September 19, 2017 | Sex & Society

Sex dolls meet the sharing economy

The sharing economy has had an enormous impact in certain fields; just look at AirBNB and Uber, for instance.

Enter Touch, a Chinese firm that last week unveiled a (female) sex doll rental service. For about $45 a day, customers could choose from a large variety of models (including a Wonder Woman clone).

Using the Touch app, customers could customize outfits and hair-styles, add extras such as handcuffs and whips and opt to have the doll “warmed up” prior to delivery (God knows how). 

Given that state-of-the-art silicone sex dolls can cost thousands of dollars, the idea had potential. But the service was shut down by police less than a week after it started. We don't know the precise reason. Communist prudishness? Public health concerns?

Would Touch have been a runaway success if it had not been stopped by the authorities? It's hard to say. On the one hand, the idea of sharing any sort of sex toy with a complete stranger (no matter what the between-use sterilization process is) does have a certain ick factor to it. Even though having casual sex with other humans is much more likely to cause an infection than fucking a sharable doll, the latter just seems dirtier.

We're still waiting for walking, talking male sexbots before we buy -- or rent.

Fun’s over: You can no longer rent a sex doll in China. Here’s what happened. Hindustan Times