Abstract
While being part of many people’s sexual lives, sex toys are rarely the focus of sociological research. To better understand the role sex toys might play in the sociology of sexualities in the future, this article traces the history of sex toys through a transnational and decolonial lens, reviews recent empirical findings, and points to promising new directions in sex toy research. In doing so, we put forth a call for sociologists to interrogate the tension between liberatory sexual politics and empire, while also seriously considering the role of sex toys in shaping people’s sexual identities through sexual exploration and self-discovery.
Introduction
Despite the historical role of sex toys globally, sociologists’ treatment of sex toys has been shallow at best. Sex toys are sometimes mentioned as props in a specific context, such as when online sex workers use sex toys in their performances (Jones 2020), and in other cases, researchers have examined how sex toys (and sexual technologies more broadly) can be used to reduce socio-sexual inequalities. Much has been said, for example, about the usefulness of vibrators in reclaiming women’s sexual agency (Lieberman 2017; Waskul and Anklan 2020), and the importance of condoms in reducing sexually transmitted infections globally (Altman 2001). With sex toys becoming more advanced due to massive capital investment into the “sex tech” and “sexual wellness” markets (Chankova 2022; Stardust, Albury, and Kennedy 2024), it is time for sociologists to critically examine what is at stake when pleasure and sexual liberation are packaged as nightstand commodities.
We have three goals in this article. First, to offer a history of sex toys that brings greater attention to the need for transnational and decolonial perspectives in sex toy and sex tech research. This is crucial for understanding the technological developments that made today’s sex toys possible, and for better dissecting the tension between individualistic logics of sexual pleasure and global conquest. Second, we review recent empirical research on sex toy and sex tech users. Our intention here is to clarify who is using sex toys and which types of sexual technologies are being studied. In doing so, we examine the limitations of claims that sex toys are tools of liberation. Finally, we conclude with a discussion about what the future of sex toy research might look like by pointing to promising work in this emerging area of scholarship. Our hope is that this piece invigorates critical sex toy scholarship among sociologists.
An Archeology of Sex Toys
Like many controversial subjects, sex toys have a labyrinthine history. Anthropological evidence suggests that some form of sex toys and sexual wellness technologies have existed for thousands of years (Liberman 2017), and that the history of sex toys is intertwined with global capitalist development. Discerning this history is difficult because sexual discourse is always inflected by the various influences of political, religious, judicial, and pseudo-scientific moralizing. At crucial moments, people have sought to repress, misrepresent, and articulate narrow visions of sexuality (Foucault 1978; Rubin 2002), while at other times resistance, circumvention, and liberatory desires have emerged (Lieberman 2016, 2017).
An illustrative example of this complexity is the vibrator, perhaps the best-known modern sex toy. One version of its history, popularized by Maines (1999), is that the vibrator was first developed by physicians to treat hysteric women but once the sexual function became common knowledge, women started using vibrators at home for personal pleasure. In response, physicians stopped using vibrators in medical practice. This history has been scrutinized by historians for its decontextualized reading of medical literature from that period. As critics point out, the scientific literature from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s cannot be wholly trusted due to anti-obscenity laws in France (Ruberg 2022) and the Comstock Act of 1873, which restricted and criminalized the circulation of “obscene” materials in the United States (Lieberman 2016). To circumvent these laws, pornographers often disguised erotic materials as pseudo-scientific writings (Ruberg 2022). Thus, early accounts of doctors using vibrators on women for medical purposes might better be understood as titillating reading material rather than medical records; further, as Lieberman (2016) notes, there are no direct references to masturbation with vibrators prior to the 1930s. The alternative history, Lieberman (2016, 2017) suggests, is that advertisers likely played the largest role in the widespread adoption of vibrators due to their strategic reliance on mid-century discourses that dignified time-saving devices, wellness, progressive femininity, and even traditional gender roles, depending on the target customer.
Similarly contested, almost mythological origin stories abound within the history of sex toys. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than with sex dolls. One legend is that the Nazis gave their soldiers sex dolls to reduce sexual temptation (Ruberg 2022). The most popular myth is that sex dolls were first made by colonial sailors to cure their loneliness (Ruberg 2022). Upon closer examination, none of these stories hold much water as made apparent by Ruberg’s (2022) thorough archival research on the origins of sex dolls. Instead, it is likely that sex dolls were one among myriad inventions developed in the mid-1800s when rubber became one of the most valued commodities in Western Europe and the United States.
