YOU WOULDN’T USE a second hand condom, would you?
Even if it had been cleaned for hours with top-of-the-line germ-killers and disinfectants?
Of course not.
That’s disgusting enough to the point of being completely nauseating.
Then why would anyone rent a previously-used sex doll?
Like a condom, one of these objects is made for a single user.
Yet here we are, with a sex doll rental business opening up in Kamloops.
Say what you will about the social implications of this issue, either positive or negative.
Disregard for a moment the idea of someone preferring to spend $350 on a doll rather than trying to foster an actual relationship with another human being, and what that says about our increasingly isolated culture.
Set aside what this says about encouraging those with violent sexual tendencies to exercise them on an inanimate object rather than an unsuspecting person.
The most serious implications of this new business are health-related.
While the owner of the business, Kristen Dickson, has assured anyone asking that there is a comprehensive cleaning and sterilization process between uses, her assurances are simply not good enough for the community.
LISTEN: 98.3 CIFM’s Jeremy McParland chats with Kristen Dickson, Owner of House of Dolls
Dickson says Interior Health has left her responsible to come up with her own regime, as it has no regulations surrounding the sanitizing of the dolls.
It absolutely should.
In this case, a business owner asking her customers to trust her with their health is just not good enough.
Interior Health has a different definition of the word ‘dirty’.
There should be stringent regulations and regular visits by trained inspectors to ensure there is no chance of any bacteria or infections being spread from one customer to the next.
If restaurants and salons and day care facilities are made to adhere to strict health and safety practices — under enforcement by Interior Health — a similar matrix is warranted here.
On its surface, when it comes to someone renting an inanimate object for intimate purposes, there is no harm to the wider community.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once famously stated, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”
You do you.
But it is within Interior Health’s mandate to protect public health and safety.
To add on to Trudeau’s words, there is no place for what was in one person’s bedroom in the bedroom of anyone else.
