*Content warning
Docler Holding buys major stake in Playboy
This is Gyorgy 'Gyuri' Gattyan.
Founder and owner of Hungarian sex camming site, LiveJasmin (or LiveYasmin), Gattyan is one of Europe’s most prolific and well-known pimps and pornographers. So prolific that in 2011, LiveJasmin was dubbed "the most popular porn site in the world". It was reported in 2022 still to be one of a few companies dominating the global sex camming market.
A new addition to Playboy’s Board of Directors, Gattyan recently purchased a major stake in the US based porn empire through his investment company, Docler Holding. A Docler subsidiary – Byborg Enterprises – is now managing Playboy’s digital assets (a role previously played by Pornhub parent company Aylo, formerly MindGeek). The list includes Playboy Plus, Playboy TV and Playboy Club (a subscription based porn site formerly known as Centerfold).
Lollipops and teddybears: Playboy Club employs a paedophilic aesthetic to sell porn
Media reported that immediately after signing the licensing agreement, Playboy ended its plan to sell off Honey Birdette. Prior, the Westfield based sex shop chain had been listed as a “discontinued operation”.
Gattyan and Docler Holding are behind a range of sexploitation ventures including several AI porn platforms; a sex robot, AI porn and sex camming advocacy group - with ties to the Kinsey Institute - fronting as a "sexual wellness research institute"; and an e-commerce sex toy business selling bondage-domination-sado-masochism (BDSM) gear and sex dolls.
Caitlin Roper - our Campaigns Manager, author and leading global authority on the harms of sex dolls for women and girls - dispelled some of Dube's dubious claims about the virtues of sex dolls in her groundbreaking book: Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman-Hating: The Case for Resistance:
Simon Dubé, a PhD candidate who specialises in Erobotics – the study of human and machine erotic interaction – claims that sex robot technology can help people become “better erotic beings” by teaching users to become “better lovers and sexual partners”:
This technology can be used and designed to help us understand each other and improve the quality of our relationships with fellow humans ... We need machines to learn what our sexual preferences are and nudge us in the right direction (Dubé, 2021 as quoted in Pettit, 2021).
But Dubé’s proposal raises a number of questions. For starters, why is a machine needed for a person to figure out what they like sexually? How does sexually penetrating a machine prepare someone for, or improve their relationship with, an actual human – someone with their own thoughts, feelings and desires, and not merely a lifeless receptacle for semen? And how does masturbating into a silicone doll make one a more attentive intimate partner?
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It appears men’s sexual entitlement knows no bounds, or at least, that it even extends to space travel. According to Simon Dubé and Dave Anctil, sex robots could be the answer for astronauts whose ‘psychological wellbeing’ could be threatened if faced with periods of abstinence.
In an article published in The Conversation, Dubé and Anctil lament that space programs have almost completely neglected sex in space, branding NASA “irresponsible” for not addressing the topic. (Get it together, NASA.) Abstinence is not seen as a viable option. The researchers argue that while it might be fine for some people (women, perhaps?) it could be detrimental to the physical and mental health of others.
Space exploration will likely make it more difficult for people to engage in sexual relationships, but sex tech “might have the answer” – making “erotic technologies” available to space travellers. Sex toys cannot meet the social dimensions of human erotic needs, but “erobots,” a category comprised of “all virtual, embodied and augmented artificial erotic agents” like sex robots and virtual erotic partners, could.
Erobots could provide companionship and sexual pleasure to crew members and settlers. Beyond the capabilities of sex toys, erobots can incorporate social dimensions into erotic experiences. They could help with loneliness and the inevitable anxieties borne out of solitude. They could act as surrogate romantic partners, provide sexual outlets and reduce risks associated with human sex. ... Erobots could also provide intimacy and emotional support. And finally, erobots’ sensors and interactive capabilities could help monitor astronauts’ physiological and psychological health – acting as a complement to daily medical exams (Dubé and Anctil, 2020).
Is there anything sex robots can’t do?
The authors conclude, “we must shed our taboos regarding technology and sexuality,” as though taboos around technology and sex is the clear underlying motivation of those who object to female-bodied sex robots produced for men’s on demand sexual use.
Side note: Discovering a company flogging female bodied sex dolls and robotic sex tech was also the mastermind behind a pro-sex robot "research" group had a surprise factor of absolutely zero.
Imagine our lack of shock to find the "research institute" promoting other themes Gattyan profits from.
