Monday, June 30, 2014

The Morpheus Database for Critical Theory:: Mark 2


"In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora"

Ovid's Metamorphoses.I.i.1-2

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The Morpheus Database (Mark 2) represents a second stage in the development of an interactive archive of transformation in literature. At this point, I begin Beta Testing the database by allowing online access to the information in order to assess the viability of the program. 
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The Archive Expands

How do we narrate Transgender? How do our stories reflect on our theories of change? What social anxieties inform our transformations? How have we gotten here?


As the Morpheus Database enters into its Second Stage, the information has begun to include texts that would not be easily classified as literary. We may debate the ontological distinctions between theory and literature, however critical differences emerge in how we use them. One asks certain kinds of questions of a text we treat as theory: argument, counter-argument, evidence, etc. One asks other kinds of questions of art: characters, tensions, resolutions. 

Furthermore, in the digital humanities we must often think like a computer while coding and make bright line distinctions. Computers are concrete thinkers and we must meet technology half way. Channels must be forged and followed. Binaries turned on and off.

The Theory Database breaks down a collection of scholarly and philosophical treatises. It codes these texts according to their positions, counter-positions and interrelations with other discourses on gender, disability and sexuality in the medieval period. As a result of this analysis, the database looks to deepen as well as expand the scope of the research. New insights can be seen by tracing the patterns between texts as well as the worlds developed within them.




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Building a New Interface

Data-entry and queries can pose epistemological questions for researchers that suggest alternative ways of thinking. Creating an archive involves the classification of many different data-types and determining how different data-sets will interact. Pull-down menus help keep classification consistent allowing for easy collections of information. 

For instance, a yes/no option determining whether or not a text touches on gender studies in a significant ways can be an hard or arbitrary distinction but makes it easier to group and compare texts by weeding out less relevant information. Conversely, text boxes that allow for full paragraph descriptions of arguments are harder to link but allow for material to be examined in greater detail.

A guiding rule in building the Morpheus Database continues to follow questions of use. In a Theory Database, users will likely engage with texts as interlocutors (subjects) more than as artifacts of study (object). As such, both a thesis (what they are supporting) as well as an antithesis (what they are opposing)are provided to allow for each engagement in the ongoing debate.

As part of the ongoing mission of the Morpheus Database, to trace the modes of Trans Bodies and Transformation, the interface also allows for a summary of how the thesis connects to developing arguments on the History of Change and how it connects to the Literature of Change mapped in the Literary Database.

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Micro-Data

Alongside big-data, the database allows for a close reading of individual texts, chapters, and arguments on transformation. Breaking up texts into sections allows for the internal development of an argument to be mapped as well as provide more opportunity for details of specific points to be captured.

One of the detail-oriented aspects in this mass database is the ability to include relevant quotations or citations. This aspect will be further developed to allow for easier integration or connection between quotes and arguments located elsewhere in the database. For instance: the ability to call up all quotations that deal with castration or have a hermaphroditic aspect to the language.

The ability to "go small" is critical to bridge digital humanities and conventional writing projects. Not only to opportunities for rigorous tiny projects within the database, but also the provide the notes that could be excerpted or referenced for use within traditional articles, talks, etc. By allowing the text boxes to be edited and expanded, the database can continue to grow over its subsequent uses. In this way, the database bares a record of its own development.

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Macro-Data

Two concerns at this point is allowing for unexpected connections to be made and for making the macro-data understandable at a glance.

A Database must at once think big and small at the same time. Not only must each text be considered in its particularity, this could be accomplished by a close-reading alone. What a database distinctly allows is the ability to compare mass amounts of the micro-data into macro-data sets that provide insights into trends. Noting points of interconnection (language, dates, etc.) as well as providing the ability to "tag" themes will allow the database to quickly filter data once the database reaches critical mass.

To assist in the development of later queries, a useful interface must allow for mass data to be glimpsed at a glance. By allowing for a thesis to be seen alongside another text's thesis, a user can easily jump between chapters (to see intra-textual developments) and between books (to see inter-textual developments). As the database builds up, themes will begin to emerge as the dynamics scholarly conversations are mapped.