Heavy reliance on rubber products around the world had significant consequences for South American countries. Indigenous South Americans had been using latex for years, but after Charles Goodyear’s successful vulcanization of rubber, a process that made it both more durable and versatile, colonists from Europe, Asia, North America, the Middle East, and even other parts of South America descended upon the Amazon rainforest to capitalize on the rubber boom (Nascimento et al. 2024). The influx of colonial interests ballooned the population and put immense strain on ecological resources. In turn, colonial rubber extraction created conflict with the local people. Enslavement, exploitation, and the ghastly treatment of Indigenous people continued until scarce labor and impending ecological collapse led colonists to harvest rubber plant species and replant them in Asia, where they began the process of exploitation anew (Nascimento et al. 2024).
No list could adequately capture the range of rubber products being made and the consequent horrors inflected on Indigenous people in the 1800s. New rubber products of all sorts were developed during this time, many of which were implemented in the U.S. Civil War (Nascimento et al. 2024). As for inventions that relate to sex and sexuality, the mid-century preoccupation with rubber led to the creation of rubber condoms, diaphragms, breastfeeding aides, corsets, and les femmes en Caoutchouc, or rubber women, otherwise known as the first sex dolls (Ruberg 2022).
Western countries’ reliance on foreign countries to develop sex toys and sexual wellness products is a recurring theme in the history of technological development, and Japan has had a particularly strong influence on the U.S. Japan’s sex toy history is not well researched, but written references to artificial penises and vaginas appeared as early as 1695 (Moya 2006). Japanese companies have since invented a dizzying array of masturbation devices for both men and women. The West’s reliance on Japanese sex toys is a direct result of Japan’s entanglement with the U.S. during World War II. The U.S. military control of Japan in the 1940s and 1950s led to numerous sources reporting on the “extreme” yet “casual” handling of sex in Japanese culture that sometimes seemed envious, while at other times condescending. The following quote from a 1945 editorial piece in Sexology Magazine, reproduced in Moya (2006), is an illustrative example.
In Japan, sex is a commodity as ordinary as groceries are in the United States. In a Japanese sex store one can buy strange and amazing things, such as sex books, sex pamphlets, sexual medicines, and hundreds of varieties of curious sexual devices. (Our Anglo-Saxon sexual code does not allow us to describe these at length in plain English terms, due no doubt to our very low Western culture!) The sale of such commodities in Japanese sex stores is perfectly normal and legal.
Wartime interactions in Japan and the country’s seemingly uncomplicated relationship with sex exposed many U.S. men to toys, balms, and books that they could use for sexual exploration, an experience that continues today due to ongoing militarization and U.S. occupation. This exposure presented a stark contrast between the seemingly “repressed” sexuality of the West and a purportedly liberated sexuality abroad. Whether or not Western sexuality is or ever was truly repressed has been debated (Foucault 1978), but in this case, it is not the fact of repression that is most relevant, but rather the discourse of repression that simultaneously exoticized, fetishized, and ultimately cast foreign sexualities as alluring yet primitive, and dangerously exciting. WASP GIs could have their fun abroad, but the expectation to return home and start a family was clear.
Reading between the lines of sensationalist pseudo-science and the historical record, we see that colonialism played a key role in the development of sex toys in the modern era. Western ideals of sexual liberation and individual self-definition are materially predicated on the exploitation of foreign countries’ natural resources and Indigenous peoples. Moreover, warfare, empire, and expansionist militarism have brought differing sexual norms into contact with one another. While it is easy to take sex toys for granted today, their histories are anything by simple.
Sex Toy Demographics and the Technological Turn
With a quarter of the twenty-first century behind us, it feels as though sex toys are entering a new era. Empirical research in sexology and psychology is expanding our knowledge on the subject, especially as researchers turn away from pathologizing medical and psychiatric analyses and toward social understandings of sexual toys. Yet despite the progress, much is still unknown about how sex toys fit into either broader social structures or people’s intimate lives. Complicating this lack of knowledge is the fact that the sale, possession, and use of sex toys is still prohibited in many countries, which has narrowed much sex toy research to Western countries and shrouded or ignored other perspectives (Hald, Pavan, and Øverup 2024). Additionally, stigma regarding the use of sex toys still plagues many purportedly “liberated” groups, making these products “severely under-researched” (Döring and Pöschl 2018:e4).
