grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

Sure you were, smacky. Sure you were.

I really want to have kids someday myself, so, I should be the one to talk, but getting a kitten to scratch that itch, if you think about it, that should be even more...

Don't get me wrong. I've helped with doggie rescue, I'm pretty passionate about pets. ...but, you know, if you get a doll instead of having a kid, at least you're not jumping species to scratch that itch. You know?

It's like grown men wearing pajamas with the feet sewn in--keeping your feet warm shouldn't be so weird. ...but it is.

What are you trying to insinuate about Jerry Sizzler, Ken? You know what? I don't want to hear it! :P

Just let me mourn the loss of Jerry in peace, mmmkay?

To tell you the truth, I was thinking about it quite oppositely from your standpoint, Ken. At this moment in time, "Do you want to have kids?" sounds more to me like "Do you want to have a pet monkey or three"? No, not currently. If I can master caring for a small dog financially, I think then maybe someday I could move onto something that requires even more care and attention and money.

Srsly...if pets are teh expensive...kids = teh expensiver. I wouldn't want to be worrying about sending someone to college in this economic climate. OTOH, Jerry Sizzler wouldn't have needed college...you don't need to go to college to be awesome.

the worst part of the real baby doll phenomenon is the woman who makes the baby animal/human hybrids. it's fucking horrifying. i'd save it for someone i didn't like who was having a bad acid trip; you know, put on a top hat and a death's head mask and jump out into the room shouting "THIS IS THE FACE OF GOD" and just watch them cry and cry and cry.

Link? I don't do acid anymore, so no worries.

i'll look up the link at home.

i'm not too easily squicked - sitting through a four hour obesity surgery will do that - but the reborn dolls just hit a button that makes me want to scream.

K thx

Why don't they volunteer to babysit the children of struggling, single mothers for free or at a discounted rate? Or why don't they adopt one of many misfortunate orphaned children? Or why don't they volunteer at a soup kitchen? These are the questions I find myself asking. I suppose all of those other options would reek too strongly of the curdled milk of human kindness. Why do something useful and beneficial when you can spend a thousand dollars on a semi-convincing facsimile of a human that doesn't care either way if you feed it or run it over in your driveway all day? Man, people suck. This dwindles my faith in humanity more than I would have estimated. I don't understand why Dan Savage always claims that people willing to do infantilism play are in short supply, because from certain vantage points the world seems to be filled with willing adult babies.

Maybe. I mean I could see how it would be difficult if you can't have kids and you were really looking forward to holding a baby specifically, since most children available for adoption are not infants but are older. But it still seems like there should be some better way. I don't know...maybe I'm just jealous because 1,000 dollars is not capital that I would be spending on a baby doll.

I've thought about this a lot.

Thing is... Double income? Sure there are more expenses, but how much do you save by living together? ...and you have twice the security. ...or one and a half times the security, something like that.

And I've seen people make it through college with no help whatsoever. That isn't the way I'd want to do it with my theoretical kids if I could avoid it, but it can be done.

The thing is finding someone lovable, committed and trustworthy. Those people are out there.

But you don't justify real RealDolls this way! Is it because of the existence of infertility problems for some couples, and the sometimes real scarcity of infants that this gets a pass? And because it's not some weird sex thing?

I still think it's scandalously wasteful and extravagant. And I say this as someone who wanted to purchase an inbred boutique pocket-size puppy. It's worse. At least Jerry Sizzler has real, fuzzy feelings.

Who said that first? Jerry Lee Lewis?

Aren't you kind of feeding into that old misogynistic chestnut about the fragile psyches of women, though? I mean...playing with dolls. Spin it as you wish, therapeutic or whatever...but it's still grown women coddling inanimate objects. I'm not saying not being able to be a mother isn't difficult. I'm not saying that. But your rationalization sounds eerily similar to "women who are unable to use their wombs as god intended" to my ears. In other words, condescendingly paternalistic. I'm sure you didn't intend it that way, but I'm just saying.

I'd say not if the people in question actually have fragile psyches. Especially when society is already set up to load down those people with ideas about how the whole of their usefulness is connected to their uterus. Pointing out the fact that some women have internalized the dominant narrative to the point that they need to dull the pain with opioids in doll form because they can't have/are too narcissistic to/don't actually want but are convinced that they're "supposed to" actually desire living contact with other organisms isn't itself misogynistic. It's just pointing out something that's kinda sad. It doesn't become misogynistic, or support misogynism, until the person quoting it starts being approving of the fact that it's happening, or paints it as the logical end result of something inherent to women. It's not. It's just a pathology brought on by the current structure of society.