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Explore the Theory Database!

Sign up to be an authorized Beta-Tester! Add to the conversation about transformation and critical theory!

Please offer comments or suggestions,
Thank you!

Friday, June 6, 2014

Real Dolls: Transgender Sex Toys & the New Authentic


Transgender Silicone Real Doll Sex Toy related to Dollification

"Why, in our culture, does the term 'anatomically correct' 
automatically equal genitals?"*


*Note: if you are a church member or a search committee,
please, actually ready the scholarship and don't jump to conclusions based on visuals.
The thesis of the argument is about thinking critically and not judging on first glance.
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In 2012, I began the "Feminine Products &  Queer Objects" Project
examining a series of trans-human matters including
Among them, Silicone received the most hits,
standing today as the 1st and 2nd most read posts on this blog.
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Authenticity

Real dolls are popular high-end sex toys. Each ranges from $4,000 upwards. In addition to preconfigured versions, shoppers have the option to customize their doll with a variety of eye, skin, and hair colors. Despite the range of possibilities this customization offers, the dolls remain relatively normative in their presentation of the human (excepting skin and eye options mimicking Anime and sci-fi characteristics). The height, weight, number of limbs, facial features, and genitalia follow normate standards of beauty. By mimicking these imagined human standards, these dolls substantiate their claim to "realness."

[The Real Doll developers] got lots of questions about whether they were "anatomically correct", which is why they ended up with fuckable vaginas. And it struck me -- why, in our culture, does the term "anatomically correct" automatically equal genitals? When someone uses that term, we know exactly what they're talking about. (Sort of like how we know what the term "legal" is supposed to mean, when we're referring to young girls. Shudder.)

Real Dolls and the Problem with "Anatomically Correct" Unapologetically Female, SUNDAY, JULY 25, 2010

The allure of the Real is that it is effective at creating the feeling of authenticity while remaining in the realm of fantasy. Reflecting both the norm and cartoon characters, Real Dolls substantiate the fantasy of the Real by embodying it in the prior case and trespassing it in the latter. The standard models exemplify the strangeness of the the others, and visa versa. By creating unreal alternatives, the attractiveness of the Real is heightened. If ever the two are combined, such as in the case of a Trans sex doll without limbs (as in the case of trans amputees) there is a sudden break in the attractiveness of the Real, as evidenced in a review of such a toy:

Really, how can they do this? Can you imagine how a transsexual person, already having trouble fitting into society, feels when they have a terrible accident, and wind up missing limbs. To know there are people who objectify that condition as a sexual fetish must be creepy beyond belief. They should really make this with full limbs, and a head. Then the purchaser can amputate whatever they wish to suit their perversions. They'd probably enjoy that, too.

~ "Review of Mia Isabella's Extreme Fuck Me Silly," Michael Z Williamson, 26 March 2012, Amazon.com

To be Real, the doll must reflect certain fantasies of the norm. This means, in the case of Michael, that the doll cannot be disabled. Even worse, the sex toy cannot be a toy. Admitting to what it is breaks the fantasy (a private affair) and makes it a disgusting political act (a public affair). This makes the toy liable to being policed by such a reviewer. To sustain the power of the object we need to deny what it is and what we are doing with it. Purchasing a Real Doll provides the experience of possessing a woman or man that one can enact one's illicit desires. One can fuck, cuddle, use, abuse, dress, undress, pose and dismember a Real Doll in ways and frequencies that would be too dangerous or illegal to practice on a human subject. In this way, the lie of authenticity appears to be a win-win situation. It is like a human when one enjoys the fantasy and then it is like an object when one fears the fantasy.


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Transgender Silicone Real Doll Sex Toy related to Dollification
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Fake Fakeness

Realness is then doubly a product of the social imagination. While enacting these sex acts in private is supposed to be essentially an apolitical act, the closeting of desires that contradicts public prohibitions demonstrates that illicit desires are in constant conversation with social fantasies. The slenderness of the Real Doll fulfills the public fantasy about women's figures while being made of silicone rather than flesh and blood makes it justifiable (even rational) for the doll to be given no food. Likewise, the public desire for women to be brainless sex toys is embodied by the brainless sex toy that is supposed to be a woman.

