Married to a Doll: Why One Man Advocates Synthetic Love

[undeterred]

Davecat lives with his wife and mistress, both dolls, and thinks synthetic partners are ideal for those who don't want to deal with humans' inconsistencies.

by Julie Beck Sept 5 2013


Davecat met his future wife, Sidore Kuroneko at a goth club in 2000, so the story goes. The less romantic but perhaps more true version is that he saved up for a year and a half to buy her online. She cost about $6,000.

Sidore is a RealDoll, manufactured by Abyss Creations in the shape of a human woman. She is covered in artificial skin made of silicone, so she’s soft. These high-end, anatomically correct—even equipped with fake tongues—love dolls (or capital-D Dolls) are ostensibly made for sex. But 40-year-old Davecat (a nickname acquired from videogames that he now prefers to go by) and others who call themselves iDollators see their dolls as life partners, not sex toys. Davecat and Sidore (or, as he sometimes calls her, Shi-chan) obviously aren’t legally married, but they do have matching wedding bands that say “Synthetik [sic] love lasts forever,” and he says they’re considering some sort of ceremony for their 15th anniversary.

Davecat considers himself an activist for synthetic love, and the rights of synthetic humans, such as Shi-chan. He’s active online, with an iDollator blog, “Shouting to hear the echoes,” that he updates regularly, and has appeared on TLC’s show My Strange Addiction, as well as in a BBC documentary called Guys and Dolls. According to the backstory of Davecat’s relationships, his Doll mistress (and Sidore’s girlfriend), Elena Vostrikova, saw Davecat and Sidore in Guys and Dolls and moved from Russia to be with them. Davecat purchased Elena, or Lenka, in 2012, and the three of them now share a one-bedroom apartment in southeastern Michigan.

I spoke with Davecat over email about the ups and downs of synthetic relationships. When and why did you purchase your first Doll? Were you thinking of companionship at the time, or was it just for sex? I bought Shi-chan back in 2000. Admittedly, my reasons for purchasing her were 70 percent sex, 30 percent companionship. I've always been attracted to artificial women such as mannequins, and especially Gynoids, which are robots made in the likeness of human females. In late 1998 one of my best friends, showed me the RealDoll website, as she knew I was keen on artificial women. I thought they were gorgeous creations, and having one would not only dispel loneliness, but be excellent for sex as well. And I was right!

When did you start feeling like Sidore was not just a sex toy but someone/something you were in a relationship with? It actually didn't take me too long to regard Shi-chan as a synthetic person, and not simply a thing; it occurred pretty much when I opened her crate for the first time. I was immediately stunned by her lifelike beauty, and after I mentally collected myself, extracted her from her crate, and sat her down on the couch, I just held her in my arms for a while. It felt so right and natural, if you'll pardon the pun. It seemed perfectly normal for me to treat something that resembles an organic woman the same way I'd treat an actual organic woman.

Read more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/married-to-a-doll-why-one-man-advocates-synthetic-love/279361/

[NV Whino]

1. Okie-dokey, then.

[Warpy]

2. BBC has done a documentary on these guys.

Most of them fantasized some sort of relationship. For them, the dolls were perfect women who never talked back, never aged, never gained an ounce, and were utterly passive sexually. A minority dated real women.

I'd say they're ideal for a certain type of man.

[Nay]

10. "They're ideal for a certain type of man." Yup. It's really only a step up from those boys/men

in Japan who won't come out of their rooms, ever. In fact, I hope to see the day that large numbers of men, having access to very realistic walking, talking female robots, leave us real women to manage real life without their input. I notice that the interest in such robots, according to the interviewee, is 99% male (male robots are also bought overwhelmingly by males) -- women don't seem that interested in such way-out-there fantasy lives. If they're like me, they 1) have too much to do; 2) truly do appreciate real human relationships rather than fantasy; and 3) aren't 'toy' fixated the way so many grown men seem to be.

[Cleita]

3. He's very creepy looking. I'm glad he's into inanimate objects because I can't imagine

that any relationship with a real human would end well.

[undeterred]

4. I thought that was one of the synthetic guy dolls.

But maybe you're right and its the person in the article. This is incredibly sad.

Edit: Anyone making synthetic guy dolls would have to give them better hair than that.

[Warpy]

11. Funny, I looked twice, myself

but I think the synthetic male dolls (which are likely also bought by men) are probably modeled after Superman actors and are considerably more buff.

If you want a $6000+ sex object, you want to get your money's worth.

[Shrike47]

5. One of my cases involved a man who insisted he was married to a chicken.

They were happy at first, they would sit on the couch and watch TV together, but they eventually disagreed and he strangled her.

[undeterred]

6. What were they watching when they disagreed?

[awoke_in_2003]

8. Did he fix supper...

after choking his chicken?

[BlueJazz]

7. I've got someone special like that.

[eShirl]

9. "Lars and the Real Girl"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/

[cbayer]

17. Loved it!

[LiberalElite]

12. I recall seeing a program several years ago on cable

about women in England who were totally involved with infant dolls and treated them as if they were alive.

[Nay]

13. I remember that too! It leads me to think that both of these doll fixations point out quite

the gulf between the mentalities of men and women. It's hard not to be critical of the impulse men have toward sex all the time with anything, and it's hard to be critical of women's desire to mother a baby even if it's not real. Men's sexual impulses, whether they mean it or not, have led to plenty of destruction and misery; generally, you can't really say that about women's impulses to mother and help out.

[undeterred]

14. But I have the feeling that society considers it more acceptable for men

to interact with synthetic woman than for women to interact with synthetic babies. The former is simply an option or a purchase whereas the latter is pathologized.

[mainer]

15. Very glad these men don't reproduce

They deserve to be evolutionary dead ends. Someday they will be found rotting in their apartments, covered in maggots ... and no one will ever notice they've been missing.

[undeterred]

18. But their women will still look great!

[CTyankee]

16. This could be the basis for a "Twilight Zone" episode...

In fact, wasn't there one about a woman who turns into a store mannequin?