What if all of this were about pleasure, power, and control over the body?
Boys wear blue. Girls wear pink.
Boys get joysticks. Girls get dolls.
It may seem like a silly stereotype – and it is. But it’s also a deep reflection of a much older symbolic logic. A logic that, for centuries, has dictated who gets to control, who gets to care, who gets to desire.
This text is not about toys. It’s about what toys teach us about the body, pleasure, power, and affection. It’s about the subtle (yet powerful) ways technology, consumption, and culture have been shaping human desire for millennia – a phenomenon I’ve come to call affective-erotic substitution.
Joystick: the phallic symbol of controlled pleasure
Let’s look a bit less innocently at a pop icon from gamer culture: the classic Atari 2600 joystick – a symbol of bodily control, sensory immersion, and personal interactive pleasure.
A square base. One red button. A phallic shape: a firm black stick that moves with the hand. Hard to ignore the symbolism.
More than a controller, the joystick is a symbolic device. It activates an intimate circuit between body and machine: the player touches, presses, moves – and receives immediate response.
Touch → Desire → Feedback → Reward.
Playing is a symbolic, choreographed ritual – a kind of mental masturbation.
From design to discourse, everything is geared toward performance: control, action, solitary pleasure.
Vibration, feedback, and risk-free pleasure
Over time, controllers got more advanced: vibrating, touch-sensitive, immersive.
Technology began to simulate pleasure. The body commands, the machine responds. But here’s the thing: nothing escapes control.
No reciprocity. No contradiction. Just predictability and dominance.
It’s a fantasy where the Other doesn’t exist — only the player and their power.
And what about the girls? Dolls that don’t respond
For decades, girls were kept far away from this symbolic circuit.
They were given dolls, tiny kitchens, plastic babies.
Toys that teach care, not control.
Nothing that vibrates, reacts, or answers back.
Nothing that teaches spatial mastery, timing, or power over the Other.
The girl’s body learns a different logic: sweetness, waiting, delicacy.
While boys master the world (and technology), girls silently welcome it.
And that silence, sadly, also shapes their desire.
Every technology is also a symbolic project
It’s not an exaggeration. Just look closer.
Every shape has intention. Every design communicates something.
When we understand this, we realise that toys are not neutral.
They shape gestures, affections, and futures.
They shape what we expect (or fear) of ourselves and of others.
What if we reimagined everything?
Once we become aware of this symbolic circuit, something shifts.
We can create new ways to play, touch, feel, and imagine.
More diverse. More free. More human.
Because joysticks can be for girls too.
And dolls can be for boys.
And pleasure, power, affection, and fantasy can
and should – belong to everyone.
Download or Read more here:
BATISTA, D. J., & WARZECHA, P. (2025). Affective-Erotic Substitution: The Gamified Intimacy from Paleolithic Venus to Human-AI Experiences. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16620373