Given that the authenticity of the Real Dolls is a social fantasy, what then do we make of the sudden appearance and popularity of "transgender options" being offered by the manufacturer? What does it mean that buyers want a "transgender option" from the manufacturer?  While trans, intersex and other gender identities are not preconfigured, the presence of an option to transform a male or female doll into a transgender Real Doll is suggestive of a new fantasy for authenticity in the public imagination. 

By naming the variants (still not considered a standard model) "transgender options," Real Doll acknowledges an identifiable and relatively benign term for a range of identities. Real Doll is not using the contentious word "Shemale" despite its continued use in the porn industry, but opts instead for the language used by LGBT political groups. The public vetting of Transgender has been adopted for private use by Real Doll creators and users. For at least a subculture of Real Doll buyers, there has been some resolution of the "female/male" dichotomy still suggested by the term "Shemale." Instead, the transgender sex doll reflects a cultural synthesis, allowing that a (trans)woman can have a penis, for instance, in this new social order.

Her penis feels great but it is NOT for anal beginners. She has LARGE durable breasts. Her mouth is so tiny that even a small penis isn't getting in. She had me cumming almost immediately and I was able to squirt it all over her breasts while she was still inside me.

Review of Gia Darlings Transexual Love Doll, Viblover, 12 October 2012, 69AdultToys.com.

The selling of Transgender Real Dolls suggests that Transgender has begun to be essentialized by the neoliberal sex industry. There is a new authenticity that can be sold and marketed to in society. The buying and selling of Transgender sex dolls demonstrates that there are public desires and prohibitions that can be enacted and transgressed in the private sphere. There is an imagined "Transgender reality" out there that with the cost of a few thousand dollars you can get in your bedroom.

We all have shemale fantasy's, tranny porn is some of the hottest on the internet, but very, very few of us are going to have the opportunity of really fulfilling those fantasies. That's where tranny sex dolls come it. They are hot, and a great placebo for the real thing.

"Tranny & Transsexual Sex Toys," Flesh Toys for Boys.

Imagining such a thing as a Transgender realness is particularly striking because of the ongoing history of the Trans person figuring the artificial or fake body. The relation between Transgender and breast implants (fake tits), facial reconstruction (plastic surgery), sex change operations, and hormones (often developed from animal urine) has been used to depict Transgender as essentially unessential. It is common to hear the terms "a real woman" used in contrast to a transwoman (i.e. the "fake" or "unreal" woman). Indeed the Born this Way rhetoric of Gay and Lesbian rights movements only deepens the gulf between Transgender and Realness. This gulf allows for participation in and with Transgender without committing to being responsible to either Transgender politics or the persons. 

This non-committal relation to Transgender is evident in the optional aspect of the dolls. "I like that the cock is removable," writes one reviewer, "but with the cock on, I can't dress her up. The face was cute, but nothing special and the back door wasn't as tight as most females. But it all-in-all works for me!" (Review of Jesse Transsexual Doggie Style Love Doll, Dirty Boy, 6 December 2011, 69AdultToys.com). Manufacturers of top of the line dolls do not usually commit to making a line of Trans dolls but create add-on dildos to the female dolls. Not only does this cut out a large portion of the Trans community from representation but allows buyers to take it or leave it ("it" being a penis). Either way, as Dirty Boy notes, the experience is never complete. Realness remains a fantasy.

Yet for the same reasons, Transgender Real Dolls may be considered the fantasy of the Real par excellence. Transgender is the human that isn't human. The real fake body. The flesh and blood human that embodies plastic surgery. Transgender embodies the fabrication of reality. The New Authentic offered by the Transgender Real Doll is a Realness that acknowledges its own lie and thus allows us to be free to play out our own fears and enjoyments.

