The doll in the Andrew Dobson case:
thoughtfully pixelated by the British Press
so as not to cause offence or arouse illicit desire
Following the prosecution and jailing last month of 49-year-old Andrew Dobson for attempting to import a supposedly childlike mannequin - deemed to be an indecent object - into the UK from Hong Kong, moral and legal experts have been debating the ethics of non-consensual relations with increasingly sophisticated and apparently soon-to-be sentient sex dolls - particularly when designed to appear underage.
Seeing as this is a subject on which I have previously written at some length, I feel entitled to offer my own thoughts here ...
Firstly, I'd like to point out that - contrary to what's been claimed in some quarters - this is not the first time that an item of this nature have been stopped from entering the country. In fact, sex dolls were banned from doing so back in 1876 on the grounds that as objects used primarily to facilitate human sexual pleasure they were inherently obscene.
However, this ban was lifted in 1987 under European free trade agreements, so I'm not sure on what grounds border force officials at East Midlands Airport were entitled to intercept the doll addressed to Dobson and alert the police who subsequently arrested him at his home.
Secondly, as Dobson's defence counsel Simon Parry pointed out during his trial at Chester Crown Court, although the prosecution insisted on describing the doll as childlike it was more accurate to describe it as child sized. Even the forensic physician and paediatric consultant who examined the doll on behalf of the prosecution, only agreed its size would be consistent with that of a girl aged between four and six were it a child - but, of course, it's not a child; it's a doll that hasn't been manufactured to a realistic adult scale.
Parry also mentioned the mitigating fact that there was nothing in the online promotional material or sales description, indicating that it should be thought of as a child sex doll.
Now - just to be clear - I'm not saying that Dobson isn't the twisted pervert that some in the media have made him out to be; he was discovered to have pornographic images of children on his computer and pleaded guilty to both making and possessing such images. However, I do not think buying a silicone doll on ebay for sexual gratification - be it in the form of a child, an animal, or an alien entity - should be a criminal offence.
Members of the Cheshire constabulary and tabloid journalists may find it sickening that some individuals choose to indulge dark masturbatory fantasies involving perverse acts and illicit paraphilias, but it's surely important to realise that real acts with objects simply aren't the same as actual acts with bodies.
Ultimately, I suspect that in addition to the legitimate concerns surrounding paedophilia there are other forms of puritanism and prejudice at play here. Thus it is, for example, that in closing Judge Nathanial Berkson said he was disgusted to think that such dolls even existed: "The user would be, in effect, able to simulate sex with a child" - and heaven forbid that should be allowed, for, as Baudrillard provocatively suggested, simulation is the gravest sin of all in the eyes of those defenders of the Real.
The authorities, in other words, find a self-consciously simulated act or virtual crime far more disconcerting and dangerous than a real one. If you rape a child, you clearly transgress the law and thus paradoxically reaffirm the criminal justice system. But if you simulate the rape of a child, it throws a spanner in the works and you expose the essential immorality - and absurdity - of a system that rests on a set of values that are ultimately null and void.
Of course, this doesn't mean the authorities won't respond exactly as if you committed a real crime - indeed, as Dobson has now discovered, they may very well come down even harder upon you.
And all the while I can hear David Bowie singing ...
Seeing as this is a subject on which I have previously written at some length, I feel entitled to offer my own thoughts here ...
Firstly, I'd like to point out that - contrary to what's been claimed in some quarters - this is not the first time that an item of this nature have been stopped from entering the country. In fact, sex dolls were banned from doing so back in 1876 on the grounds that as objects used primarily to facilitate human sexual pleasure they were inherently obscene.
However, this ban was lifted in 1987 under European free trade agreements, so I'm not sure on what grounds border force officials at East Midlands Airport were entitled to intercept the doll addressed to Dobson and alert the police who subsequently arrested him at his home.
Secondly, as Dobson's defence counsel Simon Parry pointed out during his trial at Chester Crown Court, although the prosecution insisted on describing the doll as childlike it was more accurate to describe it as child sized. Even the forensic physician and paediatric consultant who examined the doll on behalf of the prosecution, only agreed its size would be consistent with that of a girl aged between four and six were it a child - but, of course, it's not a child; it's a doll that hasn't been manufactured to a realistic adult scale.
Parry also mentioned the mitigating fact that there was nothing in the online promotional material or sales description, indicating that it should be thought of as a child sex doll.
Now - just to be clear - I'm not saying that Dobson isn't the twisted pervert that some in the media have made him out to be; he was discovered to have pornographic images of children on his computer and pleaded guilty to both making and possessing such images. However, I do not think buying a silicone doll on ebay for sexual gratification - be it in the form of a child, an animal, or an alien entity - should be a criminal offence.
Members of the Cheshire constabulary and tabloid journalists may find it sickening that some individuals choose to indulge dark masturbatory fantasies involving perverse acts and illicit paraphilias, but it's surely important to realise that real acts with objects simply aren't the same as actual acts with bodies.
Ultimately, I suspect that in addition to the legitimate concerns surrounding paedophilia there are other forms of puritanism and prejudice at play here. Thus it is, for example, that in closing Judge Nathanial Berkson said he was disgusted to think that such dolls even existed: "The user would be, in effect, able to simulate sex with a child" - and heaven forbid that should be allowed, for, as Baudrillard provocatively suggested, simulation is the gravest sin of all in the eyes of those defenders of the Real.
The authorities, in other words, find a self-consciously simulated act or virtual crime far more disconcerting and dangerous than a real one. If you rape a child, you clearly transgress the law and thus paradoxically reaffirm the criminal justice system. But if you simulate the rape of a child, it throws a spanner in the works and you expose the essential immorality - and absurdity - of a system that rests on a set of values that are ultimately null and void.
Of course, this doesn't mean the authorities won't respond exactly as if you committed a real crime - indeed, as Dobson has now discovered, they may very well come down even harder upon you.
And all the while I can hear David Bowie singing ...