Despite criminalization and stigma, most nations are experiencing significant growth in sex toy availability and use across many demographic groups, with the majority of individuals now reporting either current or past use of sex toys (Döring and Pöschl 2018; Hald et al. 2024). The popularity of sex toys for both solo use and distanced partnered sexual activity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic amid lockdowns and contact bans (Johns and Bushnell 2023). Some groups interpret current trends in sex toy use and production as signaling a cultural shift toward sexually empowering, feminist, and queer-friendly sex toys (Hald et al. 2024). This interpretation is particularly common among leaders of the digital “sex tech” industry (Power et al. 2024). In response, many smaller manufacturers and sellers have pivoted toward a more expansive and liberatory marketing strategy (Hald et al. 2024), while others have leaned into the health and wellness aspects of sex toys by selling them as trendy lifestyle aids (Johns and Bushnell 2023).
In spite of the apparent inroads into sexual empowerment made through sex tech, leading companies still predominantly market to heterosexual couples (Power et al. 2024). Moreover, the truth behind the association between sex toys and gender liberation is less than certain. Caricati, Bonetti, and Rossi (2024) found no correlation between feminist identification and the type or variety of sex toys owned in an Italian sample of cisgender adults. However, they found that respondents who justified the existing gender system and exhibited benevolent sexist tendencies were less likely to own clit-oriented toys, implying that long-standing beliefs about the necessity of penetration persist for many sex toy users (Caricati et al. 2024). Indeed, it seems that rather than queering sexual norms and encouraging expansive sexual scripts, many sex toys reify partnered, penetrative, heteronormative sex. This tendency might be due to fear that sex toys will upend historical Western sexual morals and schemas, a fear that is especially relevant for the most technologically advanced sex toys (e.g., sex dolls, sex robots, and AI companions), as their suspected capacities are framed as a threat to humanity itself if people cease to be in relationships with humans (Hald et al. 2024).
Some of the most popular sex toys are vaginally insertable products such as vibrators and dildos (Johns and Bushnell 2023). These toys are generally, though not always, phallus-shaped. However, as Johns and Bushnell (2023) suggest, more research is needed regarding users’ morphological preferences for sex toys as not all users may want insertable toys. Moreover, although the use of insertable sex toys is most commonly associated with heterosexual cisgender women as an approximation for vaginal intercourse (Caricati et al. 2024; Johns and Bushnell 2023), other research shows that lesbian cisgender women (Schick et al. 2011), gay and bisexual cisgender men (Rosenberger et al. 2012), and transgender or otherwise gender nonconforming people (Anzani et al. 2024) also use insertable toys and vibrators, indicating that this association is outdated and reductive. As suggested by Waskul and Anklan (2020), the general uptake of vibrators demonstrates that they have moved beyond their early connotations as medical instruments, household appliances, and even women’s liberatory political objects to become postfeminist toys. It is not just that purchasing a vibrator is an act of postfeminist consumption—its use is now a postfeminist individual responsibility for sexual self-discovery (Waskul and Anklan 2020).
The vaginally insertable sex toy’s infamous opposite is the masturbation sleeve, which has long dominated the male-focused sex toy market. Rosenberger et al. (2012) found that in a sample of 25,294 U.S. men, 27.9% of gay and bisexual respondents had used a masturbation sleeve, making its use less common than the use of dildos (62.1%) and vibrators (49.6%) but more common than the use of anal beads or balls (19.3%). Among users, they found high rates of insertion during both masturbation (95.7%) and partnered sex (72.0%) (Rosenberger et al. 2012). Despite its relatively common use, the masturbation sleeve, like many other male-oriented sex toys, is understudied and undervalued in even the most well-meaning sexual scholarship, often reduced to little more than a punchline (Christensen 2020). This is unfortunate given the potential pleasure of these toys. However, some critics have suggested that selling masturbation sleeves and similar sex toys is problematic because it disembodies sexual pleasure. As Žižek (2014) writes, “What one buys here is simply the partial object (erogenous zone) alone, deprived of the embarrassing additional burden of the entire person” (p. 64). Thus, the use of a masturbation sleeve might point to a desire for an atomized partner, one reduced to a surface to be penetrated; however, is this any truer for a sleeve than a dildo? Given recent calls for greater sociological attention to sexual pleasure (Regan 2024), critical analysis of people’s tendency to accept one set of disembodied genitals over another is still needed in this field.