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Transgender Silicone Real Doll Sex Toy related to Dollification
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Entrance Points

There are those for whom Transgender remains more than a fantasy but a fable. They see it from the outside or even further like a child hearing of a faerie world just beyond the next hill. There are even those so close as to be pressed up against the glass, staring through the windows of a dark club or bending aside to see what is up a gurls skirt. For them Transgender Real Dolls are a way to touch something from another world. Perhaps they may go there one day, to the city, and touch that, feeling her panties with a bare hand, yet for the moment the Real Doll stands in for the Real thing like a paper plane for a 747.



Fantasy, especially fantasy of the Real, often feels more real than the reality we know. When one reviewer writes, "I have never seen someone so beauitful as this she-male doll" we may wonder that a doll gives them something a human cannot (Review of Gia Darlings Transexual Love Doll, Robert, 30 October 2007, 69AdultToys.com). Yet is this not the case for many other things? How often when attending a concert where the venue employs giant screens do we find ourselves, even when an excellent view of the stage is available, gazing at the facsimile rather than the thing itself? Being trained to look for impossible standards (in weight, bone structure, etc.) only representations of these standards, such as dolls or television can embody them. In the particular case of the Transgender love doll, by emphasizing a double artificiality it sets itself so far at a distance that it becomes a transcendent Real. The nonhuman becomes more Human than a human.




The special ability of a Transgender love doll is that it offers an object on which one can physically enact an entrance into the impossible Real while sustaining its impossibility. Another reviewer writes of this feeling of encountering the doll as moving towards consummation of his desire, I have always been curious about the trans-sexual scene and now feel I have the confidence to pursue transsexuals now." Review of Gia Darlings Transexual Love Doll, Anthony 'Horney Bastard' Decunto, 26 January 2007, 69AdultToys.com. It may be possible that the 'Horney Bastard' does enter into the scene and bodies of transsexuals, but what is key here is it he has not yet. So long as he moves from facsimile to facsimile he can sustain his curiosity by sustaining the impossibility of encountering the Real of Transsexuals. Each time he fucks an even more Real Doll he may get that orgasmic transcendence of the "now" that changes everything. 




The production of a Real which is "never" realized (as in Robert's case) or the Real which can "now" be pursued (as in Anthony's case) keep the Realness of the Trans Doll attractive. This is not to say that pleasure or enjoyment of a trans body is truly impossible, but it will be of a different nature than the Real Doll and even more different than the fantasy of Realness they inspire. The power of the faerie is that it remains just out of reach or an incomplete experience. The Trans to-be is ever more enchanting than the Trans that-is because it denies all the insufficiencies of the present that lead us to desire it.

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The Purple Dollar

What about the faeries themselves? What do persons who consider themselves under the auspices of Transgender make of the Transgender Real Doll and her authenticity? While a Trans person myself, I shrink to suppose what the Trans opinion (or rather, opinions) to be. We are like a flooded plane even more than like a river. We are in constant motion and are ever shifting our boundaries. Material is constantly being washed away and inundated so that Transgender appears to incite more differences than to mark an discrete center.



Yet this reality is not the Real that the Trans doll represents. It insists on a Realness not only on the side of the provider but on the side of the consumer. Neoliberal market economies want there to be a Transgender community so it can market to them. Already so much of the Trans polis gravitates around technologies (surgeries, hormones, clothes, therapy) that all costs money. The fight for access or for insurance coverage does not contest the expense of money to be Transgender but insists that we change who is allowed or who should spend the money. The introduction of a Transgender Real Doll is yet another method through which the call to pay for Trans Realness is marketed. Greed is in the heart of the politics of representation. The demand "me too" is as much as request for services as it is a desperate plea to offer up one's money to the market.


"I bought this doll on sale at a local shop because as a tranny I love everything tranny."



The arrival of a Transgender Real Doll is a step away (or less than a step) from a Transgender Barbie Doll, where the "me too" pay-for-politics is heard loud and clear. "Gia is America's Transsexual Barbie," writes a review, "Go ahead, boys can play with dolls too! ("Review of Gia darling transsexual doll 7in removable cock," Justin, 29 November 2009). While the call for inclusion appears innocent, it remains indebted to references and systems of capital. Barbie's power is that she is at once a market force and a social force. These figures have the power to mobilize mass exchanges of money, including the Purple Dollar, a term I am using in reference to growing associations of Transgender with purple after Pink came to stand for Gay men.