BDSM, for instance.
More on the notional benefits of sex camming.
And the virtues of AI porn.
It was no surprise either to find Gattyan-owned companies backing a conference on "techno-eroticism", or addressing "misconceptions" of sex dolls by interviewing their owners - strategic moves for a vested interest. Learn more about how sex dolls and robots actually harm women and girls here.)
Gattyan's "research institute" director Bobbi Didochka on Instagram. Didochka is also co-chair of the Academic Conference, The International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots (LSR)
Kiiroo + le Shaw: Byborg Enterprises subsidiaries are official sponsors of a pro sex doll and robot conference
Georgy Gattyan shielded by marketing spin
Gattyan hides behind a layer-cake-like facade of company and brand names, Corporate Social Responsibility claims and philanthropic efforts.
Source: LinkedIn
The irony of Gattyan's donations to women's shelters is not lost on us. We've called this type of 'charity' out before - what are these donations' other than profits derived from women's exploited bodies, at the cost of women's humanity and worth, transferred to another party?
We're not buying Gattyan's whitewashing and public relations spin - we're calling it out.
Byborg Enterprises PR tactics: pornified AI women celebrate the men helping create it
Gattyan's long history exploiting vulnerable women for profit
With headquarters now in Luxembourg, LiveJasmin's Hungarian birthplace is not coincidental. Hungary was already well established as a global hub for creating porn featuring extreme brutality against women, giving rise to the harrowing trope that "everything can be done to Hungarian women".
As highlighted by researchers Associate Professor Emilia Barna and Noemi Katona, the sex camming industry relies on the economic vulnerabilities of women in Eastern Europe and South East Asia, exploited by comparitively wealthy men in Western countries. A former male Docler customer care employee told them:
It is a very simple model: Eastern European and South East Asian women are cheap, while in the West, people have a lot of money, they are the customers.
The majority of LiveJasmin porn performers are from Romania, Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, the Republic of South Africa, and Colombia. Most registered customers are based in the United States and Germany.
LiveJasmin keeps between 20 and 70 per cent of earnings from performers - scaled to penalise low earners who give the company a bigger cut than higher earning performers. It is unclear how many LiveJasmin performers are controlled by pimps.
"Anything can happen": In sex camming, female performers are coerced into extreme acts of brutality and degradation by paying male customers
Byborg Enterprises and AI generated porn
Gattyan's suite of porn sites including AI and nudifying platforms trade on harmful tropes and genres linked to real-world harms to women and girls:
Fetishisation of school girls and female teachers:
Step-sister and step-mom incest themes:
Pornification of animated children's characters:
Better than real women - 'Always available' and 'does exactly what you want':
Teen; small; flat-chested; pigtails; school uniform - terms associated with minors:
Cherry.tv: Gattyan-owned sex camming site trades on the popular "teen" porn genre
We couldn't help noticing the childlike appearance of a number of women for sale on LiveJasmin.
Gattyan also profits from harmful "nudifying" AI content generators. For example, Cuties.AI gives users the ability to turn images of women and girls they know into porn (known as Image Based Abuse Material and Child Exploitation Material. Creation of either is illegal in Australia).
Implications for community members
The new partnership between Playboy and Gattyan further solidifies Honey Birdette’s ties to the exploitative and predatory porn and prostitution industries, and lays to rest any lingering gibberish about Honey Birdette being "just a lingerie store". We are concerned about how these ties will impact community members including vulnerable children who are forced to view Honey Birdette’s pornified shop window displays in suburban family shopping malls.
With a history of ads depicting sexual strangulation, eroticisation of violence against women, bare and exposed genitals, group orgies, and bondage and fetish themes, we cannot imagine how the ads could get worse. But knowing that Honey Birdette now has the financial and strategic backing of a Euro mega pimp with a 25 year history of trading on women’s naked and objectified bodies and ties to the Kinsey Institute - as well as Playboy's - tells us these harmful, objectifiying ads are here to stay. This type of imagery and its inherent messaging – that women are objects to be used and abused by men – are Docler Holding’s bread and butter.
Take action:
Tell Elliott Rusanow, CEO of Westfield's parent company ScentreGroup, to stop allowing Honey Birdette’s porn themed ads in his shopping centres.
See also
“I told myself it was empowering”: The truth about OnlyFans
How the global sex doll trade harms women and girls: Caitlin Roper writes for Mamamia
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