Today is Valentine’s Day, when, according to current social mores, every single one of us should now celebrate romantic relationships of all shapes, sizes and smells, not just traditional heterosexual ones – or else.
One particularly disturbing contemporary restriction upon free speech is the growing demand from queer activists across the West to make alleged insults like ‘misgendering’ a crime. Which rainbow group will be next to seek protection from ‘dangerous words’ beneath the all-sheltering legislative umbrella? How about the ‘objectum sexuals’, or OSes, that exceedingly strange group of individuals (many of whom are autistic), who fall in love with inanimate objects such as fairground rides, leisure centres, cars and flagpoles? Should it be henceforth verboten to say anything negative about them, too, even though some quite genuinely labour under the severe delusion that their chosen objects of desire are secretly alive, and so able to communicate with them telepathically?
This Valentine’s Day, this particular sub-set of ‘psychic’ objectums will doubtless be buying their lovers cards, flowers and chocolates and, to be frank, shoving their plastic, metallic or wooden extremities bodily inside themselves. Should it really be prohibited to laugh at such truly Pythonesque scenes in print?
Swinging From the Chandeliers
In 2019 a Leeds woman with the rather ironic name of Amanda Liberty (the former consort of the Statue of Liberty, apparently) took objection to a humorous article in the Sun implying she was mad due to having lately hooked up with an antique lesbian German chandelier named Lumiere, whom she now aimed to marry. The article was a spoof ‘Nutter of the Year’ type award by columnist Jane Moore, the clear winner being Amanda. Moore’s very short entry on Amanda read as follows:
Winner: Amanda Liberty, from Leeds, who, thanks to being an ‘objectum sexual’ (nope, me neither) married a chandelier-style light fitting. Dim & Dimmer?
As there were numerous comical elements to Amanda’s full story – her first boyfriend was a drum-kit, it was “the shape of her arms” that made Luimiere so attractive to Amanda, and the happy couple were in an open relationship with other similarly swinging chandeliers – the Sun naturally made fun of the situation. Highly offended, Ms. Liberty registered an official complaint with Ipso, the voluntary U.K. press regulator, arguing the tabloid had breached Clause 12 of Ipso’s code of conduct, which reads thus:
The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
It was not the final part about discriminating against someone on account of his or her “mental illness” that Amanda objected to, because in Amanda’s opinion she is not mentally ill at all. There is certainly no suggestion she has ever been medically diagnosed as such. Instead, it was the specific element of the code banning discrimination upon grounds of “sexual orientation” Amanda was filing her complaint under, arguing that newspapers would no longer be allowed to print pieces mocking or abusing someone just for being gay or lesbian, so why should they be allowed to run articles publicly disparaging someone just because they were an objectum sexual?
In 2020 Ipso ruled against Amanda’s grievance, on the grounds that, under the Equality Act 2010, a person’s “sexual orientation” is specifically defined within U.K. law only as including “their sexual orientation towards other persons and not to objects”. In consequence, Ipso concluded, “the complainant’s attraction to an object did not fall within the definition of sexual orientation as provided by Clause 12 and [so] the terms of Clause 12 were not engaged”.
So, for the moment, writers are still allowed to make fun of objectum sexuals in print within the U.K.: if they aren’t, I am heading immediately to prison. But then, up until about yesterday, the press was still allowed to make fun of homosexuals and transsexuals in a similar fashion too. Remember the Sun’s classic 1980s front-page ‘EASTBENDERS!’ headline, about some new gay characters being introduced into the soap? They couldn’t do that now.
Doctor Strangelove
One specific sub-species of objectums are the consolums, in love with videogame consoles; I previously wrote about a young American lady who married the videogame Tetris here. The consolums’ own tribal queer-flag is multicoloured, representing the familiar livery-colours of the market’s three main current players: red for Nintendo, green for X-Box and blue for Sony PlayStation. There’s also a nice, poofy bit of pink in there to represent all those smaller, more cultish, now-defunct former marketplace competitors, such as Sega, Atari, Commodore and Hudson-Soft. Well, these people are certainly on some kind of ZX Spectrum. But should we take this joke literally?