There are also sex toys for those looking to go beyond a fragmented sexual experience. While most sex toys offer replications of only certain body parts, sex dolls, one of the more controversial sex toys available today, offer a complete human replica. There is a wide range of sex doll offerings on the market today, from affordable and simplistic inflatables to customizable and highly realistic silicone dolls (Döring and Pöschl 2018). One commonality across sex doll designs is the overwhelming tendency toward hyperfeminine appearances that cater to heterosexual men’s desires (Hanson and Locatelli 2022). Both racialized and gendered sexual ideals are reflected in—and likely reified by—today’s sex doll market, including a heavy skew toward fetishized and exotified Asian morphologies (Hanson and Locatelli 2024). Just as other sex toys are being synched with apps and digitized in myriad ways, so too are sex doll companies embracing the technological turn. The focus on sex robots in research, best understood as sex dolls augmented with technology such as sensors or AI, is increasingly eclipsing any discussion of traditional sex dolls even though very few sex robots currently exist (Hanson and Locatelli 2022). While still in the early stages of development, sex robots could offer “partially autonomous behavior such as simulating sexual movement, getting into various sexual positions, and expressing orgasm” as well as the ability to “display conversation, emotions and preprogrammed personalities” (Döring and Pöschl 2018:e3). Common narratives surrounding sex robots refer to their potential for fulfilling a wide range of sexual fantasies, both those considered normative and more transgressive offerings (Karaian 2024).
A well-rounded body of empirical research on sex dolls and sex robots is needed given the overwhelming focus on English-speaking Westerners in the literature (Hanson and Locatelli 2022). Döring and Pöschl (2018) find that most users are heterosexual men with high socioeconomic status. Some scholarship on sex dolls and sex robots has suggested that users may escalate their transgressive desires and then objectify or abuse human sexual partners as they do their doll or robot (Döring and Pöschl 2018). Others hope that these products will offer greater emotional and sexual satisfaction for their users, especially those who are disabled, socially isolated, or elderly (Hanson and Locatelli 2022).
Beyond sex dolls and robots, technological developments in the sex toy world are, as in many other domains, increasingly focused on the adoption of artificial intelligence. Full integration of AI and sex robots is still mostly a fantasy of the future (Dehnert 2022), but the use of AI chatbots for sexual purposes is very much a fixture of the present-day. Some users of the Replika chatbot, which offers a digital companion that is “always here to listen and talk,” use their bot as a virtual partner. It is likely that most users are heterosexual men, and many share their experiences and advice for utilizing Replika’s erotic roleplay and sexting features on a subreddit with approximately 30,000 members (Depounti, Saukko, and Natale 2023). Depounti et al. (2023) suggest that similar to sex dolls and robots, the use of AI chatbots for sexual purposes reifies existing gender ideals and expectations. While AI has the potential to expand our understandings and capabilities, this technology is ultimately still limited by current social hegemonies and inequalities.
Information about who uses sex toys and why people use sex toys is becoming increasingly available as academics recognize the need for greater research in this area; however, this does not mean our understanding of sex toys is comprehensive. Most research uses samples of cisgender White adults from Europe or North America and very few studies of Indigenous populations or the Global South have been published. Moving forward, we want to encourage those conducting sociological research on sex toys to center underrepresented groups and perspectives to gain a better understanding of modern sexuality.
