Against Moral Panic: Or, Dolls Aren’t Real Kids

On November 3, the Washington Post reports, “fast-fashion” retailer Shein banned sales of sex dolls on its site after a government regulatory agency threatened to bar the company from operating in France and referred it to prosecutors. Some of the dolls sold on Shein’s online platform were, it seems, too “childlike” in appearance.

I consider it lazy to assert, as many opinionators do, that “no one” supports, or “everyone” wants, this or that particular thing, but if there’s a subject that commands anything close to societal unanimity, it’s opposition to the sexual molestation of children.

Pretty much all of us who aren’t sexual abusers of children want sexual abusers of children stopped and punished. Many even advocate capital punishment as a permanent individual solution and future collective deterrent, and while I’m opposed to the death penalty myself, I do find the opinion understandable.

It’s odd, then, that so many opponents of child molestation also advocate for laws which increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood that someone with such tendencies will act, in that way, on those tendencies.

Or is it really that odd? These days, public opinion — followed by legislative and law enforcement attitudes — seems largely driven by moral panic. Many people don’t want to just stop actual harmful Activity X, but also want government to suppress anything which might activate the “ick factor” associated with seeing, hearing, or thinking about topics adjacent to Activity X.

Thus the increasing tendency toward banning “child pornography” in which no actual children are involved, and “childlike” sex dolls that, whatever else they may be, are not actual children.

If we want to see actual reductions in the incidence of child sexual abuse, it’s worth considering what economists call the “substitution effect.” Per the Corporate Finance Institute, that effect is the “change in demand for a good as a result of a change in the relative price of the good compared to that of other substitute goods.”

A vanilla example, literally: Suppose you like vanilla ice cream. A scoop of vanilla ice cream made with real vanilla costs $1. A scoop made with artificial vanilla flavor costs 50 cents. You prefer saving 50 cents and putting up with artificial flavor. But suppose the price of the artificial version goes up? If it’s 75 cents or 80 cents or 90 cents, you’re more likely to pay just a little bit extra for the real thing.

I don’t keep track of sex doll prices, but so long as they’re legal, they’re presumptively “cheaper” than long prison sentences, mandatory sex offender registration and the handicaps that come with it, maybe even “chemical castration. “Some potential child molesters will opt for the lower “price” of the doll.

Making “childlike” sex dolls illegal brings their “price,” in non-monetary terms, closer to the “price” of actually molesting a child. That, to at least some degree, incentivizes potential child molesters to become actual child molesters.

So, do we want fewer or more child molesters? If the former, we’ll stop letting moral panic drive our legal and political demands.

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