Barbie authorizes a kind of Realness that is mimicked by the sex doll. This is an ironic plea, however, as Barbie has publicly rejected and marginalized Transgender political movements. When the Barbie website released a poll with a third gender option, "Boy, girl, and I don't know," certain anti-Transgender, anti-Gay and Lesbian groups threw a fit. "To pose 'this transgender question at little girls, they've really crossed the line,' [Bob] Knight said, who added that 'bisexuality gender confusion' is the Web site's agenda, which is 'very dangerous.'" ("Barbie Accused of Being a Part of the Transgender Movement," Jake Tapper, 3 January 2006, ABCNews.com). In response, Barbie replied that "This was just an innocent oversight" and "I don't know" was changed to "I don't want to say." This moment of inclusion was rejected, in part, because neoliberal capitalism only wants fair weathered inclusion. Everyone is free to join in and give us their money, until the crowd becomes too diverse and scares off the target market (white heterosexual women). The call for "Trans too" or "boys too" can only be made in the already pseudo-marginalized setting of the sex toy store or the privacy of online shopping where people can't see or won't say who is being included.



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Transgender Silicone Real Doll Sex Toy related to Dollification
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the Best of Both Worlds

Sometimes Realness succeeds where Transgender fails. In social landscapes where "Don't Say Gay" is enforced (including the very politically turbulent arena of the bedroom), Transgender Realness is often appropriated by heterosexuals without acknowledging the history of the object. In this case, both the fantasy and the realness are denied in order to allow for silent enjoyment of both of them. While producing an extremely delicate situation where words, desires, and enjoyments must be tightly policed to keep men and women within the precarious grounds of heteronormativity, Transgender becomes a silent instrument undergirding systems of homophobia and sexism. Incapable of imagining Trans Reality in and of itself, this relation to Transgender Realness is typified by the statement that Trans bodies or sex toys are "the best of both worlds."

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, shemale sex toys and tranny sex dolls are all the rage – and with good reason. You get the best of both male and female sex dolls with a bit of fantasy thrown in.

"SexZie06 Tranny Shemale Sex Doll," Flesh Toys for Boys.



Where "male and female" genders and "female for male" sexualities work in relation to LGBT networks through the politics of denial, Trans sex dolls are seen not as concrete wholes but as a mixture of parts. If a penis is for a woman's enjoyment and a vagina or boobs is for a man's pleasure, then the combination of these organs must either suggest a multi-purpose tool for hetero couples or else a personal toy with excessive extras. Such instrumentalist reviews of Transgender sex toys tend to ring with a tone of wonderful amusement or else uncomfortable homophobia.


This is a fascinating toy to help nervous couples interested in possibly introducing another person. Just imagine how the woman can have her regular male partner and another penis to be able to play with. Now add some female parts for him to play with too! Finally, to test the less regular waters, allow him to imagine the fun of anal.




Denying both the Transgender and Realness of the sex toy, the object becomes "fascinating." Ignorance or naivety mildly inoculate users from self-inscribed homophobia. This method presumes that only a gay man or lesbian would immediately recognize the possible uses of a Trans doll, anxiously covering over that the user evidently recognized a desire and pleasure for the mixture of penis, ass and breasts when it was purchased. The winking suggestion of a third person allows for the heterosexual pair bond to be underlined to help build the case against accusations of gay, lesbian, or trans desire. Other possibilities may be suggested but must be regarded as comical (i.e. unnatural) if the realness (i.e. naturalness) of the heterosexuals are to be maintained without speaking the forbidden terms.


