A Future With Furry Nuptials?
June 8, 2005
Remember The Love Boat? How about the love ferry? German sex psychologist and researcher Volkmar Sigusch sees a trend toward people having love ties to inanimate objects -- such as a boat -- or to house pets, as well as having no emotional ties at all.
The renowned academic, who heads the Frankfurt based German Society for Sex Research, recently published a book called Neosexualitäten, or neo-sexuality, in which he describes the "cultural change of love and perversion" in modern society.
"We live in a situation where things that were once proscribed or embarrassing or shameful can now be expressed," he said. "Today we talk about things that used to be hidden."
Two of the trends he sees are towards asexuality -- where for varied reasons people show no sexual desire at all -- and objectophilia, a sexual obsession with objects or house pets.
In his book, Sigusch describes a woman whose love life gave new meaning to the term partner-ship when she fell in love with a ferry. She thought about the boat obsessively, photographed it, then decorated the photographs. She was "enraptured like one in love," he wrote.
The scientist also considers people to be objectophiles who treat their pets -- mostly cats and dogs, but sometimes lizards -- like beloved partners. They hug and kiss them, spoil them, take them on vacation, dress them up -- even send them to spas or summer camps.
"Some love their pets more than they have ever loved a person," he said. Those who worry that there can be no future for such a union can take heart in Sigusch's prediction that it will only be a few decades before such "partnerships" are openly recognized.