Just like OSism, transgenderism also has proven links towards autism, and we all know how much that particular cross-dressing personality disorder is being pushed by politically motivated activists these days. Might something similar be about to occur with OS individuals? I have detailed elsewhere how objectums have recently begun marshalling their forces online in order to gain wider social – and ultimately legal – recognition for themselves by aping the prior tactics of the LGBT lobby by creating their own lingo, flags and pressure groups. Another key plank in any such campaign would be to accumulate sympathetic outside advocates from fields like academia, medicine and the media.
The leading such advocate of objectums today is perhaps Amy Marsh, a U.S. sexologist and author whose website describes her as “Supporting Your Sexual Human Rights and Quest For Pleasure”. According to her own online blurb:
Dr. Marsh is a clinical sexologist, AASECT-certified sexuality counsellor, certified hypnotist and hypnosis instructor who has worked in the field of human sexuality since 2008. Personally, Dr. Marsh prefers to be known as ‘Avnas’, zir chosen name. Ze identifies as a nonbinary femme. Dr. Marsh’s private practice is eclectic: combining sexuality counselling with hypnosis, guided imagery, adult sex education, sand tray play and attention to social justice activism and community wellness. Though online only, Dr. Marsh’s ‘office’ is a ‘no-shame zone’. … As a sexologist, Dr. Marsh has special interests in erotic hypnosis, spectro-sexuality [i.e., having sex with ghosts], objectum sexuality, LGBTQIA++ rights, ‘sacred sexualities’ and more.
Marsh is also the creator of the patented ‘Marsh Spectrum of Human/Object Intimacy©’, and in 2010 published the first major notable research paper into the subject, ‘Love Among the Objectum Sexuals’, in the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality. Interviewing a sample population of OSes online, Marsh also found clear links to autism amongst OS individuals, but appeared to feel possessing such traits was not a form of pathology at all, just some alternative form of sexual orientation, like being gay or trans – the same line as pursued by Amanda Liberty. (Interestingly, one of Marsh’s research participants also claimed to be in psychic communication with the Statue of Liberty and her “amazing personality” – was this Amanda herself, I wonder?)
According to Marsh, only 23.8% of her sample OS participants were heterosexual, the precise same number as those who were bisexual or pansexual. Furthermore, a majority, 57.1%, had fancied objects since childhood, revealing a clear path towards the sympathetic ‘born this way’ narrative which has been so successfully employed by homosexuals over recent decades. Nobody non-evil would be so cruel as to lampoon someone for being born blind or deaf, so why should it be acceptable to mock someone for being born gay, trans or objectum sexual, it might be asked?
Throughout, Marsh seems to imply disapproval of OS relationships is a damaging conservative social prejudice which ought to be discouraged, colluding in her sample participants’ fantasies to such an extent that, in places, she redacts the ‘names’ of the individual inanimate objects acknowledged as lovers in order to protect their identity!
No Laughing Matter
The implication of Marsh’s sympathetic assessment is that you shouldn’t, under any conceivable circumstances, ever laugh at these people. Yet it is often very difficult not to do so, as anyone who has ever seen the notorious Channel Five OS documentary series, Strangelove, will know full well. Perhaps knowing this, Marsh therefore complains of “a glut of media coverage but a dearth of intelligent inquiry” into such folk, with shows like Strangelove and the “irresponsible actions of journalists” only leading to “a torrent of abusive and insulting comments” aimed against objectums on social media.
I don’t think you should specifically go out of your way to hound OS people online myself, but nor should you be pressurised into holding your tongue about your likely true opinions about them either. And, let’s be honest, your likely true opinion about them is probably: “Ha ha ha, what a bunch of weirdos!”
Marsh’s study contains undeniably amusing tales such as someone seducing a building’s caretaker only in order thereby to get closer to the boiler (or some similar large item) he maintained, a transgender male kicked out from his local church after falling in love with its organ because the priest claimed “I had the soundboard in my heart, and not Jesus”, and an objectum who complains that, as “my lover lives in a museum”, there is very little privacy available for their sexual encounters, because “there are always a lot of other people around, which makes things rather difficult”.
