Partners of sex doll owners?

[Sian_E]

Hello,

Thank you for all of your support, questions, and participation in research via this forum. Alongside Dr. Rebecca Lievesley at Nottingham Trent University, we are currently looking to interview a small number of people who are in a relationship with a sex doll owner. The aim of this study is to examine their perceptions of sex doll ownership, how ownership fits into their relationships, any experiences of stigma that they face, and how their partner's doll ownership makes them feel.

We will be running these interviews anonymously via Skype, with the data forming a part of a postgraduate project and future academic publication as we develop our understanding of the experiences of doll owners and their friends, families, and partners.

If you have a partner who knows about your doll ownership, we would be really interested in hearing from them. If they would be willing to take part in an interview, or if they would like more information, please have them email me at craig.harper@ntu.ac.uk, and we'll get any questions addressed.

Thanks very much,
Craig

[Sian_E]

This is just a message to increase the visibility of the original post. If there are forum posters who have partners who know about their doll ownership, please do consider asking them if they are interested in taking part in an anonymous interview.

Thank you,
Craig

[MattUK]

I still don't get why people here are happy about this. Your area of expertise and your publications seem to be exclusively about sexual offenders, sexual abuse, paedophilia and assessing how dangerous people are. Rebecca Lievesley's areas of interest seem to be pretty much in line with this. Yet people here somehow seem to think that you won't be approaching this subject with an incredible amount of bias. It seems wilfully naive to me.

[haremlover]

Well the point is for us to demonstrate a disconnexion between doll ownership and undesirable traits.

Best wishes

Harem

[kanna]

I still don't get why people here are happy about this. Your area of expertise and your publications seem to be exclusively about sexual offenders, sexual abuse, paedophilia and assessing how dangerous people are. Rebecca Lievesley's areas of interest seem to be pretty much in line with this. Yet people here somehow seem to think that you won't be approaching this subject with an incredible amount of bias. It seems wilfully naive to me.

Why do you expect them to be doing the study with a bias? Merely being an expert in evaluating how dangerous people are is not something that creates bias. Bias is born from unwillingness to accept a certain kind of result. Have you seen something that suggests, that they wouldn't accept a "not dangerous" result?

[MattUK]

Well the point is for us to demonstrate a disconnexion between doll ownership and undesirable traits.

Best wishes

Harem

Why should I consider there to be any onus on me to do that? No-one's ever asked me to demonstrate the disconnection between me drinking tea and wanting to murder people.

[MattUK]

Why do you expect them to be doing the study with a bias? Merely being an expert in evaluating how dangerous people are is not something that creates bias. Bias is born from unwillingness to accept a certain kind of result. Have you seen something that suggests, that they wouldn't accept a "not dangerous" result?

I didn't say conducting the study with a bias, I said approaching from a position of bias. The list of publications and areas of interest already point to this bias. In the author's own article, the section entitled "the argument in favour of sex dolls" starts like this:

The argument in favour of sex doll use is quite simple — these dolls are essentially pieces of latex that provide a sexual outlet for those who, for either personal or legal reasons, are not able to act out their sexual fantasies and urges in the real world.

So even in their argument for sex dolls, there's an explicit assumption that sex doll owners are living out some "dark" fantasies that they can't enact in any other way. The only question is to whether or not those weird people constitute an actual threat to wider society. And then about two-thirds of that whole section focuses on child sex dolls and paedophilia.

Do you feel that represents you? Do you feel happy to adopt the label of extreme sexual deviant, so long as you're given the opportunity to try and convince people you're not a dangerous extreme sexual deviant? You see how you're not even being afforded the option of being just a normal person with normal sexual desires who has decided to have a sex doll for whatever reason? No, the starting assumption is that you're doing something weird with them and acting out abnormal and possibly illegal desires. That's not even up for debate, all you're getting is the chance to try and show you're not dangerous.

Sorry, but fuck that.

[haremlover]

Sorry - you have the wrong end of the stick.

You and I might think we are normal but idiot women such as the infamous Dr Richardson who's so unattractive that clearly she's not been close to a man for many years and who don't understand men insist that men engage in animal activities and abuse women and even children as a matter of course. Their case is that men with dolls - no SEXdolls - must have stronger urges to do horrible things than ordinary men who just do such things to women and children and other men if they're gay. The case that they have presented is so vociferous that gutter press sides with them because perceived sexual outrage sells and to the point that they have persuaded customs officers to confiscate dolls.

