Parafilia II - Objectum sexuality

“Objectum sexuality commonly referred to as OS, is a pronounced emotional desire towards particular inanimate objects. Those individuals with this expressed preference may feel strong feelings of arousal, attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. For some, sexual or even close emotional relationships with humans are incomprehensible.”
(Wikipedia)

After last weeks quite funny post about the German rubber-boot fashion, I was actually thinking about Dendrophilia (paraphilia for trees) for this second post on paraphilias. But then I stumbled upon the website objectum-sexuality.org. I have to admit that I had never heard about this phenomenon, even though the cases of Erika Eiffel and Eija-Riitta Eklöf Berliner-Mauer have been discussed extensively in the media in the last years.

Objectum-sexuality cannot be compared with any other paraphilias. It is rather a psychological condition, often consequence of a lack of affect during childhood, and only about 40 people around the world, mostly women, know how it feels to actually start an emotional relationship with an object. About half of them also suffer from Asperger syndrome and have severe difficulties forming relationships with other people.

For most of us it is hard to understand that somebody who fails to build up a social network, to form a human relationship, may flee into a relationship with a radio, for example. That is exactly what happened to a British woman aged 43: she was in love with a Hi-Fi system called Jake. She would take care him, repair him and even communicate with him by making love to him about twice a day.
(Please don’t ask how such a sexual relationship may be performed, that would be pure voyeurism…)

The term “Objectum sexuality” – short “OS” (almost “SOS”, what an irony) – was coined by Eija-Riitta Eklöf Berliner-Mauer who runs a kind of OS organization. You wonder about her second last name? She deeply fell in love with the Berlin Wall in the 1970ies and, after about six visits, she decided to “marry” him before a handful of selected guests (I say him, because OS individuals often believe in animism of their beloved objects).






One the photos, you can see her at her wedding in 1979 (left) and with "OS-sister" Erika La Tour Eiffel (right).










Eija remains a virgin with humans but insists she had a full, loving relationship with the wall. "The Great Wall of China's attractive, but he’s too thick – my husband is sexier.” After being married for ten years, IT happened. “What they did was awful. They mutilated my husband." After a while she shifted her affections to a nearby garden fence.
Nowadays, Mrs Eklöf Berliner-Mauer runs a little museum at her house in Liden, Sweden. There, a collection of her exlovers (a guillotine, among them) can be admired.

Eija-Riitta voluntarily talked about her condition, when OS was still to be defined. She had the self-esteem to appear in newspapers and TV-reports.
With Amy Wolfe, it didn’t happen like that. Age 32, fat, ugly and said to be “slightly retarded”, she was the perfect prey for sensationalistic TV channels and magazines. Since her childhood she suffered Asperger and OS. After being in love with different objects such as models of spaceships, a church organ or a banister, she found her ideal partner – a fairground ride in an amusement park. In a US documentary, Amy herself has to read a psycological analysis of her “disorder” – quite shameful, I thought. I didn’t post the video because I didn’t like the way it exhibited the woman’s most intimate thoughts and emotions. Kind of pornographic. The filmmaker accompanied Amy to meet her lover, watching how she kissed and caressed the crane-like machine, talked to him. “I felt embarrassed, like a voyeur”.

Of course, not all of the OS individual are in search of the glamour of being a famous landmark’s spouse. Most of them just feel love, attraction, arousal and commitment for a particular, everyday object. A fan, a suitcase, food items, a virtual reality avatar, a doll. People seem hostile to them while inanimate objects appear friendly – they won’t let them down ever (as probably their parents did).

I don't know if this video is for real or just a joke. Anyway, these things exist!



Another famous OS personality is Erika La Tour Eiffel who legally changed her last name to reflect her bond to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Years ago, La Tour Eiffel, a former soldier from San Francisco used to be in love with Lance, a bow that helped her to become a world-class archer. Besides having a secondary, physical relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom, she pledged to love and honor Paris’ Tour Eiffel in an intimate ceremony in the presence of a small group of friends.




Below I posted part of the documentary in which she openly talks about her being an Objectum-sexual woman. She blames her upbringing for her condition.

I'm looking forwards to reading your comments. See you next week!