An overwhelming proportion of the existing published scholarship on sex doll and robot ownership addresses, or at least seeks to address, the ethics of owning and engaging with sex dolls and robots. For example, scholars in bioethics, sociology, robotics, and legal studies have all cited concerns that sex dolls and robots encourage the sexual objectification of women and exacerbate traditional standards of beauty and perceptions of attractiveness [9, 10, 15, 20,21,22,23,24], with the ultimate effect of this being a loss of human intimacy and connection when it comes to sexual interactions [24,25,26]. At its extreme, this collection of work suggests that doll and robot ownership has the effect of promoting sexual violence and child sexual abuse, which in much of this work is erroneously synonymized as pedophilia [4, 6, 27, 28]. While many of these claims make sense at face value, their empirical bases are open to challenge.
Emerging theoretical models of objectification suggest that this process involves the viewing of a particular entity as a means to an end, meaning that a defining feature of objectification is instrumentality [22, 29,30,31,32]. In delineating the nature of objectification, Orehek and Weaverling suggest that there is nothing about objectification (as a psychological process) that is inherently moral or immoral. In fact, objectification may even be an inevitable mental process, as “to suggest that people should not be objectified is to say that they should not be evaluated” [29]. In this regard, the extent to which objectification becomes dependent on some other factor(s), such as the underpinning values of the person who is labeling something as objectifying, or the behavioral implications of the objectifying cognitions or acts. That is, if objectification (specifically of a doll in the current context, or of women more generally as a result of doll ownership) has no behavioral effects (e.g., an increased proclivity for sexual aggression), then neither doll ownership nor the resultant objectification can be considered to be immoral.
There is a large literature on how the sexual objectification of women predicts more permissive attitudes towards sexual aggression [33,34,35]. However, it is important to stress that there is currently no empirical evidence that doll ownership translates into elevated levels of sexual objectification, either of dolls as objects themselves or of real women. Indeed, applying data from media effects research in related areas would suggest that concerns about the transferability of violence from various forms of mass media to personal behavior might be misplaced. Recent analyses of the effects of playing violent video games [36, 37] and, more relevant to the sex dolls and robots, the viewing of pornography, suggest that engaging with these media has little effect on behaviors in the real world among those with no pre-existing aggressive propensities [38, 39]. More than this, the evidence for the effects of pornography appear to show a potentially cathartic effect, where societies that have higher rates of pornography use demonstrate lower rates of sexual violence [39, 40].
Linked to the topic of objectification is that of gendered stereotypes about what constitutes beauty and sexual attractiveness. According to a thesis by Krizia Puig, female-like sex dolls represent a form of synthetic hyper femininity that reinforces “whiteness, thinness, being cis-gender and being heterosexual as what is considered desirable and beautiful” [41]. While this argument self-evidently stems from the epistemological tradition of intersectional queer theory, it does highlight the view that the physical characteristics reflect particular features that are designed to attract male buyers. One suggestion to address this issue of a reinforcement of a single beauty standard has been to abandon the “unsophisticated” porn star design of sex dolls and robots, and to instead create “robots that are more realistic in their representations (both physical and behavioral) of women, that represent men, and that perhaps challenge the gender binary” [10].
While several authors have suggested that these features reinforce socially constructed notions of beauty [9, 10, 25, 41], insights from evolutionary psychology tell a different story. Gad Saad has pioneered the field of evolutionary consumption, the field that applies evolutionary psychological theory to the study of consumer behavior. He has presented a nomological network of cumulative evidence examining the argument for an evolved male sexual preference for women with an hourglass body type [42]. These networks consider a range of evidence from disciplines that appear to converge on a consistent conclusion. In the case of an hourglass figure preference for women among men, Saad presented evidence that the hourglass figure confers biological cues suggestive of youth and fertility [43, 44], resulting in a cross-cultural sexual preference among men using a range of psychophysiological outcomes [45,46,47]. In the sexual services domain, an hourglass figure (operationalized as a waist-to-hip ratio of approximately 0.70) is consistently reported by female sex workers in their online service advertisements [48], with a figure more closely matching this ratio being associated with a higher fee being charged by female escorts [49]. Specifically related to sex dolls, adult-sized models have been reported to have an average waist-to-hip ratio of 0.68 [50]. In light of these data, the argument that sex dolls reinforce socially constructed beauty ideals is challenged by the competing view that dolls simply reflect an evolved male preference for a particular body type, and are thus driven by market demand. In short, customer preference drives model design, rather than vice versa. Nonetheless, longitudinal studies investigating the effects of exposure to sex dolls on indices of objectification and body type preferences would be a useful starting point for exploring the relative validity of these competing hypotheses.
As already intimated, there is no research that directly examines a causal link between sex doll ownership and a proclivity to engage in sexual aggression. Instead, the existing literature hints towards these links from philosophical, ideological, and ethical positions [9, 20,21,22, 28, 51]. Absent this causal evidence, some philosophical arguments have gone so far as to consider whether sex with robots should be considered rape in-and-of itself [4, 27]. For instance, a concept piece led by Elen Carvalho Nasciemento stated that “sex robots exploit the female figure - eventually male, and perhaps even children - for unilateral physical pleasure. The buyer of the object, a humanized sex toy, possesses these bodies to do what they want, with no need of consent” [20]. Sinziana Gutiu went further, suggesting that the programmable nature of sex robots allows for their owners to in essence practice the act of rape:
… the sex robot looks and feels like a real woman who is programmed into submission and which functions as a tool for sexual purposes. The sex robot is an ever-consenting sexual partner and the user has full control of the robot and the sexual interaction. By circumventing any need for consent, sex robots eliminate the need for communication, mutual respect, and compromise in the sexual relationship. The use of sex robots results in the dehumanization of sex and intimacy by allowing users to physically act out rape fantasies and confirm rape myths. [51]
Extending this line of argument still further, John Danaher offered a tentative argument in favor of criminalizing sex robots as tools for “robotic rape and robotic child abuse” [4]. He does this by considering the potential social effects of sex robots (see above), before logically pulling together two premises: that morally wrongful conduct can be criminalized in law, even when no objective harm to others is caused (the moralistic premise), and that robotic rape and child abuse represent morally wrongful conduct (the wrongness premise). However, Danaher offers no coherent explanation as to why engaging in sexual activity with a humanoid robot should constitute “rape” or “child abuse” in its own right, or in a specific sense.
Eskens addressed this issue more directly, concluding that sex with robots does not constitute “rape” in the strictest legal sense, as the normative use of this term involves a consideration of consent. She concluded that robots lack moral value (by virtue of their artificiality and lack of cognitive capacity (see also [52, 53]), and thus cannot give (or withhold) consent, and by extension cannot be victims. In spite of setting out these arguments, Eskens tempered her argument by stating that “although it might not be impermissible to have sex with robots for the reason that it is non-consensual, it might be impermissible for other reasons,” invoking those ideas of objectification, desensitization, and the promotion of offense-supportive cognitions, as described above.