"In Japan there is a disturbing trend for disaffected young men to fall in love with a pillow printed with their favorite anime character and announce the pillow is their girlfriend."

"So thank goodness your boyfriend does not have such a relationship with any of his [two dozen stuffed animals]. Men have been told that women do not want testosterone-addled brutes in their lives (OK, maybe the success of Fifty Shades sends some mixed messages), and you don’t get much less brutish than a stuffed animal collection. It’s a good sign that the group is only 20 percent of what it once was and that with one exception they live in the closet. You yourself have gone through life with a special teddy bear (do you bring him to your boyfriend’s for a sleepover with his special friend?), so you’re right, you should be more accepting. If this is the only thing that bothers you about a great guy, then you need to look at your own sexist beliefs."

From Emily Yoffe's advice column. 

6 things:

1. Does objecting to one extreme — "testosterone-addled brutes" — mean you're hypocritical to accept the other extreme? That excludes a preference for someone who fits your conception of balanced, moderate, and normal.

2. I don't think people seeking a life partner should be told to "be more accepting." You'd better find somebody who's right in the zone of what you like, whatever it is. The problem I see with this woman is that she's not looking closely enough at what she herself likes. She wants an outsider to pass judgment on whether there's something wrong with the man. I'd say it's not that this woman needs to "be more accepting," but that she shouldn't deny herself the pleasure and fulfillment of accepting this man, if that's what she wants.

3. Is it "sexist" to consider writing off a man who has a big stuffed animal collection? This woman is (apparently) heterosexual, so she's already applying "sexist" judgment in her choice of a partner. If that's okay and not sexist — and what a weird world it would be if we thought we shouldn't do that — then why is it wrong, as you search for a person of the sex you prefer, to search more precisely for the manifestation of masculinity (or femininity) that you find especially appealing? The problem, as stated at #2, is that the woman is having trouble using her own thoughts and feelings and wants to import what other people think.

4. Having her own teddy bear does not obligate the woman to accept a man with huge stuffed animal collection. To have one is very different from having a big collection — in stuffed animals and in many things. But more important, you can quite appropriately want to possess various things and at the same time not want your partner to have things like that. If she discovered that her boyfriend has a big collection of makeup, the argument that she should accept it because she too has makeup is something that we easily see as silly. (Maybe the day is coming when it won't look silly per se.)

5. If the brutishness of brutish men has a physical cause — testosterone — shouldn't we be more empathetic the way we are toward other medical conditions that impair the mind? Isn't it ableist of us to direct hostility toward "testosterone-addled brutes"?

6. "Men have been told that women do not want testosterone-addled brutes in their lives...." What, exactly, have men been told and how have they adjusted? I think the message has been that women don't want violence and subordination. No sensible man should read that to mean that women want babyish men. If the man is too dumb to understand that the rejection of violence and subordination is not a rejection of masculinity, then maybe the problem is that he's too dumb. Or he just doesn't love women enough to get the message straight.