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Sex dolls have been criticized for reproducing unrealistic expectations about human bodies. Yet precise sex doll measurements are lacking in the literature nor has there been any systematic attempt to determine the extent to which sex dolls exaggerate human characteristics. To address this gap, we compared the specifications of sex dolls marketed in the USA with the characteristics of women and men living in the USA. Specifically, we tested if and to what degree female dolls were slimmer (H1) and male dolls more muscular (H2) than female and male humans, respectively. Furthermore, we tested if and to what degree female dolls' breasts (H3) and male dolls' penises (H4) were larger than those of women and men. We also tested if sex dolls' observed race/ethnicity was more often White than that of the US population (H5). In 2023, we collected the measures of all 757 full-body sex dolls marketed by the US retailer SexyRealSexDolls.com. Body measures from the US population were extracted from scientific literature. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed using R. All hypotheses were fully or partially confirmed, which indicated that sex dolls marketed in the USA are not realistic depictions of the US population but hypergendered (H1, H2), hypersexualized (H3, H4), and racially fetishized (H5). Implications of the lack of realism are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers can use data visualization techniques to explore, analyze, and present data in new ways. Although quantitative data are visualized most often, recent innovations have brought attention to the potential benefits of visualizing qualitative data. In this article, the authors demonstrate one way researchers can use networks to analyze and present ethnographic interview data. The authors suggest that because many respondents know one another in ethnographic research, networks are a useful tool for analyzing the implications of respondents' familiarity with one another. Moreover, respondents often share familiar cultural references that can be visualized. The authors show how visualizing respondents' ties in conjunction with their shared cultural references sheds light on the different systems of meaning that respondents within a field site use to make sense of the social phenomena under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly debates on sex dolls tend to view them in one of two ways. Either the purchase and use of sex dolls reflects and exacerbates misogyny, or that dolls are themselves a technological marvel meeting an array of sexual and emotional needs in sex negative cultures. I complicate these views by analyzing how and why heterosexual men personify their hyperreal sex toys in conventionally feminine, albeit hypersexualized, ways. Drawing on digital ethnographic observations and interviews with 41 love and sex doll owners who use digital media to personify their dolls, I suggest that the creation of hyper-gendered doll personas tends to reproduce culturally specific gender norms due to social dynamics within the community. Specifically, I show how doll community norms privilege heterosexual masculinity and thus limit the doll personas that are imagined and created. By focusing on the social practices of this community rather than how sex dolls are designed, this research suggests a way for scholars to be critical of taboos against technologically assisted sexual pleasure while acknowledging the tendency of futuristic sex practices to reproduce social inequalities. Implications for how future sexual technologies could someday challenge status-quo inequalities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a case of internet posts discussing social issues affecting men and masculinity. Analysis of 500 posts containing masculine coded language on the subreddit r/unpopularopinion suggests that masculinity, especially when intersected with straightness and whiteness, is discursively constructed in an imagined social hierarchy where the plight of straight white men is invisible. By framing opinions as "unpopular," these posts suggest that while the poster's view may be objectively true, it is disvalued in mainstream discourses. Three key findings emerged from this analysis: First, regardless of the particular social issue discussed, efforts to reduce social inequality were negatively evaluated on average. Second, negative posts were more popular on the site; thus, amplifying the visibility of grievances. Third, masculine coded language is structured on Reddit, such that certain issues are bundled together to generate salient, interlocking themes indicating a robust meaning system. Overall, these findings suggest that criticisms of social equality are embedded within a discourse of threatened masculinity, straightness, and whiteness. This research extends past work on internet discursive practices related to masculinity and gender by showing the pervasiveness and intersectional nature of masculinity threat in digital forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have worked to understand how people use dating apps as this new technology changes sexual interactions. While previous scholarship has examined how people interact with one another on dating platforms, less attention has been paid to how people decide to adopt dating apps for personal use. This study analyzes interview data with 27 heterosexual college students in order to examine this process by asking, "how do heterosexual college students come to define dating apps as a normative dating practice?" The findings in this study suggest that both men and women work through ambiguous and deceptive online interactions. As they work through online interactions, they establish themselves as normative dating app users by aligning their experiences with their perceived potential of dating apps. The findings suggest that initially, many dating app users see the apps 'fun' or as a 'game.' Eventually, through a combination of experience and technological tools, students came to define dating apps as more convenient than in-person dating and relatively safe to use for sex and dating. The findings also suggest that while both men and women confront deception and ambiguous social interactions, gender-specific concerns strongly influence how students use dating apps. This gender difference is particularly pronounced regarding the perceived relative safety of dating apps. Specifically, men define dating apps as fun albeit superficial, whereas women define dating apps as potentially dangerous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutionally equivalent groups that occur in a single molecule are classified on the basis of their topic relationships by comparing their environments. The proposed classification extends earlier suggestions of Mislow and Raban. The existence of homotopic groups (those indistinguishable under any conditions) is related to the symmetry properties (gyrosymmetry) of rigid as well as flexible finite moieties. Stereoheterotopic groups (those that are distinguishable but occur in constitutionally equivalent environments) may be associated with various steric elements which will be fully discussed in a second paper. Each of these elements, the center, the axis, the plane and the torsional element, is divided into four mutually exclusive classes: the chiral and achiral elements of stereoisomerism; the prochiral and proachiral elements of prostereoisomerism. Of these classes, only the various centers of stereoisomerism and of prostereoisomerism are discussed in this report. Some modifications in our earlier proposals for the naming of individual stereoheterotopic groups are introduced. The utility of these new and revised terminologies for biochemical discussions is indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association curates a special issue highlighting sociological contributions to technology and media studies. That tradition continued in 2020, even as everything else changed. The articles included in this year's special issue were mostly written pre-Pandemic, yet their implications seem amplified by the current historical moment. With a globe gone remote, mediated communication rose from a specialist academic subject to an acute social consideration, intersecting with and illuminating basic sociological concerns about inequality, the nature of work, family life, and the compounding effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they interplay with social and material conditions. These topics are all reflected in the articles from this year's issue, now inflected with a post-Pandemic reality that shows insights from CITAMS are needed now, more than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]