Last year, I wrote about the arrival of a “sex doll brothel” in Toronto, and noted that these establishments are dangerous and have the potential to entrench deviant (and even criminal) sexual behavior. A week after that story broke, I noted that the City of Toronto had successfully stepped in to inform the business and the owner of the property that was to be used—an old tanning salon—that they would have to go elsewhere, blocking the brothel from opening. The lease was cancelled, and it appeared that Councillor John Filion’s motion to restrict “adult entertainment parlours” in York, passed twenty years ago, would prevent sex doll tourism in Toronto.
It appears that we celebrated too soon. According to blogTO:
Aura Dolls removed the physical address from its website in response and has been quiet ever since, at least in terms of advertising, but the business didn’t go away.
On the contrary: North America’s second doll brothel (after Toronto’s own KinkySdollS, which was relatively unheard of prior to this summer’s scandal) appears to have opened sometime this fall, though nobody, save for clients, can say exactly where…
American freelance writer Susan Shain similarly visited Aura Dolls in October for a feature story in Playboy, though she described the neighbourhood a lot differently.
“On a quiet street in northern Toronto, among well-kept yards, luxury cars and a small Christian-owned business, sits a five-bedroom stone house.” she wrote.
“A neatly coiffed woman drives by in a Mercedes, likely unaware of the home’s inhabitants: six bare Barbie-proportioned life-size silicone dolls available for rent.”
It sounds like the business may have moved since then, or maybe there’s more than one, or maybe the dolls move around? Twitter suggests there’s definitely a market for sex doll “out calls” in Toronto right now.
It’s hard to say what’s up for certain. Right now, the address listed on Aura’s website simply reads “Markham/Richmond Hill… Announced upon booking.”
The owners of the business insist upon remaining anonymous, but Aura Dolls marketing director Claire Lee did tell Smith that they were in the process of adding male dolls to their roster—so it stands to reason the business is doing well.
These establishments are quite literally being billed as places where people can experience sexual encounters that would be illegal with real people. As I explained last fall, those who believe that these places can serve as “outlets” for would-be sex criminals are gravely mistaken. As we saw with the rise of sexual violence within the romantic context due to the virality of Internet porn, a growing attraction to certain behaviors rarely results in those behaviors being curbed.
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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.
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