They’re leaving our bedrooms for the wide world beyond—along with trouble in their wake.

You have to admit that seeing love dolls out in public places, doing what so many of us can’t during the COVID-19 pandemic, is beautifully ironic.

Sex doll sightings in public, even outside of quarantine, had already become frequent enough to be considered a growing trend.

Now that businesses are slowly beginning to reopen and at reduced consumer capacity, however, love dolls and sexbots are being embraced as a way to fill empty space and offer silent companionship.

A soccer match between South Korea and Gwangju, for example, had some rather unexpected fans supporting them from the stands.

Offsided by the pandemic

As with every other country on the planet right now, most of South Korea’s outdoor activities have been scaled back due to social distancing measures.

But South Korea’s K-League wasn’t going to call the game on account of the cornonavirus.

So to keep their fans happy, K-League joined other soccer associations in holding a special series of matches they could view at home.

Although the players were giving it their all, a televised match with row after row of empty stadium seats was far from uplifting.

One Korean team’s solution, inspired by other sporting event organizers in other countries, was to fill those vacant seats with a wide range of artificial stand-ins.

While being able to break quarantine and get out into the open air was no doubt a major plus for their choice of seat fillers during that South Korea-Gwangju match, fans seeing sex dolls on TV has brought FC Seoul no end of trouble.

‘We are very sorry’

At first, no one seemed to notice that the figures were any different than the mannequins that have become a kind-of standard feature at events in the post-pandemic world.

Then, and we’re not too sure how they may have been recognized as such, people began to raise the word that FC Seoul’s seat-fillers were much more realistic, in specifically a sexual way.  

It didn’t help that many of the sexbots were sporting the colors and insignia of a prominent sex toy manufacturer. In any event, the outcry gained so much momentum that FC Seoul was forced to make a statement, translated here by ESPN, to try to clear things up:

We are very sorry about the supporting mannequins that were placed during the game on May 17. These mannequins may have been made to look and feel like real humans but they are not for sexual use—as confirmed by the manufacturer from the beginning.

So according to FC Seoul they weren’t exactly sex dolls. The confusion over whehter they actually were or weren’t technically sex dolls grows with how it continued the statement:

Our intention was to do something lighthearted in these difficult times. We will think hard about what we need to do to ensure that something like this never happens again.

The K-League didn’t take what had happened in a lighthearted manner, though: saying that the stunt “has deeply humiliated and hurt women fans, and damaged the integrity of the league,” as reported by The Guardian,

FC Seoul was also slapped team with a record 100 million Korean won fine, which is about $82,000 US Dollars.  

Adding injury to injury, there’s a real possibility that the fine won’t be the end of it, with FC Seoul potentially also getting banned from the playing in that stadium ever again.  

Seeing the world—and the world sees them

We can certainly smirk and giggle or feel bad over how FC Seoul’s attempt to cheer up fans bakfired so brutally.But there’s an underlying aspect to sex dolls, and sexbots, coming out of the bedroom and out into the public eye that’s quite important.

Some people still see love dolls and sex bots as being somehow shameful, so seeing them out and about in public could be a way for them, and those who find pleasure in them, to feel recognized.

As we should be very aware of by now that representation, visibility matters.  

I am here, these dolls seem to be saying about themselves and those you enjoy them: out of the closet and into the light.

Image sources:  FUT OFFICIAL, Rob Sinclair, San Diego Reader