Sex Dolls in the Swedish Media Discourse: Intimacy, Sexuality, and Technology

Björkas, Robin; Larsson, Mariah

doi:10.1007/s12119-021-09829-6

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Sampling elsewhere, be it other digital spaces or in physical environments, would expand our understanding of people's subjective experiences with human-like and personified sex tech. Purposive or quota sampling approaches could be useful here, especially for work that seeks to dispel stereotypes perpetuated by media coverage (Björkas and Larsson (2021); DiTecco and Karaian ( 2023)).…”

Section: R Hanson / a Methodological Reckoning For The Empirical Stud...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A methodological reckoning for the empirical study of sex doll and sex robot issues

Hanson

2023

FRL

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In light of repeated calls for empirically driven analyses of sex doll and sex robot owners and users, I outline key methodological challenges researchers in this field currently face. I discuss how methodological limitations have shaped the field thus far and narrowed the scope of empirical research to date. To resolve these issues, I propose strategies for improving archival, quantitative, and qualitative approaches for future scholarship. Specifically, I attend to issues of historicity, nomenclature, population, sampling, qualitative approaches, and research ethics. I conclude with a discussion of how the stigma associated with sex dolls, sex robots, and sex tech amplifies the need for researchers to respect and adhere to ethical research practices yet still maintain a critical distance that directly confronts, rather than skirts, dilemmas related to use, ownership, and production. This methodological reckoning will help scholars design more robust studies and effectively evaluate innovations in the field.

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Section: R Hanson / a Methodological Reckoning For The Empirical Stud...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A methodological reckoning for the empirical study of sex doll and sex robot issues

Hanson

2023

FRL

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“…With sex doll ownership being a controversial topic of growing importance both socially and legally (Björkas & Larsson, 2021), a standardized measure of stigmatizing attitudes to sex doll ownership is a much-needed development if empirical research is to progress in line with such debates (Harper & Lievesley, 2020). This is because the standardization of the measurement of these attitudes can help us, as a field, to uniformly agree on the most appropriate conceptualization of attitudes toward this group and to avoid the temptation to frame our research questions and design our study materials in line with our a priori views and ideological positions.…”

Section: Why Do We Need a Measure Of Stigmatizing Attitudes To Sex Do...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Subsequently, debates on the acceptability of ownership and the characteristics of owners are receiving increased attention in social, legal, and academic circles (Björkas & Larsson, 2021;Harper & Lievesley, 2020;Langcaster-James & Bentley, 2018;Maras & Shapiro, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes toward sex doll ownership: Scale development and preliminary validation

Harper¹,

Lievesley²,

Woodward³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Sex dolls are beginning to become more mainstream, both in the public’s consciousness and in academic research. However, there is no current systematic examination of public attitudes toward sex dolls within the peer-reviewed literature, which represents a barrier to the efficient study on this topic. In this paper we report the development and initial validation of such a measure. Using an international public sample (N = 377) we found that public attitudes toward sex doll owners were underpinned by three factors: ‘Acceptability of Doll Ownership’, ‘Doll Owners as Immoral’, and ‘Doll Owners as Dysfunctional’. Scores on each of these factors, which make up the Sex Doll Ownership Attitudes Scale (SDOAS), were predicted by participant sex, religiosity, permissive sexual attitudes, right-wing authoritarianism, and the endorsement of moral intuitions that favor personal liberty. We present a full form 66-item version of the SDOAS, as well as an 18-item short form which both possess strong psychometric properties. We highlight potential future uses of the SDOAS as this emerging field of study continues to rapidly grow.

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“…Widespread appearance of sex dolls and sex robots in mass media (Björkas & Larsson, 2021 ) and the sex tech industry’s recent boom (Hanson, 2022a ; Yasir Arafat & Kar, 2021 ) have increased attention on sex dolls, with some scholars speculating that hypergendered and hypersexualized designs may influence people’s sexual desires (Hanson & Locatelli, 2022 ). The primary aim of this brief report is to empirically assess sex doll designs and compare them to human bodies so that scholars can better understand to what extent sex dolls exaggerate human characteristics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Doll Specifications versus Human Body Characteristics

Hanson,

Döring,

Walter

2024

Arch Sex Behav

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Sex dolls have been criticized for reproducing unrealistic expectations about human bodies. Yet precise sex doll measurements are lacking in the literature nor has there been any systematic attempt to determine the extent to which sex dolls exaggerate human characteristics. To address this gap, we compared the specifications of sex dolls marketed in the USA with the characteristics of women and men living in the USA. Specifically, we tested if and to what degree female dolls were slimmer (H1) and male dolls more muscular (H2) than female and male humans, respectively. Furthermore, we tested if and to what degree female dolls’ breasts (H3) and male dolls’ penises (H4) were larger than those of women and men. We also tested if sex dolls’ observed race/ethnicity was more often White than that of the US population (H5). In 2023, we collected the measures of all 757 full-body sex dolls marketed by the US retailer SexyRealSexDolls.com. Body measures from the US population were extracted from scientific literature. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed using R. All hypotheses were fully or partially confirmed, which indicated that sex dolls marketed in the USA are not realistic depictions of the US population but hypergendered (H1, H2), hypersexualized (H3, H4), and racially fetishized (H5). Implications of the lack of realism are discussed.

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Sex Dolls in the Swedish Media Discourse: Intimacy, Sexuality, and Technology

Cited by 12 publications

References 18 publications

A methodological reckoning for the empirical study of sex doll and sex robot issues

A methodological reckoning for the empirical study of sex doll and sex robot issues

Attitudes toward sex doll ownership: Scale development and preliminary validation

Sex Doll Specifications versus Human Body Characteristics

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