Two weeks ago, two distressed citizens stumbled across what they assumed was the mangled corpse of a woman, stuffed into a suitcase in a small town about three hours south of Sydney. They called the local police, who in turn issued a statement that a body in a suitcase had been found. The wider public waited sombrely for Australia’s tally of dead women to tick up by one.
But instead, a day later, after forensic analysis, it was determined that the woman in question wasn’t a woman at all. The “body” was that of a sex doll, marked with fake bruises, left to rot on a lonely dirt road. In Australia, as in the UK and some other European countries, it is not illegal to own a sex doll unless it resembles a child. Given the doll’s seemingly mature presentation, police investigations were called off.
The sex doll trade is flourishing. A 2026 market analysis estimates that the global market currently was valued at US$6.6bn in 2025, with a projection that it will more than double, to US$13.4bn, by 2033. As the market booms, and involves increasingly lifelike facsimiles of women, does how these dolls get treated matter?
And when a sex doll with “bruises” and rain-matted hair is tucked into a suitcase and left on a roadside, should we be concerned?
Johannes Fuss, chair of forensic psychiatry and sex research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, tells the Guardian that “the disposability and desecration of the female form in these contexts cannot be viewed entirely in isolation from broader cultural hostilities toward women”. Working with researcher Jeanne C. Desbuleux, Fuss has published papers on the link between the anthropomorphisation of sex dolls and gender-based violence.
The research remains inconclusive. “We currently lack robust longitudinal data to definitively prove whether such doll use is protective or, conversely, is a behavioural stepping stone that increases real-world offending risk. I think we urgently need research on this question as more and more technologies enter the market to simulate human sexuality,” Fuss says.
However, he is suspicious of their appeal. “To put it provocatively: it boils down to total availability, a youthful and attractive body, and zero emotional demand or dialogue.”
A quick scroll on The Doll Forum website finds members regularly pit real-life women against their silicone knock-offs, one writing that “girlfriends are for guys who haven’t found the right doll yet”, and that “no matter how pretty she is, there is a man out there who is sick of her shit”.
Tammie Paine, owner of Naughty by Nature Adult Store, a sex doll retailer based in Adelaide, regularly engages with sex doll enthusiasts. “One of the biggest misconceptions is that they all fit a particular stereotype, or that owning a doll automatically says something negative about someone’s character,” she says. “This hasn’t been our experience at all. The recent image from Goulburn [a town near where the sex doll was found in the suitcase] understandably attracted attention because, without context, it looked confronting. But I don’t think one unusual image should be used to characterise an entire group of consumers.”
While the market for sex dolls may be heterogenous, what does it mean to engage in any kind of relationship with a woman-shaped thing?
“From my conversations with professionals and police, there are definitely men with adult-like companion dolls who see that doll as a person. They might see their dolls as women,” Prof Kelly Richards, a criminologist in the School of Justice at the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Justice says. “But do they see women as humans?
“This is going to sound really dark. But in a global context, where I believe gender equality has gone backwards, sex dolls are actually just the extreme end of that.”
Central to the industry’s rise is sophisticated technology. Lifelike sex dolls are now increasingly customisable. Prospective buyers can render themselves an ideal companion from scratch, courtesy of 3D printers. In 2017, the sex-doll brand RealDoll paved the way for the future of AI-generated sex robots by introducing “Harmony” to their coterie. In its newest model, which its website says will be available this year and for which it is running a waitlist, buyers can assign personality traits to her – attributes like “spiritual” or “insecure” – from an app on their phone. “She’s far more than a beautiful body. Harmony listens to you,” the website reads.
The new Harmony also has an AI vagina – described on the RealDoll site as “an electronic insert that pairs via Bluetooth to the X-Mode App. It detects touch, movement, and speed, transitioning naturally from mild arousal to climax, with synchronised vocal responses that make every moment feel real.”
