This article is from a few weeks back, and this post will probably kill my site’s SEO before it even gets off the ground, but whatever. This story is funny. And it gives me an excuse to ramble incoherently about sex magic.

Coronavirus football: FC Seoul apologises for ‘sex dolls’ in stands

On Sunday, FC Seoul played their first home match of the K League season.

The ground was empty – one of many measures designed to prevent a Covid-19 outbreak.

So before the match, a company called Dalcom offered to fill some of the empty seats, and the club agreed.

In total, there were 30 mannequins – 28 of them female, and two of them male.

However, fans watching online noticed that some of the mannequins looked more like sex dolls – and some were advertising x-rated websites – leading to the club apologising on Instagram and Facebook.

Sex dolls in the stands, as stand-ins for a crowd. Brilliant!

And weird, so it’s totally fine and “on-brand” for me to share it here. Right?

Okay, sure, it’s not exactly weird in the “high strangeness” sense, so let’s kick it up a notch.

Sex magic has become almost comically mainstream, especially in the last few years. Back in the early 2000s, comic book writer and noted chaos magician Grant Morrison was publicly asking fans of his comic The Invisibles to participate in a “global wackathon” to help him boost sales. Fast forward to March of this year, and we get this gem from Men’s Health.

In between these tent-poles there have been articles on sex magic in Vice, Teen Vogue, and Cosmopolitan. Not to mention such an astounding number of books, YouTube videos, and Instagram posts that I won’t even try to link them here.

It’s a very strange, yet very welcome phenomenon to see magic given such lengthy write-ups in the mainstream press, particularly when those write-ups often come across as downright favorable. I have some theories as to why sex magic in particular seems to get better treatment than, say, astrology, but that’s beside the point.

Closer to the point is the fact that sex magic isn’t as universally practiced, nor is it even as accepted in magical circles as some of these articles make it sound.

Sex magic is a contentious topic, and discussions about it often run up against a host of other hot button issues.

• If sex magic is the end-all, be-all, where does that leave asexual people?
• What, if anything, does our modern understanding of gender and sexuality have to say about sex magic?
• Is sex always a magical act? If so, what does that say about casual sexual encounters? And when does “all sex is magic” start looking a lot like “slut shaming?”
• Is mystifying sex just another way for puritanical, Christian values to hang around long past their expiration date?
• Is the “sex = manifestation” idea a direct successor to “sex = procreation” and how problematic is that?

Spend a socially-isolated Friday night trolling through old magic forums and Twitter rants about sex magic and you’ll see these questions and dozens more pop up all the time.

You’ll also see a lot of ALL-CAPS.

The idea of centering sex in a magical or religious practice is all but guaranteed to bring out this kind of energy. Our individual attitudes toward sex are often deeply ingrained from an early age, and intertwined with all sorts of other subjects from gender roles to our ideas of what is “dirty” versus what is “clean.” When we adopt a metaphysics which claims sex is an act of manifestation, might we also be at least tacitly allowing all of its associated cultural baggage to take a seat at the table?

This is all just food for thought, but it’s worth thinking about. Sex magic is guaranteed to be around for a while, if human history is any indicator. Sex and mysticism have been inextricably linked since our earliest days on this planet. Google up some of the theories regarding the “Venus of Willendorf” if you’d like to start down that rabbit hole.

Which brings us back to sex dolls, and the fact that as hilarious as a stadium full of them might sound, consider this: FC Seoul did win the match that day.

I doubt that’s what they were going for when they placed their order, but it makes good fodder for a silly blog post. Besides, who’s to say a few dozen big-breasted, gape-mouthed silicone fans in the stands didn’t have an effect, intended or not?

In fact, why not invite an inflatable coworker to your next Zoom meeting? See what happens.

Maybe you’ll get a promotion!