Welcome to the 'future of sex'... and why every parent in America should be absolutely terrified
I was standing on the threshold of the room, my heart rattling like an express train.
The only light seemed to emanate from the spot-lit king-size bed several meters away, positioned in the middle of the room, like a stage.
And at its center lay a young woman sprawled, face down, as still as a corpse.
This was Kokeshi, one of 15 sex dolls available to customers at the first immersive cyber brothel in Europe.
I took a reluctant step inside, half expecting her to turn and start up from the bed.
In the left corner of the room, an archaic, vaguely medical-looking contraption loomed ominously out of the shadows.
It was a large gray chair with a metal frame and two plastic stirrups sticking out at the front. There was a silver wheel that could be spun to adjust the chair and a low, padded step attached near the base, seemingly for a medical examiner to kneel on when assessing the cervix of the chair's occupant.
My heart rate would not slow. It felt like I had stepped into a crime scene - or, at the very least, like I was a voyeur, intruding on a moment of immense vulnerability.
The only light seemed to emanate from the spotlit king-size bed in the middle of the room, like a stage
Kokeshi lay there passively, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling
In the corner of the room stands a vaguely medical-looking chair with a metal frame and two plastic stirrups
Kokeshi was wearing ripped fishnet stockings; one of her feet protruded, bare, from a gaping hole. The stockings ended halfway up her thighs, but a thin strip of material on each side ran across her bare buttocks, connecting to a fish-net vest of sorts, which she wore over a flimsy white T-shirt.
Even from the doorway, I could see that the T-shirt, like the stockings, had been ripped. There were four slashes across the back, as if something with very sharp claws had taken a swipe at her.
Her skin was white, though the lighting dyed it an eerie hot pink, and her hair, straight, ash-blond, and shoulder-length, fell across her face.
Her bare arm was soft and cool to the touch. I reached around and felt the hard, firm flatness of her stomach. I stood up and rolled her forcibly onto her back. She was a lot heavier than I expected.
She lay there passively, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. The movement made her fingers wobble uncannily. They were rubbery and malleable. Her fingernails were painted a dusty pink. There was a small rip in the pad of one fingertip.
Her legs were open. That was when I saw it. One of her labia had been ripped off. Or perhaps bitten off?
I had traveled to Berlin for firsthand experience of Cybrothel, where VR, sex dolls, and so-called analog AI combine in an experience its creators describe on their website as 'more than just a doll brothel.'
'Come experience our real doll characters in a sophisticated and discreet setting where technology, sex and intimacy combine to provide fantasy and fetish,' reads the website. 'Welcome to the future.'
The doll was dressed in ripped clothing and a flimsy, slashed T-shirt
One of the rooms at Cybrothel comes complete with a swing
Laura Bates has written The New Age of Sexism, which is out now
But what are the implications of this future?
The cyber brothel is described as an interactive space to 'connect all consensual beings with sex and technology,' but what does it mean to manufacture an illusion of consent in a situation where it doesn't really exist?
And what will the side-effects be for the real-life girls and women who will later encounter the men who have been interacting with robot dolls?
And yes, we are talking overwhelmingly about men here: 98 percent of Cybrothel's clients are male, and just two percent are female.
Upon entry, you are buzzed up to a second-floor apartment where a doll is waiting for you in a room, complete with lube, condoms, hand sanitizer, latex gloves, and the aforementioned gynecological chair.
There is no human contact at all. When you have finished, you simply make optional use of the small gray-tiled bathroom, with its depressing vase of dried flowers and its Dove deodorant, and then leave without speaking to anyone.
The 'future of sex' that Cybrothel is so excited about, is the option to experience interactive, 'mixed-reality sex' in what the venue claims is a world first.
Users participate in something Cybrothel describes as a 'unique sexual experiment' that 'blurs the lines between reality and virtuality.'
This involves a collaboration with digital entertainment studio Polybay, which has created a game called Cherry VX. It looks a lot like virtual reality porn, except that instead of just being an observer, players actually participate in the pornography.
When a player moves and thrusts their groin, wearable hip controllers mean that they will be able to look down and see their virtual member thrusting in and out of a virtual woman, all while physically interacting with one of the sex dolls.
When they stretch out their hands toward the 'woman' they can see in their headset, they will see their virtual hands reaching for her. And so on.
Kokeshi is a silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner
What will the side-effects be for the real-life girls and women who will later encounter the men who have been interacting with robot dolls?
In fact, the technology offered by cyber brothels is evolving and changing so fast that, since my visit, Cybrothel has announced a new innovation: clients will now be able to interact physically and verbally with the dolls themselves thanks to a new AI program that enables them to respond directly.
'I firmly believe that the technology and experiences we are pioneering will become increasingly common in the coming years,' Cybrothel cofounder Matthias Smetana told me when I interviewed him by email.
'The technologies we are developing at Cybrothel are opening doors for normalizing the use of AI, robotics and immersive experiences in everyone's sexual lives.'
Back at Cybrothel, I started to examine the doll.
Its breasts were high and firm, with the consistency of a stress ball when I squeezed them. They took a moment to return to their original shape, the indents of my fingers disappearing near the dark pink nipples.
The stomach was concave, the belly button small. The head and face were eerily convincing, except where visible elastic attached the wig to the neck.
