Why Are There So Many More Sex Dolls for Men Than for Women?

It's a standard refrain concerning sex that the majority of our culture is, or has traditionally been, geared toward the heterosexual male gaze. One striking example is the sex doll industry.

Stigma and prohibitive costs aside, heteronormative sex dolls geared toward cis men are ubiquitous. Even female-owned companies skew toward males, with one mother-daughter-led company offering 83 styles of customizable penetrable sex dolls and two penetrative styles.

Sexual pleasure vs. realism

Sexual health educator Edwina Caito broke down the economics behind this massive gap.

"The vast majority of sex doll companies say male dolls account for up to 10 percent of their overall sales," Caito said. "The only company that sells as many penetrating sex dolls as they do penetrative is Sinthetics. I believe the reason for this is that their dolls look far more realistic than most all other masculine sex dolls on the market today."

If there's no demand for a product, fewer or no resources will go into developing said product. But is there really no demand for male sex dolls geared toward heterosexual women?

Author and sex toy historian Hallie Lieberman believes the issue isn't a lack of demand, but poor technology.

'Women need clitoral stimulation...You need the mouth to not be just f**kable for a dick but with a tongue.'

"One of the barriers to getting women to have sex dolls is that things were so heavy—they would weigh 80 pounds," Lieberman explained. "They're not going to want to put an 80-pound object on top [for] missionary style. That's not erotic—it's suffocating. If you're designing something for a woman, you need some female designers and you need to think about sexual pleasure as opposed to, 'It looks realistic.' I think that's the problem with the male sex dolls."

But it's not only female customers who use penetrating sex dolls—in fact, they're not even the primary audience. When "male" sex dolls are built, they're mostly intended for male homosexual audiences and lack a critical piece of what a female customer might want.

"Women need clitoral stimulation," Lieberman explained. "When I've looked at these sex dolls, you almost never see that [as] the focus. They need a suction device on there. They need something where women can grind their clit and there's a vibrating thing on there. You need the mouth to not be just f**kable for a dick but with a tongue."

Perhaps if they whispered sweet nothings...

For a sex doll for women to be successful, there has to be some advancement in synthetic cunnilingus. A sex doll intended for giving men oral sex can easily have a penis sleeve inserted for the mouth. The same isn't true of male dolls geared toward straight women, but that doesn't make the task impossible.

"As long as they aren't robot-style sex dolls, penetrating sex dolls can be created with a penetrable mouth, just as the penetrative sex dolls," Caito said. "It really depends on the brand of the doll and their customizations available. You can also buy sex doll heads separately at many sex doll websites."

That's a lot of legwork just to masturbate, but humans are capable of great feats. The real barrier comes not from ingenuity, but from investors.

'After all, we are looking for an intellectual connection that fuels the physical.'

"If a woman is threatened by something, it's still going to get made," Lieberman said. "If a man [feels] threatened by something in a patriarchal culture, it's less likely that it's going to be made. It's hard to get venture capital even for breast pump companies—anything to do with female technology. Most of the investors are older white men and you say, 'I'm creating this sex doll with a great penis that can give your wife orgasms. Let me have some money for it.' They're going to go, 'No.' Part of it comes from where we're getting the funding from and who's in control in society. You can't decouple it from patriarchal culture."

Even the prevalence of fictional tales about male scientists creating "perfect women" is more dominant than vice versa.

There is also the argument that sex dolls for women aren't more popular because of a woman's heightened need for emotional intimacy—which Caito doubts a doll could fulfill.

"Now, if they ever finish developing a male sex doll that whispers sweet nothings to us, offers great conversation and maybe a few compliments, I believe male sex doll sales will soar," she said. "After all, we are looking for an intellectual connection that fuels the physical."

The gender gap in sex doll ownership certainly isn't the most worrisome gender gap in our world today. However, you might be forgiven for saying that it does reflect the more insidiously dated beliefs about feminine passivity in sexuality.