That is certainly not true. Another possibility - probably at least as controversial - is that such dolls might be used by some children themselves. Physicians, electricians, car mechanics, etc practice on non-functional mock-ups to learn what they aspire to. So how exactly are sex toys for children any different? Apart from the perennial bugaboo that children and the disabled supposedly don’t have those kinds of thoughts, because it makes others uncomfortable to think about.
I find it quite telling that that larger discussion, only hinted at here, is one that despite having no victims to moralize over, most people lack the maturity to consider without succumbing to fits of some kind.
I get your line of reasoning. But it’s fallacious.
The human mind is pretty basic. Teach someone that sex with kids is great, they’ll carry it on, unless something interferes with that thought process.
We used to have this state of being that we protected - “innocence” - and would protect to the death.
Maybe it was because people were clear on that fact that innocence was beautiful, or maybe it produces tree diagrams of thinking we wouldn’t independently realise.
I am willing to venture that many of kid’s first thoughts about sex will be about sex with their peers. I know that I would find that more natural and understandable than if my kids fantasized about adults. And what interferes with that process is growing up. Just like how I was taught that it can be nice to make friends, and both as a child and in middle age I have always tended to be more involved with people close to my own age.
What I think happens is that humans fetishize the visual patterns they make. So a homophobe hears description of a same-sex act and hates first themself, and then the speaker, for their own reaction to this self-created mental image. The same thing I think happens with child sex. I know the taboo of what it is like to be sexually attracted to children because I was a child, and felt that way. But adults seem to compartmentalize that and pretend it didn’t happen, because imagining it now would be gross. Same thing happens with talk about kid’s sexual behaviors alone or with other children - if people visualize it they have strong reactions. And people do visualize it, because society tries to repress this. It is a matter of self discipline. If I hear about somebody having a sex life I don’t need to be sidetracked by imagining what they do or what it is like. What age, gender, or orientation they are should not be big factors for me as an outsider.
I admit to being an “innocence” skeptic. I have always struggled to understand what people are referring to with this concept, and it often seems quite elusive. I always think that one can only be innocent of some specific accusation, rather than some universal quality. Part of me suspects that it ties into “original sin” type notions of living amongst cultures heavily influenced by Christianity. But like any belief system, I think that a sweeping edict such as “chastity is a virtue” really only benefits those who subscribe to an internalize the framework and symbols of that belief system. I can appreciate that many are conditioned to such things, and find them of utmost importance. But I also doubt their universality.
For me, everything is education and communication. So I often worry that what many propose as innocence skirts too close to being the deliberate fostering of ignorance, and that this “out of sight, out of mind approach” which is ostensibly to mitigate the embarrassment and confusion of children actually serves to mitigate these feelings for adults in a sex-negative culture.
Anybody being sexually assaulted, at any age, is a troubling thought. But what people might find more troubling is what if the child-robots squeal with delight? Is assault really the norm of child sexuality? People are bringing a lot of their own emotional baggage into these scenarios. Such as assuming that they will be used by adults instead of used by children. And the article touches upon gender expectations also, supposing that makers might be misrepresenting their appeal to women when they are a strictly male fetish item. Yet, nearly all non-anthropomorphic robots (“fucking machines”, Sybian, etc) that I am aware of - not unlike sex toys generally - are mainly marketed towards and used by women.
Would theoretical child sex robots be used by paedophiles? I’m sure they’d buy them.
But a ‘breeding ground’? No, I fail to believe that building child-size robots with orifices would actually create paedophiles, any more than building human-sized fembots would turn a gay man straight at the thought of having sex with one.
I think any kind-hearted person would be disturbed by a squealing, crying robotic child, but I’m not sure that changes anything. One could also say that an adult sex robot could potentially be programmed with “rape mode” in which they cry and shiver and scream. When we’re talking about theoretical robots, any number of disturbing scenarios are possible, programmed by people with depraved ideas. But I don’t think we should preemptively pass laws against making certain types of robots because of what we imagine as worst-possible-case scenarios.
To be clear, in no way am I cheering for the idea of child sex robots. Have you seen the photos of sex dolls linked in the article? Dead-eyed mannequins, I can’t see the appeal. But I also don’t think of a child-sized robot the same way I think of an actual child, or react emotionally to it like a kid. So I suppose in that sense I don’t see molesting a doll as actual paedophilia or child porn, as others do here.
All sorts of pearl clutching “think of the children” scenarios are possible here regarding automated devices.
An inventive maker could certainly bodge together one of those near life size pony stuffed animals and a large doll representing a child along with a tenga sleeve and a raspberry pi to create a little girl centaur sex robot.
Once the prototype is done, I’m sure that it would not be too hard to get contract manufacturing done in China to market these things to paedophile furry types all over the world.
Do you also think that pornography leads to rape? Some people do. Even more used to, but decades of research has failed to turn up any causal link, the explosion in the availability of porn being completely invisible in rape statistics. So I’m wondering if you have any research to back up your fears, or would you go so far as to say that they are unfounded?
When do they get bored and say “sex dolls don’t do it for me, they’re not young enough”?
There’s two untested hypotheses here. One is that by allowing people with paedophilic tendencies to indulge their fantasies they will become emboldened to victimise real children. The other is that by allowing them to indulge their fantasies they will be given a safe outlet that will help dissuade them from preying on real children, which if nothing else is a far more risky proposition for the paedophile. For what it’s worth I suppose a third hypothesis would be that it doesn’t make any difference one way or the other.
Which is it? I have no idea and I’m pretty sure you don’t either, though if you have any sort of evidence at hand I’d be interested. But failing that, I think in general it’s a bad idea to ban things that we don’t understand just because we find them gross or frightening.
Especially if, as @nungesser points out, they don’t exist.
