Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible. – Mason Cooley
I will never understand the compelling human desire to believe in fantasy. As anyone who has read this blog for any length of time is well aware, I love fantasy and science fiction; my favorite books, stories, movies, TV shows and other entertainments fall into those genres or closely-related ones, and most of my own writing is firmly ensconced in the realm of the fantastic. But that’s entertainment, not life; as those who know me in person can tell you, I’m deeply pragmatic and firmly grounded in reality. The idea of expending more than a token portion of resources on fancies is completely incomprehensible to me; I have never understood the appeal of window shopping, and I have often been heard to snort derisively at asinine platitudes about “following your dreams”. Yes, some people are wealthy enough to build themselves amusement parks, and others fortunate enough to be able to pursue something more or less resembling their ideal lives. But for most people, efforts to ignore reality are doomed to failure.
Fantasies which only involve things (such as building one’s “dream house” or writing a bestseller) may be unattainable, but when they are they’re still generally harmless to others. Unfortunately, many individual blueprints for Utopia demand that other individuals conform to the dreamer’s moronic fantasies about “proper” human behavior, and while those are always doomed to disappointment, they have considerable potential to wreck the lives of others. If the person suffering such a delusion has money, political power or social influence he can wreak havoc on anyone who gets in the way of his impossible program of social engineering, and even those who don’t have access to such resources are dangerous when they share the mad fantasies of those who do.
One such fantasy, popular for roughly the last century and a half, is the idea that prostitution can (and should) be “abolished”; people who adhere to this particular pipe dream always pretend to some sort of moral high ground, generally involving a deity or deities and/or some apotheosized principle of “equality” or “purity” or “intimacy” or other Utopian vacuity. What their actual motives might be they usually won’t say, though it’s easy enough to guess. Sometimes, as in the case of the “sex robot” nonsense I’ve mocked so often, the desire is rooted in the rather sad desire of socially-awkward men to be free of what they see as the “burden” of having to give money (or anything else) to women in order to get sex:
If internet porn leaves you cold, and you can’t manage the hassle of finding a real, live, woman to have sex with, a Japanese company has an attractive offer for you…Tenga has introduced a virtual reality bodysuit that simulates sexual intercourse, and takes partners out of the equation…The Illusion VR bodysuit comes equipped with a Tenga masturbation device that stimulates the penis, and with grope-able fake breasts. The suit sends “impulses all over the wearer’s body to make it feel like another human being is touching them”…The device was created for use with Illusion’s Oculus game “Sexy Beach,” which lets players customize female avatars and have sex with them in virtual reality, while being stimulated to orgasm in actual reality. The suit costs $400 and is already sold out…the technology might also be used “for intimate cyber meet-ups with those you may or may not know personally,” and even threaten the livelihoods of sex workers down the line…
Yeah, no. Just in case the video isn’t enough to convince you, please let me assure you that until virtual reality reaches the Star Trek holodeck level, only men who are basically satisfied with a blow-up doll are going to find this toy a replacement for real live whores, despite the fact that the device’s price tag would buy only a single hour with me.
Whether you sympathize with, feel sorry for, or giggle at such goofy schemes to eliminate harlots, I think we can all agree that they’re harmless. Even if you think fixating on such a device is “unhealthy” (an analysis with which I would disagree, but that’s a discussion for another day), surely you must admit that it’s only unhealthy to the user and nobody else. Unfortunately, there are many other people whose fantasy of a whore-free world is not satisfied by merely removing themselves from the equation; these sociopaths will not be satisfied until the last whore is dead of starvation or confined in a sweatshop, and the last man who might even think about purchasing her services is locked in a cage. Obviously, this warped idea is even less moored to reality than that of “virtual sex”, because instead of trying to satisfy men’s needs with robots, its proponents want to terrorize people into celibacy:
France is to make it illegal to pay for sex after MPs finally approved new legislation…following more than two years of rows and opposition by senators…There would be a €1,500 (£1,200) fine for a first offence, rising to €3,750 for a second, which would also be put on the person’s criminal record. The offender would be forced to attend [brainwashing sessions]…the final vote was delayed after several hearings owing to sharp divisions between the lower parliamentary chamber and the senate…Socialist MP Maud Olivier…said the aim was to “reduce [prostitution]…and to change mentalities”…
If you don’t find the find the concept of a law designed to “change mentalities” (via forced propaganda sessions packed with lies) about a basic human activity to be utterly horrifying, you’ve probably been watching or reading about too many fictional dystopias. Unless humans eventually abandon physical bodies altogether, there will never be a world in which people don’t trade what they have for what they want, and that means there will always be people willing to pay for the fulfillment of their sexual fantasies. But if I do cling to one unrealistic dream, it’s that the human race eventually arrives at a point where nobody has the power to use violence to force their own evil sex fantasies on everyone else.
