In his article on critical making, Matt Ratto explains that the shared process of construction can foster connections between the social and the technological. He posits that acts of creation facilitate a personal investment, a “caring for” (259) that may not be found in the technical or social otherwise. Conversely, Debbie Chachra argues that the traditionally male domain of maker culture “devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving” (6). The concept of care stood out in both of these readings, and I think the theme surfaces in particularly telling ways within robotic/technological iterations of “femininity.”

The idea of caretaking, and particularly women-as-caretakers, is complex. One one hand, important acts like education and emotional labour are not valorized as much as “making,” and Chachra notes these acts are most often performed by women. On the other hand, the rhetoric of women-as-caretakers has too often reduced “caregiving” into tired tropes — all while promoting a kind of essentialist divide between genders.

The problem surfaces in technological examples like the Real Doll: a woman-shaped construct of metal and silicone intended to provide sexual, logical, and emotional “care.” A look into the plasticized hyperbole of the Real Doll reveals the most troubling interpretations of gendered concepts of caretaking.

The Real Doll is an uncanny venue to observe the manifestation of technology, socially-constructed gender and — since its renewed programming in 2015 — artificial intelligence, which perhaps adds a new ethical qualm in the mix.

As Chachra notes, a culture of “making” inherits a sexist history, and the idea of the woman-humanoid caretaker is not a new one. The Real Doll was created in the ’90s, though a renewed interest has formed due to this year’s introduction of AI technology. Yet the premise is age-old. In the Iliad, Hephaestus crafts female servants out of metal: “like living servant girls, possessing minds, / hearts with intelligence, vocal chords, and strength” (18, 517-18). The Twilight Zone episode “I Sing The Body Electric,” written by Ray Bradbury in ’62, eerily foreshadows the contemporary process of creating a Real Doll. (The woman-robot being created in this clip is intended to be a caretaker for the children.)

The language forming this gendered divide in technology is equally revealing. The etymology of the term “android” is masculine; the word is now associated with the ubiquitous Google OS, and is somewhat of a de facto term for cutting-edge tech intelligence. A more classic fictional example of an android would be something like C3P0 in Star Wars: a male-gendered helper-figure for both organization and battle. The gendered prefix’s opposite is “gynoid” – a look through technologies tagged with this term reveals robots which are more explicit in their caregiving and/or sexualized functionalities.

Zooming in on the Real Doll, we can see how its creation was founded on social demand for a kind of companion, one whose role is as much sexual partner as it is confidante and knowledge-calculating “caretaker.” Here’s a quote from a Vanity Fair article which highlights the origins of Abyss Creations, manufacturer of the Real Doll, from CEO and creator Matt McMullen:

By 1994, when he wasn’t working odd jobs or playing in grunge bands, McMullen, who had studied art in college, was sculpting a female figure at home . . . “I started this whole thing in my garage as a hobby, a project, and it kind of took on a life of its own . . . as a concept I had for a posable sculpture—a highly realistic mannequin, I guess, is the best way to describe it.” In the past he has said it was more of a “joke” or “funky art piece” than anything and became a sex device only because of “the public’s demand” (Gurley).

McMullen hired a team of Doll-makers “to keep abreast of the latest technologies and push the industry in new and exciting directions” (Ferguson 44). I understand that the work of Abyss Creations is not a perfect example of Ratto’s “critical making” because, in this sense, the end result is the most important part — the Doll is a form of capital, the driving force behind the team. While this warehouse is certainly not the academically-sanctioned space that Ratto details, I do think the formal process is somewhat similar. The Doll-makers take a question of the social into consideration — the Platonic ideal of a sexualized caretaker-figure, as philosophical as you’d like it — and, in their selection of materials and “personality” programming, therefore indicate the social biases impinging on their conceptions of the aforementioned.

Here’s a peek into the process of creating a Real Doll, from base “body” parts to artificial intelligence. It reveals an aesthetic bias that probably carries over from pornography. The figures bat their eyes, pucker their lips. They are performative by proxy, and appear to be programmed primarily by men.

Why consider the Dolls caretaker-figures and not, simply, sex toys? As McMullen stresses,

“We’re trying to create the simulation of a caring, intelligent being that can look out for you and even work in the sense of a personal assistant like Siri. It can remind you of things, it can connect to home automation features” (Yan).

