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Real Dolls: Love in the Age of Silicone Meghan Laslocky -- 10/17/2005  [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ][ 6 ][ 7 ][ 8 ][ 9 ][ 10 ][ 11 ][ 12 ][ 13 ][ 14 ][ 15 ][ 16 ][ 17 ][ 18 ][ 19 ][ 20 ]Clearly no blanket statements can be made about the diagnosis of this particular brand of lust. Tucker says that even if a study were done, it is unlikely that a single common denominator would emerge. In the meantime, it’s guesswork, even regarding the differences between doll love as a normal variant in sexual behavior and doll love as an unhealthy disorder or pathology. Doll love could signal any number of things. For example, a doll lover with a harem might have had been surrounded by dominant women as a child. Or, in the cases where men prefer dolls to live human sexual partners, doll paraphilia could signal severe problems with trust, intimacy, or social anxiety. Tucker ventured that for a vulnerable man, doll love could stunt normal emotional development because intimacy with another person is a milestone in maturity. Immediate gratification and complete control of over the emotional content of a relationship with a doll might make a man accustomed to absolute control with women – a dynamic that would likely not play out well in a real relationship. Tucker says pedophiles or doll owners with violent tendencies toward women – a group that he speculates is a small subset of doll owners -- possibly could use a doll to “rehearse” offending behavior. And while there aren’t definitive answers as to whether or not fantasizing about pedophilia or violence leads to action, in the psychiatric community that type of fantasy is generally regarded as risky, Tucker said. It would probably be dangerous, for example, for a pedophile to use a young-looking doll because it would reinforce his fantasies with orgasm. Also, Tucker interpreted the instances where dolls were damaged or mutilated and then repaired -- fixing knees, broken backs, necks, torn breasts and genitals – as perhaps “victimless” sadism masquerading as caretaking. Sadism is largely about power and control, and total control over the doll and the relationship with the doll – to the point of hurting and healing – could be part of the dynamic. But quite apart from any psychological explanations for doll love, could it be that in some cases, doll love points to something else – say schizoid personality disorder, a condition in which people avoid relationships and do not show much emotion, or even something hardwired in the brain? Consider Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that is often thought of a mild variation in the spectrum of autism. People with Asperger’s have difficulty interpreting non-verbal signals from others, developing peer relationships, and understanding the give-and-take of emotional and social interactions. A quick look at the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s reveal some tantalizing similarities with the characteristics of doll lovers on Hello Dolly. People with Asperger’s often avoid face-to-face communication, preferring conversation over the Internet; many of the men I interviewed preferred email to any other form of communication. People with Asperger’s often have an encompassing preoccupation with one particular interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus, often serializing activities; many men I was in touch with logged hours and hours weekly with doll-related activities, either photographing their dolls or catching up with every post on Hello Dolly. People with autism and Asperger’s are often very imaginative; doll owners create elaborate fantasies about their dolls, and many write science fiction. And, people with Asperger’s Syndrome are often fascinated by mechanics and by the parts of objects. It would not be a stretch to say that many men on Hello Dolly are seemingly obsessed by doll parts and mechanics. Could it be that Everhard, a man who is baffled by dating and finds the prospect of emotional interaction in a relationship daunting, who told me he considers himself to be like a completely different species of human kind, who logs 10 hours every weekend on doll activities, who says that his dolls are one of the few things in life that give him pleasure, and who posts photographs and mechanical drawings related to Caroline’s upkeep, has a form of Asperger’s? Or that Griggs, the man who is happier now that he has less interaction with people, is affected by it as well? Is the ancient story of Pygmalion in fact a depiction of someone with what we now call Asperger’s? In theory, yes, says Dr. J. Arturo Silva, a psychiatrist who specializes in the intersection between Asperger’s Syndrome and sexual disorders. (Silva is the co-author of papers in the field of forensic psychiatry, including sexual serial homicidal behavior. His co-authored articles include “The Case of Jeffrey Dahmer: A Sexual Serial Homicide from a Neuropsychiatric Perspective,” published in the Journal of Forensic Science, which posits that Dahmer had Asperger’s.) There could be an as yet unexplored correlation between some doll love and high functioning autism. People with autism are often dominated by hardwired fear – fear of physical sensations, including touch, and fear of the unknown or unfamiliar. Imagine then how terrifying sex would be for someone with autism -- an intimate act, an explosion of sensation, and an outcome you cannot control. Silva expresses the problem facing autistic people as: “You want to have sex, but you’re afraid of touching other people, you’re afraid of meeting them, so how do you solve that?” Autistic people, Silva says, often reduce a love object to a physical object because they simply can’t tolerate emotion or the idea of not knowing what is going to happen next with other humans. “It makes them more comfortable to strip out all of the psychological attributes,” he told me. And Real Doll, of course, offers all the beauty of a woman and orifices that serve a man well while remaining an empty vessel. end of page 21 [ 21 ] read more ... [ 22 ][ 23 ] |
