Loving Objects
Watched an interesting documentary recently called Married to the Eiffel Tower. It profiles several women who are Objectum Sexuals – they are physically and emotionally attracted to inanimate objects, and believe these objects return their affections. Apparently there is a small community of them, and they are all female. They are not simply fetishists, as they believe the objects are full partners in a reciprocal relationship.
This brings up some interesting questions for me which I am still mulling over. Is this simply an extension of animism? If I believe that non-living objects have spirits – and I do, though I think the degree of strength can vary significantly – can I imagine falling in love with one? It may seem weird at first glance, but is it any stranger than having a romantic relationship with a completely disembodied spirit, or a god? I’ve certainly felt strong and personal affection for entities that other people would class as “things” – such as caves, woods, and other natural places. What about the issue of reciprocation – how can one be sure the object feels something in return? (Does having a spirit even necessarily imply the ability to love, and lust?) And if it doesn’t reciprocate, is it wrong to “use” it sexually? I note that in the documentary, the truth of the object’s return feelings is never directly called into question, and from what they showed, these women seemed sure that every object they fell in love with clearly felt the same way. Also interesting to note that they were all polyamorous in their affections and relationships. The woman who married the Eiffel Tower, for instance, was also involved with a fence, a bridge, an archery bow, and several other things. Her relationship with the bow, by the way, led her to become a world-class competitive archer – until the relationship ended and she could no longer become one with it.
Pretty fascinating stuff, especially from a pagan perspective. Would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this. And go watch the documentary – it’s free and definitely worth 45 minutes of your time.
This is an interesting line of thought, indeed. How is the Eiffel Tower different from a Tree? It could be said that one is living and the other constructed of “dead” material. But is it? Can minerals die? And even if they were dead, such as our ancestors, don’t we still have deep and profound relationships with them? hmmm
I feel there is a difference between living and non-living materials, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t spirit in the latter. Another interesting question is, is there a quantifiable difference between the raw metals as they are in the ground, and the structure that humans build with them? Can that structure have an individual spirit that was not present in the raw materials? I think so, but it’s an interesting thing to ponder.
I just watched a program on NatGeo where the same woman was in love with the Berlin Wall.
Yes, they covered her love for the Berlin Wall too – actually it was pretty interesting, as she tackled some of the issues that are unique to that, in that it was such a negative symbol for so long.
You know, I must confess to a peculiar relationship w/a grove of trees… very long ago. It was kind of a group thing & freaked me out quite a bit, being a rational sort of person. I have never encountered a similar experience since. (Perhaps before, maybe, just a little…) I hadn’t thought of it until I came across a blog that was geared towards sexual relationships w/non-human spiritual entities & natural features (no beastiality from what I gathered). This post brought back that memory again. It was kind of odd, reading your description of the video & thinking “That is very, very weird, yet strangely familiar.”
I think it is fair to correlate object love to relationships w/deity ala godspouses & I personally feel it represents an extension/permutation of animism. Not one most people would be comfortable with, of course.
In retrospect, I have wondered about the lust part. Is sexual union a purely physical event? If so, how would something like a tower or wall (or grove of trees) experience such sensations? Lacking a nervous system, I would expect it to be challenging for them. Where do spirit & sensation meet?
I would be interested in looking at that blog, if you still have the link. As I said, I can certainly relate at least to some degree regarding places (forests, caves).
As for your last questions, I would venture a guess that the OS folks would consider it an energy exchange in some way – that the reciprocation from the object isn’t sexual in the physical sense that humans have, but that the powers of attraction (like a magnet) and union and consummation are expressed in some manner on a spiritual/emotional level. Again, similar to non-corporeal entities.
I haven’t seen this particular documentary yet, but I’ve seen an episode of national Geographic Channel’s Taboo that focused on Objectum Sexuals.
But yes, every so often, I can sense a spirit in the inanimate and “non-living”, like subway tunnels, sufficiently old houses and office buildings, steam-engine trains seem to have a more pronounced spirit than electric. Can’t say I ever thought of them as sexual entities, but there can be a certain romantic quality to many of them, but I generally don’t pass harsh judgement on those who do.