The Future of Sociological Sex Toy Research
Although sociological sex toy research is limited, there are promising avenues for future inquiry. One emerging area of importance is work on digisexualities and digisexuals. First described by McArthur and Twist (2017), digisexualities are the many ways in which people use digital technology for sexual purposes. Some examples include digital pornography, digital sex work, teledildonics, and dating apps. Because digisexualities are vast, and some are relatively common, it is likely that many people have experience with digisexualities even if they are unaware of the term. McArthur and Twist (2017) also found that as sex toys have advanced and come to embody humans or mimic social interactions, some people now identify as digisexuals, or “people who see themselves as possessing a distinctive form of sexual identity” (p. 336). Digisexuality, as a social identity, should be understood as a historically contingent category made possible by today’s sophisticated human-like sex toys. As AI chatbots like Replika and other forms of sex tech become more popular, the number of people who identify as digisexuals will likely rise.
Another area of interest is the development of sex robots and how they might force us to change our conceptualization of masturbation and solo sex (Dehnert 2022). Because sex robots are uncommon, most researchers have used sex doll users as a proxy population (Hanson and Locatelli 2022), yet the distinction between these groups is blurry. For example, some sex dolls are falsely advertised as having immersive AI capabilities, suggesting that manufacturers are trying to cash in on the current AI craze (Hanson and Locatelli 2024). Additionally, at least one sex doll brothel advertises AI-enhanced services (Hanson and Smith 2024), which raise questions about the potential for AI and robotics to change sex work.
How robotics and AI could change sex work has been a subject of intense speculation, but only recently has that potential for change crested into reality (DiTecco and Karaian 2023). Echoing conversations about the ethics of robots replacing workers in the general workforce, some have suggested that sex robots could, or even should, eliminate the “need” for people to engage in sex work (Levy and Loebner 2007). Others disagree and argue that sex work is about not only intercourse, but also intimacy and connection—something robots struggle to mimic (Hanson and Smith 2024). Due to the current limitations of robotics, it is unlikely that sex robots will replace human workers anytime soon. More importantly, arguing that sex robots should eliminate sex work is antisex work and ignores the fact that some sex workers not only need but enjoy their work (DiTecco and Karaian 2023; Hanson and Smith 2024; Jones 2020). However, this will not stop corporations from trying to extract more profit from sexual services by using AI and robots. Indeed, some OnlyFans accounts are reportedly using automatic chat replies that mimic sexual interactions (Benjamin 2024).
The for-profit corporatized logic of sex tech is thus revealed to be in tension with its self-proclaimed sex-positive feminist ethos. The sex tech industry is poised to build significant capital, to the tune of $40 billion globally by some estimates (Chankova 2022). Much of the early entrepreneurial spirit that drove sex toy and sex tech advancement was predicated on a queer and feminist ethos of making sexual pleasure available to diverse bodies, genders, and peoples (Albury, Stardust, and Sundén 2023; Lieberman 2017), but the massive influx of capital and outside interests into the field threatens to destabilize the radical foundation of the sex tech industry.
For example, serious concerns have been raised about data privacy. Multiple sex tech and sexual wellness companies have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation for collecting and sharing data to third parties without users’ consent (Stardust et al. 2024). In Western countries where surveillance is one of the most powerful arms of political oppression, criminalization, and stigmatization, people’s use and engagement in digisexualities could very well lead to greater marginalization and restrictions on individual rights (Stardust 2024). In the United States, where policies written by The Heritage Foundation’s conservative Project 2025 seem all but certain to become law, it is possible that period-tracking apps could be leveraged to prosecute women for breaking extreme anti-abortion laws. In other words, the technologies that companies offer as tools for sexual self-expression could be used for domination. Given these developments, dewy-eyed utopic claims made by capitalist sex toy and sex tech entrepreneurs must be scrutinized (see Denbow 2025).
Conclusion
Our goal in this article was to raise awareness of the need to critically examine sociological scholarship on sex toys. In other words, to bring sex toys out of the drawer and into view as part of society. Their origins are mired in the same web of power that has driven much of human history; nevertheless, sex toys have at various points been means of realizing sexual pleasure and exploring desire, and they have potential value for sexual liberation. However, access to sex toys continues to be enmeshed with structural inequalities. Thus, it is necessary to bring critical and intersectional frameworks to bear on the manufacturing, distribution, valuation, and moralization of sex toys. Going forward, sexuality scholars must confront the issues raised by the infusion of enthusiastic capital interest into the sex toy and sex tech industries. While the new possibilities these technologies promise are exciting, their potential to exacerbate, rather than diminish, social inequalities must be better understood.
