One of my all time favorite sex toys is the Fleshlight that a partner of mine carries around for me between her legs. It’s right where a person’s genitals would be, but we’ve long established that she is not a real person and does not have genitals of her own.
A person’s genitals, after all, are for their own erotic pleasure and are tools for them to have sex with. She isn’t something that gets to have sex; she’s an appliance for me to masturbate with. She has a body physically capable of erotic pleasure, sure, and sometimes the ways I use her might feel good for her, but that’s nothing more than an irrelevant side effect.
Sometimes, to really drive the point home, I’ll make her prepare my Fleshlight with the lidocaine cream she keeps by her bedside. It’s most effective if you leave it on the skin for a good long time; so she has to spread a thick coating of the stuff over and around the clit-shaped bit of my Fleshlight, and then carefully avoid any activity that might wipe it off for a couple hours until I’m ready to use her.
The process gives her hours of being unavoidably conscious of her status as a masturbatory aid. When she’s sitting gingerly on the edge of a chair, legs open, without underwear—to make sure that none of the cream gets smeared away, so that she’ll be as numb as possible when I use my property—that’s a special kind of foreplay for both of us.
Then, when I shove her face into a pillow, spread her open, and lube up the hole between her legs, the dissociation of not feeling my Fleshlight like she normally does helps her accept even more fully that it doesn’t belong to her and isn’t for her. It also removes an inconvenient, selfish distraction and helps her focus exclusively on being a thing for me to enjoy. Which is exactly what she wants to get out of this kind of experience.
Looking down at her and seeing that focus in her eyes: that’s what I’m in it for.
The thrill of consensual objectification, for me, is having a possession that actively wants to be a possession. A person with their own desires and sovereign will, who craves to set all that aside and be reduced to the status of a thing. That’s the delicious paradox at the core of consensual objectification: wanting to have what you want not matter.
Dancing with that paradox is challenging, and also exhilarating.
It isn’t enough to just find an objectification slut and then do whatever you want with them. That approach works poorly. No one simply wants to be objectified in every way, all the time, by anybody. They all have specific conditions that inspire the awful, juicy need to be used. They all have turn-offs and boundaries that will pull them out of it if crossed. Most have some kind of trust that needs to be built before they can engage the full depth of their desire. Many don’t fully understand their desire or its conditions themselves.
Learning all of that, building the trust, and adapting the way you use a partner to respect their boundaries and use them the way they were meant to be used takes time and effort and commitment. Doing that work is necessary to allow consensual objectification to be fulfilling, healthy and hot. It’s also what creates the more profound levels of the dynamic.
When I use my Fleshlight, the superficial levels of what we do together are all about me taking what I want and using her like a toy. I decide, within broad parameters, when I want to take her; it doesn’t matter a bit whether she wants to have sex or not. I use her how I want, for as long as I want; she doesn’t get to have preferences. I get off; she only gets off if it’d amuse me to have her cum.
On a deeper level, and on the other side of the paradox, it’s a thing that the two of us are doing together, for our mutual fulfillment. She may not enjoy being used while it’s happening, but being in a relationship wherein she gets used fulfills a vital need for her. I don’t want to have to care about her preferences in the moment, but I care passionately about her overall happiness and about using her in the ways she needs to be used. Knowing that I’m committed to giving her the kind of experience that works for her helps her let go of hesitation and walk ever further into being objectified.
“Fleshlight,” for example. That’s her word, not mine. I use it because I know it hooks into her fantasies and pulls her craving for objectification to the surface. When she hears it, it’s a little reminder that I’ve listened enough to learn the details of her desire, and that I care enough to incorporate them into how I use her.
Most times in life, “consensual” and “objectification” are pulling in opposite directions. Consent is all about respecting someone’s agency, and objectification means denying it. When they can be coaxed into working together, the power and the sweetness of the connection are incredible. The consensual side creates trust and safety to go deeper into objectification. The objectification becomes a way for each partner to respect a secret, vulnerable piece of the other’s desire that most people wouldn’t accept.