I Love the Eiffel Tower

Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

"I saw this documentary about people who think they’re in love with objects. This one woman even married the Eiffel Tower. Are these people serious? Do they just want attention? And what do you say to those who say that allowing gay marriage will let people like this marry their furniture or cars? Isn’t this proof they’re right?"

Perhaps I’m jaded because as a child I saw that episode of Pee Wee’s Play House where he said he loved salad; and his chair suggested that if he loved it so much he should marry it, so he did. Or maybe I’ve spent the last half an hour in a labor of manic love, debating over which bearded picture of Ryan Gosling would make the best background on my laptop, despite the fact I neither know the man personally nor ever expect to.

Regardless, as negative as my visceral reaction is to the idea of a) fucking an object, thinking that this is an act of making love and b) having the audacity to compare a model of a bridge to a human being, I still can intellectually understand and emotionally empathize with these folks who call themselves Objectum Sexuals, or OS.

Objectum Sexuals, or objectphiles, define themselves as being sexually oriented toward objects, as opposed to men or women (or even children or animals). They have full-on emotional and romantic attachments to individual objects which they perceive as being not only as genuine as human-human relationships but just as reciprocal. They are physically attracted to specific objects and will engage in sexual acts with them, considering this an act of mutual pleasuring and intimacy.

In their view, objects have souls and personalities with which they can fall in love. An OS person doesn’t just see the Tilt-A-Whirl where Lee Perez puked on your jacket in 3rd grade, they see a being of strength and stoicism and sexy-ass counter weights. And here’s the kicker and the part where they tend to lose me: they believe the objects love them back… which is real convenient.

Now I can get on board with forming a deep, emotional attachment to an object. Granted, it’s outside my attraction template, but I’ve certainly had strong feelings for people who were only slightly more responsive to me than a segment of fence. I can even intellectualize how someone might see a VW Bug and want nothing more than to lick its curvaceous lines and splooge all over the hood.

I can see how easy it is to turn to non-human objects for affection when one does not feel able to willing to accept love from other people and I can even empathize with feeling torn apart when something to which you are desperately attached is destroyed.

But as much as my professional opinion is about letting other people be, allowing them to live their lives and find joy where they may, I do resent the implication that unions formed in this sexual orientation ought to be granted the same rights as those of two consenting humans. It’s insulting.

On one hand, OS people are completely reasonable to me. No one can truly control their attractions. You never know to whom you are going to be inexplicably drawn and it’s rather difficult to manage the intense feelings that come from a surprise love. It happens every single day around us and we don’t bat an eye. Brian has a mad unrequited crush on the boy who works at the WaWa and lives in his parents’ basement. Tyesha can’t stop thinking about the married woman in her apartment building who doesn’t even know she exists. Does it only count as love if two people feel it simultaneously?

Perhaps mutual attraction and love is simply a folie a deux every time: two people happen to have the same mental wiring get crossed and the same wash of neurochemicals so they become convinced they should hang out all the time watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, making pancakes in their underwear at three o clock in the afternoon… and eventually join bank accounts and argue about whose turn it is to take out the trash.

And when it comes to sex: we use different definitions for what "counts" all the time. Maybe to you banging a tailpipe isn’t real sex, but we’ve had national debates on whether or not a blowjob is either.

So yeah, Objectum Sexuals are real. They have a Yahoo group page and everything. No one knows how long they’ve really existed, but the advent of the internet certainly gave them the steam they have now. They don’t seem to want anything from the world other than compassion and to let others come out of the closet about their orientation. I can handle that. Let them be whoever they please, loving whomever they please. It’s certainly no skin off my back and I doubt my taxes will raise as a result.

And to be honest, even though I’ll never really get it, they’re still way less creepy than the people who buy fake babies and treat them like they’re real.

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