DILDO FOR SALE

TEAM WERQ                                                                                  

Paolo Halili                                                            

Bianca Lebron                                                        

Martie Lopa   
Marc Malferrari            

Mariana Mercado
Audrey Mooney
Rebekah Reyes
Miel Soriano

       

BREACHING EXPERIMENT
Dildo Selling

1.) What norm did you violate?

            Provocative items should not be presented in public.

2.) Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?

            For our breaching experiment we decided to pretend to sell a dildo to strangers and see their reactions. We sold the dildo both in Ateneo and in Regis Center, Katipunan. We began the breaching experiment by approaching individuals and small groups of people, and asked them if they were interested in the package we were selling. If they answered yes, we would then reveal what was in the brown paper bag and watch them react.

3.) What were the different reactions of the people?

         The reactions from the various individuals were mostly a mix of confusion and shock. Because we started the experiment off by pretending to sell something for school, the initial reaction was curiosity. However, when the dildo was brought out, most people were stunned into silence or they reacted outwardly by making a surprised sound or laughing. The girls were prone to a more violent reaction than the guys who would simply laugh. However, once we explained that it was simply for a project, everyone reacted with good grace.

         These reactions were brought about by the shock that people felt at the lack of proper behavior in a school setting. A dildo is not something that is usually brought out in a public place, and thus, people felt uncomfortable around it and did not know how to react when they saw one. For some people, it was their first time even seeing something like that, therefore they were both curious but slightly disturbed at the same time. This experiment affirmed the norms that sex toys are not something that people are entirely comfortable with. These are things that should be kept for private and personal use, and have no business being brought out in public. It was expected that people would react in that manner, and these hypotheses were met.

4.) Aside from the norms, what sociological themes are at play for people to react in a certain way?

            Aside from the norms, other sociological themes that our group touched on were age appropriateness, gender roles, social class, and values/beliefs. First, for age appropriateness, we limited our experiment on different ages except the minorities and the senior citizens so as to not pollute the minds of the young ones and to avoid disrespecting the elderly. From what we observed, when we held our experiment in the Ateneo where there are mostly students from our age group, most of them found it funny and shocking at the same time. Meanwhile, as we experimented on adults outside the school, they weren’t as shocked as the younger ones, one was even curious. This shows how in our age, many are still not used to being exposed to provocative things out in the open and some are still quite innocent. On the other hand, adults show less shocking reactions because they are more or less used to open sexual conversations and parents or other people do not reprimand them from doing so.

            Second, for gender roles, we had an instance when one of our guy members asked a girl if she would like to buy a dildo and she refused immediately. Moments after, our group mates overheard the girl talking to her boyfriend about what happened and the guy felt angry and wanted to look for our guy group mates as he felt it was rude and bastos. We think this happened because most people often perceive guys to be manyak.

            Third, for social class, we experimented on Ateneans and employees specifically from Red Mango and Titan. We observed how the Atenean students reacted in disgust and shock because we believe that the middle to higher class people are taught to be very conscious, conservative, demure, and even reserved. While the employee from Red Mango was not shocked at all, instead, he was even curious about the item. For the employees in Titan, they only looked at us weirdly probably because we were students selling such an item but otherwise, the item itself did not shock them so much.

             Lastly, no one was interested in buying the dildo because somehow our beliefs tells us that masturbation is not right and so is using sex toys for pleasure. It also goes against their values of being conservative. 

5.) How did you feel when you did this experiment? How does it feel to deviate from the norms? Were you hesitant to do the activity?

            We felt really awkward doing the experiment because obviously it involved the use of a dildo, which is a sex toy. It felt very weird and uncomfortable to deviate from the social norms since we were brought up to be conservative people and also, we were afraid that people will look at us differently and probably even judge us. It simply wasn't right. Yes, we certainly had second thoughts in approaching people and trying to sell the dildo for we knew it was totally inappropriate especially for our age. Just going to the sex store and buying the dildo was already one of the most embarrassing things we have done.

6.) Others observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general?

            Throughout the experiment, we were glad to have seen different reactions from different people. Indeed, we were able to “breach” in this breaching experiment. However, we did encounter a few complications. During our documentation inside campus, we stumbled upon a female student of whom the experiment was also facilitated. Apparently, she was in some sort of relationship with another male student, and after we had done the experiment, the male student was not so happy about what we had done. However, we immediately explained to him that it was only an experiment and that we did not have any malicious intentions. Another observation seen while doing the experiment were people, who were more open about these kinds of things such as the subject of sex, did not react violently but rather wanted to look at the sexual paraphernalia more and started making jokes about it. Lastly, we encountered two employees in Titan, which is located on the 3rd floor of the Regis Center. When they saw the sexual paraphernalia, they immediately seemed to think that we were just goofing around. The female employee however tried her best to keep her laughter. Again, we explained to them that we were only facilitating an experiment. Ultimately, we believe that our experiment was a success because collectively, almost all of the videos of different people taken exhibited “breached” reactions.