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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This is the next step to beastiality which along with the rape of children is where the communist manifesto takes the left. Point 10 requires the fusion of industrial production with education owned and totally overseen by the state, consequently the nuclear family must be torn asunder to achieve said educational aims.
Exactly! It is horrific satanism, promoting an utterly insane obsession with sex in the whole of humanity, normalising the rape of everything from helpless animals and children to rocks and trees, like the legend of Gilgamesh. Denmark only banned bestiality in recent years to stop the massive “bestiality tourism” there, and it is still apparently legal in Finland, Malta, Wyoming, West Virginia and other countries. Even where it is illegal, it is widely practiced, the worst countries being Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as discovered by one analysis of Google searches for sex with a huge array of helpless animals. Zoos in Pakistan are notorious for having to re-import animals to replace so many that die under the trauma of being pimped out, even giraffes. The dictionary definition of “sodomy” is unnatural relations of males with males, females with females, and humans with animals. As you know, the word comes from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by God for sodomy.
Satanism – exactly.
These freaks are mentally ill and dangerous.
In my view they are demon possessed.
Not only should they be criticised for the mentally ill perverts and demons that they are, they should be imprisoned or detained in Bedlam.
You’ve educated me I didnt actually know it was legal in certain parts of Europe. I would say we are being warmed up for them to attempt to normalise sexual relations between adults and children. It grieves them that a Christian understanding of children still pervades, even after they succeeded with divorce and baby murder en masse.
If people want to marry a chair then fine. ——-I might even vote for chair if it/them/they stood in the General Election. —-Could a chair really do any worse than the parasites are doing?
We could have a throne as monarch. That would at least give a stately impression during official ceremonies.
This article, which I abandoned two-thirds way through makes Grace Slick’s ‘White Rabbit’ appear run-of-the-mill normal.
Mocking anyone and anything shouldn’t be illegal. Speech of any kind, even “hate speech”, shouldn’t be illegal save for a tiny number of exceptions (slander, libel, there may be others).
“Incite to Violence” or “Cause Public Disorder” are another two.
I would want to see “Incite to violence” extremely narrowly tailored so it cannot be abused – anything very specific could be included but vague language like “punch a TERF” or whatever probably should not be. “Cause public disorder” just sounds like “say something someone doesn’t like, which if that someone is powerful is illegal, otherwise not” so I disagree with that one, unless you can come up with a clear definition that could not be abused.
Yes, it should only be a very clear incitement to murder, like the “Kill All Whites” chants, songs and signs so popular in South Africa.
On “cause public disorder”. —–There are an infinite amount of ways this could be done.—-Everything from shouting “FIRE” in a cinema to calling for a paedophile who isn’t one to be attacked. ——–Therefore it would be difficult to find that “exact definition” you are calling for. ——–I understand where you are coming from though.
Thanks for the reply. I think your examples are acceptable. Perhaps a way could be found to make the wording tight enough that it only applied when the disorder was immediate or the threat specific.
These planks can marry what the hell they like so long as they leave the kids alone!
The lady in the picture looks like she loves a massive hard erection! The eiffel tower I mean!
Sexual relationships and marriages that do not involve the consent of both parties are generally regarded as a bad thing. I don’t see how a chandelier or the Statue of Liberty can give consent. I’m not sure whether we could include sex toys here – perhaps their name implies consent? (but then, they were literally ‘branded’ by evil capitalists trying to sell them into a permanent existence of sexual slavery! I think I feel a sociology dissertation coming on)
So next time I see someone licking the windows in the town centre I should assume they’re just ‘getting off’ in public with their lover?
How should we tell if the window consents or is old enough to give valid consent? Should we consider this to be grooming?
Having read this article, I now feel thoroughly informed about something I absolutely didn’t need to know about.
Suggestion for Mr Tucker: If you absolutely don’t know what to write about and thus, end up writing a long tirade about other people’s habits, maybe some porn could be of more use to you as you’re obviously vacillating about it.
I haven’t ever laughed so hard in response to a DS article. Suggestion for Mr RW: Stop being so damned humorless and go boil your head.
RW, I agree with you.
Very shabby of this Steven Tucker moron to mock autistic people. And even shabbier of the Daily Sceptic to entertain such a crap article.
Autism is a disability – despite the people who ‘celebrate’ neurodiversity as if it were something great – tell that to the parents of the 60% of autistic people who have grown up non-verbal and severely impaired.
Why mock people? Shabby, shabby, shabby.
Very shabby.
Welcome to the twilight zone, ad absurdum.
Straightjackets and the Asylum is the only answer, to questions that have no need to exist.
The only way to really deal with these deluded imbeciles is to just laugh at them. Don’t try and debate, question or understand them, it’s a losing challenge. Last time I checked, its not illegal to laugh at someone, no words just incredulous laughter.
I can’t believe what I’ve just read.
Words fail me…
Falling in love isn’t just an infatuation or lust or craving. It is a meeting of soul energies a sense of finding the missing part. This goes back to the secret teaching which can’t be spoken about but it is mentioned in Plato’s Symposium when Socrates taks about his initiation by Diotima, the leader of a mystery school and a witch of high potency. I can fall in love with a new amplifier but this is just a figure of speech. We should do our best to preserve the spirit of our language.
‘And for an OS person, destruction of a beloved object, such as the Berlin Wall, is devastating.’
This gives a whole new meaning to David Bowie’s, “Heroes”
“I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)…”
So the two lovers who “kissed as though nothing could fall” are not the singer and a woman, as most people imagine, nor are they the singer and a man, they’re the singer and the wall.
Even the line, ’then you better not stay’ makes more sense now, when you realise he’s addressing it to the wall. The Berlin Wall did not stay. Bowie, as ever, ahead of his time.
As an OS person I ask for respect not mockery.
I’m in love with a light switch, although it’s an on off relationship.
NB: a “night-stand”, I read, is what we in the UK call a ‘bedside table’. I laughed till I almost puked in reading this article – particularly when I came across “someone seducing a building’s caretaker only in order thereby to get closer to the boiler“. AND YET THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!