"Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession." - Alfred Sherwood Romer and Thomas S. Parsons on the appendix

***

My favourite misanthrope sent me a Salon.com article on Real Dolls.

Some men treat them as the male equivalent of a romance novel. Others use them purely to enact their sexual fantasies. Still others pretend that they're getting some through the use of them.


Just like a woman
Thousands of men are shelling out $6,500 for hyper-realistic dolls that answer all their needs -- and don't talk back.

"Go ahead. Flinch at the notion of a man having sex with an imitation woman and classify him: lonely loser. Pathological creep. Misogynist. Potential rapist. Sicko. True enough, some men who have sex with Real Dolls are creepy, the kind of guys you wouldn't want to be alone with. But not all. Many are simply lonely -- some tragically so. Others are disfigured or infirm. Some are oddly sweet, like Davecat, for whom a Real Doll is a "teddy bear with benefits." And others proclaim their normalcy and defend their Real Dolls as no different than a 3-D version of a Playboy centerfold.

Many doll lovers -- or "iDollators," as some of them call themselves -- participate in a confusing online subculture where the lines between art and pornography, the ludicrous and the tender, and fantasy and fetishism blur like watercolors. Spend time talking to Real Doll aficionados as I have over the past year, and you come to understand that behind every Real Doll is a man with a reason."


My Favourite Misanthrope: so it's not just something that screwed up people would like?
as in, it could be a generic solution for 'loneliness', instead of simply satisfying perverts?

Me: of course.
well the guy on page 1 sounds a bit deluded

"People who are allergic to roses can enjoy artificial roses," he says. "In the same way, artificial women serve the same purpose for men who are, in whatever way, allergic to real women."

haha
what if real women are allergic to him?

MFM: I think all men are allergic to real women to some extent

Me: and the reverse?

MFM: I don't think women are AS allergic to men
men are less interfering
women are more meddlesome
and demanding