"As a straight girl, the breasts and the anal entrance (could be a good chance for ladies to test out a harness, though, or practice for a partner) are wasted on me, but the flexibility and size are super. To be honest, I bought this instead of the Dude model because this one was on sale for half the price and the cock measurements were a bit bigger. Having said that, I will buy the Dude in the future as I'd rather have washboard abs under me than breasts. Still, ladies can get use out of this by 'sitting' Mia in a chair and riding backwards. That way you get the feel of the breasts behind you which act more as a stabilizer than anything."

"Review of Mia Isabella's Extreme Fuck Me Silly," Bex, 7 July 2012, Amazon.com



If these other possibilities are to be acknowledged than then they are stated in the most emphatic terms as if repeating one's heterosexuality gives one a free pass to enjoy queer pleasures without being affected by them. In this case, one must maintain ignorance or else indifference to these alternatives throughout the act of enjoyment so that rejection of queerness becomes a part of the pleasure of touching the queer/trans body.



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Transgender Silicone Real Doll Sex Toy related to Dollification
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Freaks and Fetishists

So tenuous is this dance, a slight whisper can break it open to let in all the unspoken homoerotic and trans-erotic desires. Take for instance what happens if the Trans sex doll is used outside the context of heterosexual sex, suddenly the fiction that each partner sustained for each other vanishes and the lone partner opens themselves to being disciplined and rejected by the other partner.


My girl friend and I had bought this wonderful love machine it got both of us off all night long, The only problem is my closeness with LULU my love doll has caused issues with my girlfriend since she came home early one day and found us together in the tub. Was not a pretty seen and she has left me and will not talk to me any more :-( Note to all...........dont get to attached to this doll it will only break your heart.

~Review Sexflesh Ride Me Transsexual Love Doll, Heather More, 24 February 2012, Amazon.com.

"That's what happens when you buy a female doll with a cock."


Based on a system of exclusion and denial, the impulse to deny a partner when they enact a perceived transgression into the love that dares not speak its name, then the rejection by the other partner adds self-defense to the already overstressed compulsion to police. In the case of Heather More, seeing her boyfriend alone with the Trans doll transforms an object and a sex act they had already enjoyed together. The toy turns from a "wonderful love machine" into a too Real queer body. The enjoyment turns from a social performance that "got both of us off" into a display of private pleasure. It turns from a silent fiction into the announcement of hidden desires. As such, the girlfriend evidently denies the boyfriend and the object together, not simply because she compulsively rejects things associated with homosexuality, but so the finger does not get turned around on her. She had enjoyed it too. She had enacted an illicit pleasure and desire. Now that the shared secret had opened up the question of their personal attraction to the object, she tosses away toy and boy together as shameful evidence of her own transgression. The best of both worlds turns out to implicate both worlds in crossing the divides they have sworn to silently maintain.

The game of this dance then is not to exclusion of Transgender or queer Realness but the denial of it. For those whom maintain their heterosexuality but admit their illicit desire and enjoyment, the act of self-othering and self-rejection can become a form of self-pleasure. In this way, homophobia is inscribed in a queer heterosexuality for those who consider themselves freaks of fetishists.

Okay, I'm a "freak" who likes hermaphrodite/Futa porn and the idea of a hermaphrodite masturbator is a joy... The Cock is weirdly positioned, it's not quite anatomically placed, my best guess is so it is easier to handle as a dildo. Aside from that the feel of the cock rubbing against my belly as I pounded the pussy was novel, if only I got more pleasure from the canal. Unless you're really into this sort of thing, I would not recommend it.

Review of Sexflesh Hermaphrodite Combo Stroker , D. Gutridge, 9 May 2012, Amazon.com

In this case, the loaded terminology of "hermaphrodite" used by the manufacturer and the consumer suggests a history of abuse which is here turned back on heterosexuality as an open form of self-abuse. The Transgender, intersex, and queer remain "novel" others to the self, but they are admitted as instrumentally serving heterosexual desires. Those who are "really into this sort of thing" are imagined but are not identified with the same reality of the self. The fantasy and transgression are admitted but maintained as a freakish mirror image of the Transgender Real that is imagined and enjoyed for its own sake.

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Explore more silicone
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Transgender silicone real doll shows off penis
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