We all know that that is unconstitutional, taking positive action without proof of criminal action, but that's the state of the game.

This research is all about demonstrating that Dr Richardson and their cohorts are off the planet. So it's appropriate to canvas doll owners and enthusiasts and see if they demonstrate any deviance beyond that in the doll doll population.

There is no bias in the research - the bias is from the premise that society poses to be researched. Proper academics are professionally investigating to see if that premise is correct or wholly unfounded.

Best wishes

Harem

[MattUK]

I'm sorry I just disagree. These are obviously researchers that are coming to the topic of dolls via the "back door" if you will. Their primary interest is clearly the psychology of criminals, sex offenders, sexual deviants, paedophiles etc. Their interest in the latter will have to led to the question of child sex dolls, and from there they're now interested in sex dolls in general. But the primary interest and motivation is still clearly sexual deviancy and risk of criminality. It's right there in black and white in their publication history and their writings.

Obviously the owning of dolls is itself a "deviant" act, in that it is cleary atypical and not the norm, but this is in no way an indicator that the sexualities of doll owners themselves are deviant. Indeed, the fact that the vast majority of dolls are basically designed to resemble normal human beings as closely as possible (albeit obviously skewed more towards what is considered a physical ideal), and that the owners on this site typically tend to dress the dolls like normal women, and talk about what is essentially pretty standard and vanilla sex with the dolls the vast majority of the time (unless you're particularly shocked by *gasp* anal sex perhaps), should indicate that there's nothing particularly werid and dark and sordid going on most of the time. And that's when people are even talking about the sex, which a lot of the time we aren't.

Yes it can range from very tame "making love" descriptions, to more of the frat boy level "smashing that pussy" kind of thing, but it's still basically normal sexual desire and behaviour I see talked about. I don't see people talking about how they're living out violent or dark fantasies, or using the dolls as an outlet for dangerous desires. And yet these studies pretty much seem to be taking the latter as read and are only interested in discovering if we're actually dangerous or not.

I asked in the previous thread if the same questionnaire was going to be given to "normal" people as well as doll owners, and I didn't get an answer to that. I still maintain the results will be meaningless without that.

Yes I will agree that there is a lot of negativity surrounding doll ownership, and yes I will agree that these researchers seem to be genuine in their desire to discover the reality of how "dangerous" we are, and if anything I suspect that they probably will lean towards the "not dangerous" answer. But you know what... I can just do without the advocacy of someone who is on my side purely because they think I'm a low-to-negligible risk disturbed sexual deviant. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

The only argument I'm seeing to the contrary is basically "well there are other people out there who think even worse of you, so take all the help you can get", which just seems so... defeatist and conciliatory to ignorant opinions. If it ever gets to the stage where I have an angry mob with pitchforks at my door then yes, at that point I'd probably take any advocacy or help I could get. But until it gets to that point I just find it insulting to ask for my participation on this basis.

(as a disclaimer, I am reacting more to the previous post from this poster, and the readily googleable pulication histories and bios of the researchers, than anything posted particularly in this thread. I realise what's in this thread itself isn't very much and it will probably look weird if you think I'm reacting to just that)

[kanna]

The argument in favour of sex doll use is quite simple — these dolls are essentially pieces of latex that provide a sexual outlet for those who, for either personal or legal reasons, are not able to act out their sexual fantasies and urges in the real world.

So even in their argument for sex dolls, there's an explicit assumption that sex doll owners are living out some "dark" fantasies that they can't enact in any other way. The only question is to whether or not those weird people constitute an actual threat to wider society. And then about two-thirds of that whole section focuses on child sex dolls and paedophilia.

Your interpretation of that quote is biased. That explicit assumption does not exist in the quote. I highlighted the key words that demonstrate this. It covers all normal use cases as well.

I asked in the previous thread if the same questionnaire was going to be given to "normal" people as well as doll owners, and I didn't get an answer to that. I still maintain the results will be meaningless without that.

It was answered in the questionnaire itself. The answer is yes, they are.

