Objectum Sexuality

Objectum Sexuality

This article relates to Sky Daddy

Linda, the narrator of Sky Daddy, is sexually and romantically attracted to commercial airplanes. This phenomenon could be viewed as a subset of objectum sexuality (OS) — defined as romantic or sexual attraction to an object — although Linda insists that her interest in planes is different from "the woman who married the Eiffel Tower, or another who was in love with a trombone" because planes are not "static objects, but sentient beings with rich inner lives."

The first woman Linda refers to is Erica Eiffel (nee La Brie), an Army veteran and competitive archer who held a commitment ceremony for herself and the Eiffel Tower in 2007. In an essay for the website of Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale (OSI), an organization dedicated to connecting OS people around the world, Eiffel notes that she has been the subject of ridicule since the media covered her story, but declares, "Being OS is all I have ever known and I am not being hurt or held back, nor is anyone around me. My life has been very rich and I have achieved many personal goals empowered by the loving connection I have with what are otherwise known as inanimate objects." The OSI website was founded by a close friend of Eiffel's named Eija-Riitta Eklöf, who was married to the Berlin Wall, and who coined the term objectum sexuality. While these are two high-profile examples partly because they involve "public objects," many OS people love "private objects," in their own homes. The former is obviously a more complicated scenario for the person involved. Like people of other sexualities, an OS person may be monogamous with one object or they may be polyamorous, carrying on relationships with multiple objects simultaneously. They report experiencing "break-ups" like anyone else.

According to OSI, Linda's belief that her beloved planes are "sentient beings" is actually common for OS people, who often believe in some form of Animism, which in OSI's terms is an "innate belief that objects are not inanimate but possess a spirit, soul, or energy to which one can connect with." In an interview with OSI, Eiffel states that she believes the Eiffel Tower contains "energy forces" at the "molecular" level, even if it is not literally biologically living. She goes on to declare, "I will say with all clarity and certainty that I know that objects in my life love me back. I could not be so fulfilled if this were not so."

Recent research suggests that there's a strong link between OS and the autism spectrum, as well as OS and synesthesia. In a study of 34 OS people, 13 were discovered to have official autism diagnoses, and a test administered demonstrated high levels of "autistic-like traits" across the entire sample. The researchers believe that OS is also more common in people who experience "object-personification synaesthesia" in which a person can strongly sense (or believes they can strongly sense) an object's innate personality. Overall, the study found that "the romantic affections of OS individuals towards objects do appear to be driven, at least in part, by object-personification synaesthesia" and that "rates of diagnosed autism were over 30 times higher in OS individuals than otherwise expected."

Human sexuality is and always has been a broad spectrum that encompasses all manner of attraction and relationships (or none at all). In Sky Daddy, Linda lives a lonely, solitary life partly because she feels she cannot talk honestly to other people about her attraction to planes. The OS people who tell their stories, on OSI and elsewhere, speak of feeling a similar sense of shame and unwillingness to "come out." Books like Sky Daddy can be effective in normalizing a way of seeing the world that may be unfamiliar to most people. But for those interested in learning more about objectum sexuality, it's also important to seek out stories of people with direct experience, such as those who have written about their lives for OSI.

The Eiffel Tower, photo by Benh LIEU SONG CC BY-SA 3.0

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This article relates to Sky Daddy. It first ran in the April 9, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.