At the 2026 annual Consumer Electronics Show, a major international conference that unveils breakthrough technologies, the Singapore-based sex tech company Lovense introduced Emily, an AI-powered companion doll, to participants. She is customisable, offering “personality switching” from modes including “co-worker”, “gym crush” and “tradwife”, is able to send AI-generated selfies on request, and remembers past conversations. The Lovense website outlines built-in sensors around the doll’s body which elicits a moan when touched, and suggests the doll can offer “routine companionship”, help with “building confidence through judgement-free connection” and allow for a “safe expression of your wildest fantasies”. The site is running a waitlist, with shipping expected in the first quarter of 2027.
Coeros, an online sex doll accessories brand based in Los Angeles, offers customised sex doll heads. According to their website, they are able to model each head on “photos of a real person, an original character, or an AI-generated image”. Customers are able to upload reference photographs to a submission form on their site, when ordering their very own ersatz woman. The Coeros website claims they are able to “achieve around 90% resemblance” to the woman in photographs provided, depending on the quality of the images. The entire process of making the doll’s head, it says, is about one to two months.
Asked about the company’s responsibilities or processes if a doll was asked to be modelled on a real person without their knowledge, a spokesperson at Coeros told the Guardian: “The fact that a custom design can be created from reference images should not be interpreted as permission to use another person’s likeness without their consent. We do not encourage or support the use of our customisation service for harassment, impersonation, or other non-consensual purposes.” Details for prospective buyers on the website include specific services from eyebrow hair implantation to shipping, but do not appear to include any directions as to obtaining the permission of women in any photographs uploaded. One member of The Doll Forum wrote of Coeros’s invention: “The most obvious candidates are the ones who turned you down, the ones that got away, the ones you had no hope of winning.”
A custom sex doll head is available for approximately US$1,790. Caitlin Roper, Australian author of Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating: The Case for Resistance, calls these kinds of dolls “replica female sex slaves”.
Roper actively campaigns for adult sex dolls to be prohibited as well as childlike sex dolls. “There’s an understanding, in the case of child sex abuse dolls, that their use extends to the harm of actual children. This same recognition of harm does not extend to adult women dolls. Women are being reduced to a set of penetrable orifices,” she says, before referencing a case currently being tried in South Korea involving Jang Yoon-gi, a 23-year-old man who last month admitted to the rape and murder of a 16-year-old high school student in May. A damaged sex doll was reportedly found in his apartment, with damage to its neck and chest.
There was much speculation about why the sex doll was abandoned on the quiet country road south of Sydney. Was it a prank? A dark, violent fantasy? Or possibly, even, a clumsy way of discarding a large and bulky item – garbage?
As a large, potentially embarrassing, item, disposal of a sex doll can present its own set of issues. In March, a man from Adelaide posted an advert for his 5’6” tall sex doll on The Doll Forum. This is because it can be easier to give away a doll, even one with a mutilated vulva, than it is to dispose of one. This particular owner had cut holes out of his doll’s vagina and had never gotten around repairing it by glueing new thermoplastic elastomer to the area.
On Reddit, there are many other dolls looking for adoption, and a trove of pictures can be found. Their list of injuries are interminable: macerated nipples, perforated limbs, mouths encrusted with mould. The users authenticate listings for their used sex dolls by positioning them next to blank pieces of paper, inscribed with username details and the date. It makes for a grisly tableau of lifeless hostages.
Jerry Siew, owner of SxDolled, a sex doll retailer in Australia, has seen the same listings. “I went through forums – I saw the demand of people wanting to dispose of their dolls. I see it as very important,” he tells the Guardian. Siew’s company is the only one in Australia that offers a discreet lifelike doll disposal service.
“For owners, it gives them a dignified way to part with a beloved doll, whether the doll is beyond repair or they are simply moving and unable to take the doll with them. You just have to look at the incident in Goulburn,” he says. “It caused 20 hours of police time, and stress for the community. I’ve also seen articles of dolls thrown into oceans and rivers. That causes panic and wastes emergency resources.”
These glass-eyed companions have little to say about their treatment, but their owners frequently do. While discussing how best to dispose of a lifelike doll, one member of The Doll Forum recommended investing in a chainsaw. “Live out your wildest chainsaw massacre fantasy!” he wrote.