Caring is key. The Real Doll, for its owners, is no mere plaything; it offers a form of unconditional companionship (and supposedly helpful logic). A documentary on Real Doll owners highlights a commonality — the dolls are much more than toys. Biographies written on forums like DollForum.com indicate various backgrounds and skill-sets. Now, as AI technology has advanced, it’s interesting that sentience (or as much unique response as the technology will allow, thus far) appears part of the ideal package, too. The Doll-speech indicated in the video is that of nurturing, encouragement, emotional support, and servitude. “Wherever you go, there’s a virtual Real Doll in your phone or computer – she’s talking to you at work and then when you get home, you put on the Oculus Rift,” McMullen explains in the video, adding that this kind of Doll-talk is not only nurturing, it’s sexually appealing — now the Doll can “arouse someone on an emotional, intellectual level, beyond the physical.” Of course, the Doll’s”emotional response” is mediated entirely by its maker.

(photo: Martin Gutierrez)

This ties into what Chachra writes of maker culture and gender. Chachra’s thesis is introduced in this quote:

“Almost all the artifacts that we value as a society were made by or at the order of men. But behind one is an invisible infrastructure of labor — primarily caregiving, in its various aspects — that is mostly performed by women” (2).

The Real Doll is a literal manifestation of this problem: it’s an artifact produced by the gaze of a “maker culture” with a male-dominated history. I don’t know if it’s really a synthetic reduction of some of the “deeper, richer, messier, less reproducible” (Chachra 4) behaviours associated with emotional labour – but, nonetheless, it seems to exploit a female connection to caregiving. This comment on the above YouTube video (I know, I know) sums it up:

(To note, there are male Real Dolls “with less demand and a smaller range of options” (Ferguson 45) which are not photographed in many exposés. They make up less than 10% of sales and my sources did not focus on them for more than a sentence or two. They do not seem to garner the same intrigue. I wonder why?)

Finally, to further connections to “maker” culture, monetary constraints have led to, erm, interesting DIY ways of attaining a Real Doll-esque doll when funds do not permit the real thing. Certainly, the cost (upwards of $5 K) is prohibitive to most people. Yet dozens of online forums are dedicated to sharing knowledge, indicating not only a larger desire for Real Dolls, but a DIY ethos dedicated to imitating the ideal.

ourdollcommunity.com

brobible.com

As Ratto indicates, “using a shared process of making as a common space for experimentation encourages the development of a collective frame” (253). (And maybe the development of nightmares?)

The Real Doll remains on the pop-culture periphery. It’s a niche product; the Doll does not appear posed for social takeover, despite the claim that “robot sex partners will be commonplace by 2025” (Gurley). In fact, photographs of Real Dolls shot by renowned photographer Helmut Newton were rejected from a Playboy spread meant to fetishize them — they were deemed too uncanny, too not-real for the mainstream, ironically.

And, to play devil’s advocate, I can understand that the Dolls offer a form of sexuality and companionship which some people may not be able to find otherwise – though there is no one prototype of a customer, the buyers vary from Hollywood big-shots to recently widowed men. I’m hesitant to condemn anyone’s sexual fetishes, either. More disturbing, for me, is the idea that “female” care can somehow be “mimicked” in technology, that those “deeper, richer” acts could be  replicated synthetically.

(photo: Barry J. Holmes)

I can’t help but feel the Doll evokes the weighted history that Chachra alludes to in her article. The Dolls are a reminder of how the dominant cultural ideology attempts to scrutinize, control, appropriate, and monetize the female body. A “maker’s culture” produces the object-proof of such problems.

Chachra concludes her article by writing, “Caregivers . . . [their] work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell.” Certainly not, but it appears that’s what the Real Doll affords its patrons — a sexualized distillation of the idea of care in one silicone framework.

Works Cited

Anthony, Sebastian. “RealDoll is working on AI and robotic heads for its next-gen sex dolls.” Arstechnica, June 15 2015. Web.

Canepari, Zackary, Drea Cooper and Emma Cott. “The Uncanny Lover.” The New York Times, June 11 2015. Web.

Chachra, Debbie. “Why I Am Not a Maker.” The Atlantic, Jan. 23 2015. Web. 1-6.

Ferguson, Anthony. The Sex Doll: A History. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2010.

Gurley, George. “Is This the Dawn of the Sexbots?” Vanity Fair, April 30 2015. Web.

Ratto, Matt. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.” The Information Society, 27: 252–260, 2011. Web.

Yan, Laura. “A Q&A with the Creator of Artificially Intelligent Sex Dolls.” PSFK, September 2015. Web.