I can definitely see the comparison to those in a relationship with spirits or deities, as you point out, the primary difference being that OS individuals are clearly in love with a spirit that has a body, even if that body is inanimate and generally accepted as non-life.
Of course, a minor quibble but: Not all OS individuals are female. I see that you’ve simply repeated this inaccuracy from the page the documentary is on, but it’s not true. On Objectum-Sexuality.org, several men are represented, and one of the featured individuals on the aforementioned episode of Taboo was also male. Surely women seem to be the most visible OS individuals, though why is not exactly clear, but they’re certainly not the only OS individuals.
While I usually attribute the spirit of things to an independent entity associated with, or living in, the thing (as opposed to the thing itself), I could see it being the other way too – and perhaps that’s just semantics and there’s no meaningful difference. Regardless, the only thing that potentially bothered me about the OS folks was that, assuming the reality of the animistic spirit, there didn’t seem to be a way for the object to refuse the relationship – at least, the women didn’t appear to have ever encountered such a situation.
Yes, I was just repeating what the documentary said. I thought it was an odd aspect of the phenomenon. Makes more sense to me that it should be distributed a bit more evenly.
It’s a very chicken-or-egg type question —did the spirit come to inhabit the object, or did the object give birth to the spirit?
The question of rejection is an interesting one, and definitely one to think about, maybe even ask OS persons directly in the future. I think the primary reason I never see this addressed in media about OS people is that every-one else is so firmly of the belief that the inanimate is without a soul, and so without a soul, there is no desire or even potential for rejection, so the thought seldom, if ever, crosses the minds of those who are neither themselves OS nor possessing of animistic beliefs about spirits. Of course, I also have yet to thoroughly read all of the OS-community-produced literature on the website, so perhaps I just have yet to come across an essay that addresses this.
As for the odd single-gender focus, one thing that I did notice about the Married to the Eiffel Tower documentary is that there’s this strong focus on spotlighting the past abuses Erika Naisho Eiffel endured, and broken home the younger woman (whose name escapes me) came from. This seems to be designed to give the message that Objectum Sexuality, as an exclusive orientation or sexual preference, is something born of abuse, even though this does not seem to be the consensus of professional research on object sexuality. It’s not dissimilar to, say, in Amerikan media’s insistence on conveniently ignoring Europe’s trans men after Christine Jorgensen came home from Copenhagen, and therefore painting transsexualism as a “male[sic] perversion”, and if media senationalists or pop-psychology was ever forced to acknowledge TS men, it was spun around to be somehow less “real transsexuality” and more about “poor women sacrificing everything about themselves for respect and / or to cope with past abuses –now let’s get back to real transsexuals, who are men with a sexual obsession driving them to become women”. That’s the thing, mainstream society still very much regards any atypical male sexuality as “clearly all about having loads of perverse, deviant sex”, but objectum sexuality is about connecting with an apparently inanimate object and feeling a spirit within it, it therefore comes across to mainstream media as “personification and the relationships born of it”, and “only women want a relationship”. This is just me speculating the underlying reasons as to why the focus of objectum sexuality in the media is so clearly intent on spotlighting women, but it’s all based on what I’ve learned to be true of people in general.
It does seem quite strange on the surface of it, but then I think “Why did men name weapons?” I’ve seen bladesmiths work as I trained under one, and I’ve seen how they felt about a particular forge, or their favourite tools, or how they just couldn’t bear parting with a particular piece they had made. Maybe not “love” in the usual sense, but they felt something.
There are stories aplenty of how a hero died when a particular weapon he had named and cared for broke, and I don’t think it’s entirely poetic license. What would interest me is how the spirit or object took on that significance. Did a spirit move into the object and then become the focus, or did something get projected from the person in question? I’m never sure.
Definitely seems to be along the same lines (the way the woman worked with her bow was especially reminiscent of what you’re talking about).
Your last question is a good one. Was there a spirit all along, manifesting from the object itself, or did a spirit attach itself to the object? Or did the fierce devotion of the owner bring something forth? There are many ways for spirits to be born.
Very interesting, and I can see where that leads logically. New line of thought to consider. Thanks for posting.