisfy the chubby chaser; Brandi Sommer, with “super vibrating LoveClone™ lips”; and The Perfect Date, which is just 36 inches tall and is equipped with a mouth and cup holder built into her head. There’s even a dairy maid doll who lactates and has short blonde braids reminiscent of Swiss Miss. Some of the blow-ups vibrate and, oddly enough, scream.13

  Thus have the sexual lives of sailors, among others, been enriched with the advances in doll design and materials technology, advances that have created realistic skinlike substances such as “cyberskin”* and have thereby made the current generation of sex dolls more comfortable to use than earlier models. That sailors are still avid patrons of such products is of little doubt, and an interesting example of their use was described by Ellen Kleist and Harald Moi in a learned journal in 1993. This report involved the skipper of a fishing trawler from Greenland. After some three months at sea, the skipper had occasion to rouse the ship’s engineer in his cabin during the night because of engine trouble. After the engineer left his cabin to sort out the problem, the skipper observed a bump in the engineer’s bed, whereupon he found an inflatable doll with an artificial vagina and was tempted into using it in order to assuage his sexual starvation. A few days after this episode, the captain experienced a discharge from his penis, and upon the trawler’s return to port in Greenland he sought advice at a hospital in Nanortalik. There had been no women on board the trawler while it was at sea; the skipper denied having had any homosexual contacts, and there was no doubt in the minds of the doctors that the onset of the symptoms was more than two months after leaving port, which meant that the source had to have been on board the trawler. The engineer was then examined by the hospital doctors and found to have gonorrhea. He had observed
a mild discharge from his own penis after the ship left port but had not been treated with antibiotics. He admitted having ejaculated into the vagina of the doll just before the skipper had called on him, without washing the doll afterward. He also admitted having sex with a girl some days before the trawler put to sea. Kleist and Moi’s account in Genitourinary Medicine* suggests that this was the first reported case of the transmission of gonorrhea through an inflatable doll.

  The marketing of RealDolls and their cousins from other manufacturers tends to be based on the idea that they are “the perfect woman,” perfect because they’re always ready and available, because they provide all the benefits of a human female partner without any of the complications involved with human relationships, and because they make no demands of their owners, with no conversation and no foreplay required. And it is precisely because of these attributes, the dolls’ lack of “complications” and demands, that they will likely appeal to many of the men who gave such explanations as to why they pay prostitutes for sex, and to others who have similar feelings about their sex lives at home. So, already, in this promotional slant, we can see the basis of the idea that men who use prostitutes should save up their dollars until they can afford a RealDoll. I believe that this will happen in a big way, and that the New York hooker who feared that robot technology would decimate her profession† will be proved correct. The signs are already there, as you will soon see.

  The most successful manufacturer of sex dolls in Japan is Orient Industries, whose president, Hideo Tsuchiya, started working in the adult sex-aid business in the early 1960s, opening his own store shortly afterward. His business boomed fairly quickly, due largely to two dolls, named Antarctica 1 and Antarctica 2, that achieved media fame of a sort when some of Japan’s scientists took them as companions for the winter at Showa Base, Japan’s headquarters in Antarctica. At that time Tsuchiya’s dolls had permanently open mouths and were inflatable. Although sales were brisk, the blow-up dolls had a tendency to develop leaks and would often burst under the weight of their owners. So Tsuchiya decided that he needed a more durable product, which he achieved by using stronger materials and a design that did not need to be inflated. One of the company’s early models, called “Omokage,” was specially designed to be dismantled into lower and upper portions, for easy storage in the cramped space of Japan’s traditionally small homes.