[haremlover]

Well the point is in well publicised cases that Border Force have intercepted a doll and the Police have then gone fishing for inappropriate photographs on the doll owner's computer. The well publicised cases where the fishing exercise has been successful has proved the point in the minds of the media-driven masses.

Phil at The Doll House had all his computers confiscated for a time so this is serious business. The findings as a result of this research currently being undertaken will be seminal and particularly important.

Looking up https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Craig_Harper2 is interesting.

https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/so ... aig-harper

His research is balanced and cutting edge.

Existing work on attitudes towards sexual offenders is largely atheoretical, meaning that little is known about the mechanisms that underpin such views.

Question 1 is whether there is any link between sexual offending and doll ownership. The public perception led by idiots such as the Richardson woman is that there is, without any evidence whatsoever. Harper is attempting to find appropriate evidence one way or the other. Not the other or one way.

Craig's emerging research is divided into two strands:

The first of these focuses on social attitudes towards marginalised sexual minority groups, and the experiences of these individuals in wider society. Examples of these groups include people who own sex/love dolls, and non-offending individuals who are attracted to children. In each of these cases, Craig's research seeks to understand the experiences and behaviours of these groups in a scientific way, and counteract some of the misrepresentations that are often present within media depictions of these individuals.

At present, my research is comprised of three strands: (1) communicating effectively about sexual crime with a view to promoting emerging prevention schemes, (2) using evolutionary approaches to understand everyday sexuality-related behaviour, and (3) investigating the symmetry between liberals and conservatives in the expression of their political views.

For instance a crucial question in relation to dolls of a nature that are universally considered to be appropriate to be banned entirely is whether they can be used in therapy for people with antisocial tendencies.

In my choice of words above I have been particularly careful so as to avoid this thread degenerating into inappropriate discussion topics beyond encouragement to participate in this research. In my view this research appears to be entirely professional and without bias investigating whether the bias generally indicated is justified or not. This research is both important and crucial.

Best wishes

Harem

[Mcupplease]

I still don't get why people here are happy about this. Your area of expertise and your publications seem to be exclusively about sexual offenders, sexual abuse, paedophilia and assessing how dangerous people are. Rebecca Lievesley's areas of interest seem to be pretty much in line with this. Yet people here somehow seem to think that you won't be approaching this subject with an incredible amount of bias. It seems wilfully naive to me.

This may not necessarily be a true assumption. For example I heard it speculated that provision of an appropriate sex doll for sexual offenders leaving prison could result in a significant drop of re-offending.

By appropriate I mean the doll that fits the desire of the individual who cannot control their overwhelming impulses to seek sexual satisfaction at all costs including hurting others.

On the other side of the fence there is argument that this creates a slippery slope and might worse than the chance of reoffending.

Currently I don't think they're are any studying to prove her disprove anything. So we need people involved in this endeavor.

[MattUK]

Your interpretation of that quote is biased. That explicit assumption does not exist in the quote. I highlighted the key words that demonstrate this. It covers all normal use cases as well.

Well even if you want to be charitable, it doesn't cover the case of people who can and do fulfil their personal urges in the real world as well ("real world" is also an odd phrase to choose here). There are plenty of doll owners who are also in sexual relationships, or who have sexual encounters from time to time. As I say it's just (at least implicitly, if you wont accept explicitly) it's just assuming doll owners are either after something weird/dodgy they can't have for real, or that if they just have normal desires then they can't get these satisfied anywhere else.

It was answered in the questionnaire itself. The answer is yes, they are.

I didn't take the questionnaire. This is something I would have wanted answering before even doing so.

[MattUK]

For instance a crucial question in relation to dolls of a nature that are universally considered to be appropriate to be banned entirely is whether they can be used in therapy for people with antisocial tendencies.

While I'm sure that's a very worthwhile topic of research, it's still like a bit like posting on a gay forum about how you'd like the members to participate in a questionnaire about whether or not they like to have sex with individuals for which the act would be "universally considerer to be appropriate to be banned entirely". I don't think it would be unreasonable for the members of said board to be insulted by the implied link between the two activities.

[Mcupplease]

I forgot to mention I think that the study method possibly has a flaw.
If there is a doll owner with a partner and feels that they are on thin ice having their partner accept the situation, this is the last person who is going to be offering up their partner to do a survey.