Another OSer describes how he loves buttons so much he sews them onto special straps to wrap around his genitals during masturbation. Yet some objectums would deny such actions even are masturbation at all, as the objects being used for pleasure are in fact alive and thus wholly willing conscious partners in the affair. “I have never masturbated as I see it,” one interviewee explained. Shades of Woody Allen’s old “Masturbation is sex with someone I love!” line from Annie Hall.
Yet you don’t need the wit of Woody to be able to make jokes about such people. The jokes literally just write themselves: but, to Marsh, this is very much the problem. Laughter is morally wrong.
Are They an Item?
Rather than laughing at them, there is a constant undertone in Marsh’s paper that the reader should feel sorry for these people, as suffering similar social prejudice to that once encountered by persecuted homosexuals like Alan Turing or Oscar Wilde during decades gone by. Throughout, they are made to sound like they have been forced into isolation and despair by the anti-objectum bigotry of those appalling cishetero normies who surround and oppress them.
One interviewee is allowed to bemoan how she fell in love with her own chosen item very much through desperation, as it was the only one then available to her: “I hadn’t had any other opportunities to meet other objects at that time as I was living a very secluded life.” How secluded would your life have to be for it not to include any actual objects in it? Where was she living, inside a black hole? Another objectum is allowed to lament plaintively how “human intolerance and discrimination” has made it impossible for him or her to engage in successful long-term relationships with chosen objects, essentially forcing the poor person into a series of one-night stands, very possibly with a series of night-stands.
Other bitter objectums complain of “intolerant humans trying to destroy my personality”, of how other people should be “more open-minded and not view OS as a MENTAL problem”, or of how it would be “nice if we had the right to be able to have some sort of civil ceremony so we can be free to express our love for our partners in the same way as anyone else would”. The militant gay lobby once started off making reasonable-sounding requests like that, too…
Some Real Object Lessons
The conclusion of Marsh’s investigation, ‘What do objectums want the world to know?’ is every bit as partisan as its title suggests:
People who identify as objectum sexuals are part of a sexual minority which also contends with additional challenges such as a high incidence of autism and Asperger’s Syndrome within its ranks. Though it is rare, objectum sexuality has attracted a great deal of notoriety, controversy and ridicule. Individual members are not always well equipped to deal with public scorn and exploitation… Almost all of the objectum sexuals surveyed expressed satisfaction with their orientation to objects… For most OS people, unhappiness and stress comes from lack of understanding and human interference with their object relationships. Many OS people are unhappy about their lack of proximity and access to object lovers, particularly those which are public structures. And for an OS person, destruction of a beloved object, such as the Berlin Wall, is devastating.
Vladimir Putin isn’t the only one to regret the end of the Cold War, then.
Such words have distinct echoes of that strand of emotional blackmail often tried by contemporary trans activists to the effect that, even if just made in jest, negative words have consequences and will inevitably end up pushing certain reputedly ‘vulnerable’ trans individuals – particularly children – towards suicide. So, should such ‘hateful rhetoric’ about objectums really still be allowed?
Marsh cites one objectum thus: “All feelings should be accepted and respected, no matter whom or what they are for.” I’m sorry, but I find it impossible to “respect your feelings” if your feelings are for a cement-mixer. Why should I therefore be compelled to pretend that I do so in print?
I do not wish to claim there is a massive campaign out there to make criticism or mockery of objectums illegal – as far as I know, the only OSer who has ever tried to do something similar is Lady ‘Liberty’ herself, the Leeds-based lover of chandeliers. The prospect of laws successfully being passed specifically to prevent you calling a pavement-pounder a pervert or a lamppost-lover a loony seem remote at present – but I would have said precisely the same thing about the idea of quasi-official prohibitions being placed upon the ridicule of moustachioed men in dresses swanning around pretending to be women as recently as 10 short years ago, too, and look at where we are now.
Although I don’t think they should be persecuted, neither do I think objectums should be celebrated or empowered, let alone be transformed into a legally protected species. I don’t care what their champions like Amy Marsh say, I think objectum sexuals are a complete joke. Why the hell, therefore, shouldn’t I be able to make jokes about them?
Readers who want to delve further into the weird world of the objectum sexuals can try looking up another related Valentine’s Day article of mine on the Mercator website.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
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