“For 25-year-old Sandy, the attraction to things is so overpowering, she confesses: ‘When it comes to love, I am only attracted to objects. I couldn’t imagine a love affair with a human being.’ Her radical renunciation of love between two people didn’t turn the young woman into a loner. She gained admission long ago to a circle of like-minded people, all of whom have devoted themselves to the love of things. They call themselves objectophiles or objectum-sexuals. Experts are now faced with the task of interpreting the phenomenon. The retired professor and former director of Frankfurt University’s Institute for Sexual Science, Volkmar Sigusch, is one person who believes he has unraveled the mysteries of objectophilia. He has extensively probed this attraction to objects as part of his research into various forms of modern ‘neo-sexuality.’ The sexologist views this inclination as proof of his hypothesis that society is increasingly drifting into asexuality: ‘More and more people either openly declare or can be seen to live without any intimate or trusting relationship with another person,’ Sigusch says, adding that cities are populated by an entire army of socially isolated individuals: ‘Singles, isolated people, cultural sodomites, many perverts and sex addicts…’ ‘We’re by no means just straightforward fetishists,’ Joachim A. insists, and he immediately explains the difference: ‘For some people, their car becomes a fetish which they use to put themselves in the limelight. For the objectum-sexual, on the other hand, the car itself — and nothing else — is the desired sexual partner, and all sexual fantasies and emotions are focused on it.’” — Der Spiegel (German)

(Thanks to James for the link. There are also a Yahoo group and a German web site dedicated to objectophilia.)

When objectophiles declare that they are in love with objects, they do not mean dolls, dildos, high heels, or any of the usual things that come to mind when you think of sexual fetishism. The objectophiles profiled by Der Spiegel speak of their love for the Twin Towers, the Berlin Wall, a steam locomotive, an iBook — perhaps the last is easiest to understand, given the fetishistic tendencies of Apple enthusiasts. “A love affair could very well begin with a broken radiator,” one guy says without apparent irony.

Objectophiles seem anxious to distinguish their mania from fetishism. Reading the Der Spiegel article, which includes pictures, you quickly realize that these objectophiles are mostly middle-aged “normal” people. There are no piercings, tattoos, black leather gear, or the other sorts of baggage that you usually associate with sexual radicalism. Probably it’s wrong to make that association anyway — not every sexual radical is a “modern primitive” from San Francisco. As these objectophiles demonstrate, there are true frontiers of sexuality cutting like faults across the suburban housewife and the man in the gray flannel suit.

Objectophiles construe fetishism as a primarily sexual attraction to objects, whereas objectophilia is (in their own view) a more emotional phenomenon. They admit that it can include sex — the lady who adores the Twin Towers sometimes takes a “pleasant bath” with a scale model of the now destroyed skyscrapers — but it does so in the same sense that a marriage might include sex. In fact, that seems to be the oddest thing of all about objectophilia: it models itself on the “normal” relationship. Perverts use deviance to spice up sexuality, but objectophiles use convention to “spice down” their thing.

Of course, the question that every new sexual phenomenon poses is “Why?” Why do these folks prefer things to people? One guy speaks of how “you can reveal yourself to an object partner in an intimate way, in a way that you would never reveal yourself to any other person.” That’s hardly a recommendation, since it makes objectophilia sound like a form of cowardice. The woman in love with the Berlin Wall maintains a web site on which she explains that there is an animism underlying objectophilia: “We believe that all objects (things) are LIVING and having a SOUL,” she writes. “If one can see objects as living things, it is also pretty close to be able to fall in love with them.” Few people today will agree that the Berlin Wall has a soul, especially since it has been destroyed. If anything, this animism also gives a pathetic quality to objectophilia — it makes it sound as though objectophiles really long for living partners but, for whatever reason, are unable to obtain them.

This is not to disparage objectophilia. The sexologist points out that objectophiles “aren’t hurting anyone. They’re not abusing or traumatizing other people. Who else can you say that about?” Probably an argument could be made that they are hurting themselves — failing to build fulfilling human relationships or something. But then that applies a model of “health” or “normality” to them. If they claim to be happy, if they pay their bills, and if they refrain from wantonly hurting others, what more can you ask of them?

VideoBox

It's like the iTunes Music Store for Porn. Download unlimited high-quality video for only $9.95/month.