Objectification as a Fetish : A Simple Existence
Objectification: what a wonderful word. At least within the mystical and potent realm of BDSM is it. In the consensual context it is. To shed our need to use our minds actually reduces feelings of discomfort through the sheer fact that we are expending less of our precious self-synthesized biological energy when we are not required to make decisions. Have you heard the words, “people prefer fewer options on a menu?” This is why the 100 option menu at the Cheesecake Factory is so detestable to so many. Decision making is energy taxing. Handing over that responsibility to a Dominatrix is relaxing, even liberating if you will.
I fell in love with objectification as a fetish when I was a child and I would sit on older males backs like a chair, stand on their feet and make them walk me around like a conveyance robot, and support my feet while I kicked back and wanted to elevate them for comfort and a certain entitled bratty satisfaction. Yes, I was and still can be a big brat, but thankfully now I am mindful of who I direct my brat potential towards: only the consenting and the grateful of course.
I first discovered that one could actually become a professional Dominatrix when I was 21 and I watched a documentary called Fetishes (Broomfield, 1996) highlighting the work of the Dominatrices in a prominent NYC dungeon called Pandora’s Box. I watched in awe as a beautiful, commanding, austere woman named Mistress Raven calmly ashed her cigarette into the mouth of a very well-trained and well-behaved human ashtray, and I noticed how matter-of-fact this relationship dynamic and form of servitude was. I admired how happily and obediently her trained human object performed this task. I knew then in that very moment that I would become like Mistress Raven. I knew then that it was my destiny to become a professional Dominatrix and explore this incredibly compelling dynamic of power play and objectification.
In my work as a professional Dominatrix, the first human object that I had the pleasure of exploring with was, of course, a human ashtray. To my delight I found myself in a commercial dungeon in the San Francisco Bay Area just a year after viewing that documentary, emulating my heroine Mistress Raven as I calmly ashed my cigarette into the open and grateful mouth of my session slave. Only, in this case, his head was enclosed in a wooden box with a toilet seat affixed to it that I was crouching over. This lovely fellow's dream was to regularly survive an intense role play involving emulating his own death at the hands of a coven of witches, but not before he would be completely dehumanized through objectification to the extremes of his vivid imagination. Per his specific request, my fellow Dominatrices and I would even be tasked with microwaving a banana, coating the banana in chocolate pudding, and feeding it to him while he was in the toilet box, so that he could safely experience what he was so compelled to experience: the lack of human choice. To be the ashtray. To be the toilet. The objectification helped him to focus his mind and to surrender to the psychodrama, and then gain access to the resultant post-surrender bliss in the wake of the ordeal. As I recall, he would slip into a state of sing-song delirium for a moment after he would "die" before I would help him out of the draining bathtub that emulated the "piss-filled septic tank under the witch coven house."
Not all objectification fantasies are so wild or intricate, and yet some are much, much more so. But, objectification can be simple and sweet, and involves varying degrees of embarrassment, humiliation, or degradation. I have found myself utterly delighted to have been offered a human body as a foot stool for a full hour while I read and drink coffee, the little lump of flesh and bones shifting ever so slightly on the bricks of my side-yard patio, inspiring an opportunity to correct and train it. I have enjoyed strapping my favorite "Humiliator" mouth gag to many of my slave trainees' faces, allowing me to affix an assortment of objects to them in order to put them to good use as a toilet brush, a feather duster, a drink holder, a boot brush, and a toilet paper roll holder among other things. I have also enjoyed sprawling my submissive pet across the cold cement floor in a heap in front of the heater so that I could sit comfortably upon its warm flesh while I perched perfectly positioned to achieve full heat absorption potential, and granting my object-servant a few ass-pats of satisfaction for doing so well underneath me.
In the memories of my experiences training humans to be objects, I notice a certain common energetic texture to these situations that I'm quite fond of. For me it involves getting my trainee out of their head, facilitating feats of endurance and commitment, testing loyalty and devotion, and providing connection elevated beyond the need for words, body language, and communication otherwise. Sometimes these experiences are playful and hilarious, other times they're just the right level of degrading, and other times they are quiet and sweet. What I notice in those quiet, sweet moments while training my footstool, vase, or candelabra is gorgeous timelessness, and in this lack of temporality is our delicately suspended human energy, mingling, elated, over mundane moments transmuted into magic through embarrassment, devotion, absurdity, and presence.