I’d totally buy an Illusion VR Suit if I had a dick, but it’s really just hands-free masturbation, & by no means does it qualify as actual *sex*. Plus, you have to be into fantasizing about anime women, at least so far. This is a very niche market we’re talking about. A popular one, no doubt, but by no means universal.
Well said. Applies to a lot of other questions of belief as well but none more ridiculous than this.
I also fully agree to something on the level of a Star Trek holodeck being needed, not only for fully immersive porn, but for VR in general. And that is not only for sensory input, but also because holodeck characters have actually working intelligence and can interact from a credible simulation of understanding. If that is even possible for computers is completely unclear at this time, and the longer I follow AI research, the less likely it seems to me.
I agree with you.
It’s sad that there are some people who want to force their choices on others, whether believing themselves to be the “moral guardians” of the society or otherwise.
People’s choices in life should be respected, insofar as it is not inconsistent with the cause of humanity.
Of course, what politicians and lawmakers fail to understand that there is no way voluntary sex work is against the cause (read, good) of humanity.
“Morality” doesn’t come into play anywhere. A democracy doesn’t run on morality, it runs on freedom of choice.
And, if anything, decriminalizing sex work, as it has repeatedly been shown by research, only improves the condition of the sex workers and also the trafficked. Surely, that is moral.
That suit reminds me of the vagina dentata myth, or more to the point, of a 1978 German doctoral dissertation “penis wounds resulting from masturbation with vacuum cleaners“, documenting 8 cases recorded of men who had inserted their equipment into a classic model. There are only 11 cm between the mouth of the apparatus and the propeller blades.
Ouch!
One could suppose that there are more amateurs for safer models…
Fascinatingly, one case was father and son, where the son injured himself first, the father found out and did not believe the son. He then managed to injure himself as well when trying it out to verify the son’s explanation. Talk about even more stupid…
Wow! That would make them candidates for a double Darwin award…
(But the bozos might technically still be able to spread their genes about).
Fantasies are just more real than reality.
For us, it’s religion, for a chimp, it’s an everyday fact: He lives in a tiny world, created by the wisdom and strength of his alpha male, who protects his flock from the demons of jungle Hell. The more brain cells we grew, the less sustainable became this world view, until we had to replace it with fiction – a fantasy, a virtual zoo cage, a last refuge for our inner ape. Our big brains keep dragging us out of this cage as well, but till now, the ape’s still there, he’s still much stronger than reason, and he still sees the world through his ancient eyes.
For example, in ape world, strange males sneaking out of the jungle to steal your females were a common threat. That’s why Dracula and Cinderella are so popular, that’s why people easily believe in mythical seducers, like the Devil or the Pimp. That’s why, if you want to turn halfway reasonable people into a raging lynch mob, you just need to scream: “They’re stealing our women!”
Human world is much bigger than that of an ape, so the threats, numbers and everything else has to be inflated proportionally. In an ape gang, the alpha god would actually be able to curb prostitution, since leaving his range of perception would mean lethal danger for his subjects. In human world, it’s just natural instinct for our wannabe gods to try to achieve the same level of control. It’s also natural for an ape god to try to determine everybody’s sexual behavior. Present-day fantasies are based on past realities, and a lot of behavior that seems just bizarre today would make perfect sense in a very distant past.
In the end, it all boils down to that – an ape, happy to see something seemingly understandable in an increasingly confusing, strange, human world.
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The reality is that the electronics revolution is causing desocializing to increasingly become the norm except virtually. God, give me a sweaty woman with breasts and vagina, to tongue or slap pubic areas together with until we are satiated, exhausted, or bored. Grant me friends to dine with, and have conversations about everything and nothing. E-mail and facebook are nice for keeping in touch when you are away from each other, but they should never take the place of direct human interaction, despite its many faults.
I couldn’t agree more on the point that trying to abolish prostitution is a ludicrous notion, but as a writer for a blog on a popular Virtual Porn site, I can say I’m not too certain that either the Tenga or the Illusion Bodysuit (or VR Porn for that matter) is meant in any way to replace real Women, but is there rather for those people who either *can’t* get with a real Woman for one reason or another, or just as a novel new way of getting off.
As for whether or not I sympathize at lame attempts to eliminate harlots (of which, as I mentioned, I do not think Virtual reality is attempting to do), hell no. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. First of all, it will *never happen*. Hookers aren’t just out there because people want them to be, but because they *need* to be.
Instead of eliminating the trade, people should concentrate their efforts on making it safer. Much as the same idea of ending the war on drugs will help get it off the streets and into controlled environments.