The eyes were dark brown, fixed open, staring upward, the ears small and delicate. There seemed to be an expression of resigned endurance in its eyes. It looked so real.
The lips were pale pink and appeared pillowy, but they did not give when I probed them with my fingers.
When I sat her up, her hair fell across her eyes, and I reached up automatically to brush it aside for her.
I reminded myself that Kokeshi is not real. Then it occurred to me that some of her other visitors came here to do exactly the opposite. To imagine that she is.
She is a silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner.
Everything Cybrothel does leans into this uncanny erasure of the boundary between fantasy and reality.
'Is there something you always wanted to try but were afraid to ask?' asks the Cybrothel website. 'Choose your experience package and we will make your wishes come true.'
Therein, say critics, lies the problem. It is all about making men's dreams come true at the expense of women's voices, autonomy, or presence. And that's a very dangerous precedent to set.
As with so many other forms of violence, those first and worst affected will be the most vulnerable and invisible members of our society.
In this case, sex workers will likely bear the brunt of any impact on societal norms and attitudes before the ripple effect begins to widely impact other women. Indeed, sex workers, who already experience high levels of physical and sexual violence, have been raising a variety of concerns about sex-doll brothels for some years.
Creating a sex doll at Cybrothel - these creations will become increasingly lifelike
At Cybrothel, the dolls are designed to fulfill every male fantasy - and they will never say no
UK-based sex worker Madelaine Thomas, known professionally as Countess Diamond, told the website Mashable: 'The dolls may not ever say no. The consumers therefore grow accustomed to sexual experiences where their every desire is met with enthusiasm and won't learn how to respect limits, adhere to boundaries set and accept "no."'
Taking that phenomenon a step further, a study published in the journal Science and Gender found that a third of US men would 'have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will,' in other words, rape her, 'if nobody would ever know and there wouldn't be any consequences.'
It is perhaps unsurprising then that among the most common requests one brothel owner received from visitors to his establishment was the enactment of rape fantasies.
'Better to be violent with a doll than with a woman,' replied one proprietor of a sex doll brothel when asked about the customers who have violent sexual fantasies - as if what happens within the walls of the brothel has no bearing on men's behavior elsewhere.
As if normalizing sexual violence by providing a sanctioned outlet for it won't have profound wider consequences.
When I questioned Cybrothel's co-founder Matthias Smetana about who he expects to benefit from the services offered at his venue, he reeled off a noble-sounding list: Those struggling with loneliness, lack of social connections or limited access to compatible partners; individuals with disabilities or limited mobility.
This all sounds incredibly impressive. But sitting in the dark in that room with the motionless figure of Kokeshi lying prone beside me and the gynecological chair in the corner, I found myself wondering exactly how 'helpful' this experience could really be.
Don't the social problems that Smetana has described deserve better, more comprehensive solutions than this creepy room with its silicone inhabitant?
There's also the rather obvious fact that the premises are located up more than one flight of steep stone steps and there doesn't appear to be any accessible adaptation made to the bedroom or bathroom.
But this isn't just about sex. It is about power.
That's why you can order any preferences you like when you book your session at Cybrothel. I ordered torn clothes for my doll. No questions were asked.
At the time of my booking, one of the other dolls on the website was shown covered in blood with what look like bloody smeared handprints across her torso and breasts and blood dripping from one of her nipples and splashed across the inside of her thigh.
One of the dolls is photographed covered in blood, with what looks like bloody smeared handprints across her torso and breasts
At a sex doll brothel in Dortmund, Germany, the owners provide 'a BDSM room,' complete with a table of ghoulish-looking instruments, including various blades and scissors
The website stated that this doll was supposed to represent a vampire character, but there were no vampire teeth on display. It was just an uncannily realistic woman's body covered in blood.
One of the photographs on the website showed the doll's body decapitated, its head in its hand, grinning.
The most graphic and disturbing of these images have since been deleted from the website.
However, the fact remains that, in the US, 10 women are murdered every day. Three of those are killed by an intimate partner.
And many of these brothels offer and encourage scenarios that would be explicitly illegal if they were enacted with a real person instead of a doll. One (since-closed) brothel in Germany had an entire space decked out like a schoolroom, with desks and a blackboard, for clients with a 'classroom sex fetish.'
At one of the more established sex doll brothels, in Dortmund, Germany, the owners provided 'a BDSM room,' complete with a medical examination table, a stirrup-equipped chair (very similar to the one at Cybrothel), and a table of ghoulish-looking instruments, including various blades and scissors.
But the whole philosophy of BDSM is built on the idea of mutual consent. So to enable men to interact with sex dolls in such a context could just as accurately be described as torture porn.
This is just the beginning. These robots are only going to get more and more realistic, closer and closer to being seen as human by their users and abusers.
'Our goal is to develop dolls that are not merely static forms, but can move, react and deliver lifelike haptic sensations through electromechanical actuation and sensors,' Smetana told me.
And there's the problem. New technologies are being used to make dehumanized objects men can utterly control and abuse, whilst coming closer and closer to manufacturing the illusion that they are real women.
And while the male proprietors of cyber brothels sell this to other men as 'the future' I can't help feeling it's a devastating step backwards for women.
Exclusive extract from The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates, published by Sourcebooks
