Memes

Well, on the matter of dolls looking "just like" whoever, I think that should be legal with no reservations. The point we consider those acts you've described heinous and disgusting and so on is because real people\animals suffer. The rest is simply not our business. So if there's no real suffering involved, this is not even up to discussion.

Releasing filmed material with dolls is another issue, I think this should be considered harassment, maybe even on the "rape threat" level. But again - scaled by the real rights being violated, not by what we want and don't want others to do, because that's not our business.

I'm not sure I agree about it being a good outlet, I think you are right about not being sure. That outlet logic doesn't quite work the same with every person. Again, a person on the spectrum (like me) might use that possibility to play, and for them it will really be an outlet. A usual person with weird fetishes might do that too, or want the real thing after playing with toys enough, as with gateway drugs. A psychopath will likely have no use for toys since they only want real power over living beings.

As we all see with the Web and social media, lots of genocidal rhetoric has been normalized in the last decade that wasn't before that. Don't want to mention Azeris, but 15 years ago they (in the Russian-speaking Web) wouldn't go to common places, because those places would expel savages ; now the common places are just as degenerate and hateful. I wouldn't want the same thing to happen with torture and rape fantasies.

So - I think it's a bad thing. In private they may do with dolls as they want. In public and in the Web - depending on how realistic it is.

There's also a substantial male population for whom a woman being subservient is a turnoff, though, with knowing it's a transaction being sufficient. For such people a doll could help with some purely physical stupid things, but those are the least of lonely people's problems, so not very useful.

EDIT: Oh, another person has already said all the same things.