It’s safe to say that many sex workers’ primary objection to sex doll brothels isn’t moral or philosophical, but economic. “The dolls can’t consent and they have no limitations” It would be unfair to characterize all of these people as misogynists eager to enact their twisted rape fantasies on unsuspecting hunks of plastic, just as it is unfair to characterize everyone who buys sex (an estimated 14 percent of American men) as brutal and exploitative. Sex dolls could also potentially serve as outlets for people with non-normative sexual preferences (think a taste for violent or nonconsensual sex) who don’t wish to harm a living person, or people in monogamous relationships who want to sexually experiment without actually committing infidelity. “Patrons may have some sort of social anxiety or perhaps are disabled, who might not be comfortable with the social interactions of a human sex worker, would benefit greatly due to this service,” an Aura spokesperson said, adding that the brothel has received a number of inquiries from visually impaired people and the hard of hearing. Sex doll brothels could potentially serve as a viable option for clients who may lack the social skills necessary to form meaningful relationships with humans. On the surface, this seems like an obvious concern: When presented with the choice between a flesh-and-blood woman who can consent to sex and a $6,000 hunk of silicone who can’t, logic would seemingly dictate that any man who opts for the latter is more likely to harbor some problematic views of women.īut this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. And if sex dolls were to become popular, clients would think that was normal.” “We’re very clear about what can happen and not happen during a party. “If any guys start using these brothels, the dolls can’t consent and they have no limitations,” Allissa told Vox. She also believes they would pose a serious safety threat. (Prostitution is illegal in the US except in a select number of counties in Nevada, where it is highly regulated.)Īllissa, a sex worker at the legal brothel Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada, is outraged that unlike legal brothels, which cannot openly advertise for fear of violating solicitation laws, sex doll brothels would ostensibly be able to openly advertise on billboards (as one recently did in Vancouver). Nonetheless, there’s been major outcry over the mere prospect of sex doll brothels, particularly in the legal sex industry in the United States. Plans to open a brothel in Houston, for instance, were scrapped after the city council amended an existing ordinance to forbid business patrons from engaging in sexual congress with inanimate objects.įor these reasons, sex doll brothels are far from commonplace. Legally speaking, they also exist in a somewhat gray area: Though they don’t technically violate most state prostitution laws, the moral opposition to sex work in the United States is so intense that it would inevitably serve as a barrier. Such sex doll brothels have also been erroneously referred to as “ sex robot brothels,” even though most do not possess such artificial intelligence.ĭue to their high cost (a customizable Real Doll, for instance, starts at $5,999), sex dolls in general are still considered expensive novelty items. NurPhoto via Getty ImagesĪura Dolls is not the first sex doll brothel of its kind: There are similar establishments located in Barcelona, Moscow, and Turin, Italy.
Brothel employees clean up the dolls between appointments to prepare them for the next customer. In Rolling Stone, writer Breena Kerr profiles Aura Dolls, a sex doll brothel in Toronto where clients can pay $120 an hour and an additional $90 per half-hour to do whatever they want to the six dolls on staff (provided they do not “make any extra holes” in them, though one wonders what would be the occasion for doing so). But the technology is still far from perfect (see: the massive temper tantrums on social media over CVS’s automated self-checkout), and even though one report has predicted that robots could replace human workers by 2030, most people can rest assured that their jobs are safe for the time being. In some service industries, these concerns have proven prophetic. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution (or, at the very least, since the dawn of The Jetsons), Americans have been seized by the anxiety of being replaced by robots.