On February 12th of 2012, the first episode in Season 3 of “My Strange Addiction” was released, featuring a man named Nathaniel who “admits to dating his car,” a 1998 Chevrolet Monte Carlo he calls “Chase.” The episode features small snippets of Nathaniel reenacting certain types of intimacy he has with Chase, clearly trying to drive home (haha) the “strange” part of the strange addiction. Whoever filmed and directed the episode prioritized scenes in which Nathaniel is kissing Chase’s hood or touching his steering wheel, making certain that the moist “erotic” sounds of lips making and breaking contact were clearly audible for an audience that was meant to cringe. The episode points out that the sexual attraction to inanimate objects is called “Objectophilia,” nevertheless Nathaniel has a more specialized paraphilia: Mechanophilia: the attraction to machines. Obviously nobody is being hurt by Nathaniel’s actions. Any public sex with Chase or in Chase would be covered by a public indecency charge and requires an outside party for harm to occur. But Nathaniel and Chase’s relationship is, in all ways, victimless. So why would anyone want to make something so innocuous and ultimately none of their business into a big deal?
Recently, a 17 year old Twitter user in the Cars franchise fandom made a small call-out of a user in the “living machine” fandom Mitsu_Bitch, for being a “mech@ph!le” [sic], posting a picture of the user’s profile showing that the 17 year old was blocked. There were quite a few confused Twitter netizens who pointed out that the user’s own carrd betrayed them as having a “crush” on Lightning McQueen and even mentioned that they were a “fictophile” or someone who finds sexual arousal from fictional characters which, if applied to Lightning McQueen would certainly put them in the same boat as Mitsu_Bitch even if their Twitter wasn’t catered toward blushing Cars-stylized Honda Civics or Cadillac Escalades going on dates or getting rope-bunnied. Just because you’re disgusted by something, doesn’t mean you’re not in the exact same boat. After all, I’m probably not wrong when I say that most straight people have seen straight porn they don’t like even if the acts depicted are something they enjoy in other contexts. Whether or not Mitsu_Bitch is out there having a Nathaniel/Chase type relationship with their (admittedly sexy) Mitsubishi is not at all anyone’s business and clearly isn’t what their profile is about, mostly focusing on fictional cars with relatively tame imagery.
Our Lightning McQueen superfan seems aware of the amount of confusion that their posts can cause, as their carrd has a portion uniquely dedicated to disavowing “mechaphiles” (the proper term is “mechanophile” as I’m assuming at this point that a “mechaphile” is probably someone in the Transformers fandom…a fandom in which this person’s head would invariably explode). They state “Even though I do have a crush on Lightning McQueen, I am in NO WAY a Mechasexual […], and I’m totally against that along with others that apply to my DNI Criteria.” Of course it’s possible that Lightning McQueen is not a “crush” but a “squish” (the asexual equivalent) and the main objection to mechanophilia here is inherently tied to the sexual nature—the “-philia” if you will. It could be a simple case of a young sex-repulsed asexual who is gaining their bearings on allowing others to have sexual experiences that in no way affect them or are any of their business. Most of the time when one is sex-repulsed, it can feel quite personal when other people are out there having what could be misconstrued as “impure” thoughts about subjects that have never aroused oneself. Shout out to my uncle and his email to me about my last article which posed the question: “Why are people worried about what other people think? Are they afraid that someone out there is having a good time?” Yes, Uncle. That is exactly what they’re afraid of.
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What our young Cars fan needs to learn is that their own idiosyncrasies are often considered to be just as strange by outside parties. In fact asexuals are one of the highest demographics to experience corrective rape, as asexuality is considered to be “unnatural” and against the order of things. In consideration of the “fictosexual:” this is another paraphilia that would be classified as “objectophilia” along with mechanophilia as they would both be categorized as inanimate objects. Neither of these fetishes would necessarily be informed by trauma, evolving naturally over time within a child’s sexual awakening and maturation. There are, in fact, quite a few people who would consider fictophilia something that requires “fixing” along the same lines as any other paraphilia such as pediophilia (the sexual attraction to dolls), or pictophilia (sexual arousal derived from observing erotic pictures or photographs).
In one of the arguments our main character made, they used a screenshot from their google search of mechanophilia which featured a blurb from Wikipedia stating: “Mechanophilia is treated as a crime in some nations with perpetrators being placed on a sex-offenders' register after prosecution.” (Accessed Today, 6/17/2024) Unfortunately, the source that was cited for that particular assertion leads to page 91 of Eric W. Hickey’s Sex Crimes and Paraphilia (2006), a page that does not actually contain that information. Though it would be believable that some countries may have laws against a generalized sexual deviancy, I have been unable to procure information on individuals placed on any sex offender registries due to mechanophilia itself and the nearest I have come in the United States is a case involving a man who was brought up on charges of felony stalking, damage to property, and tampering with a victim’s vehicle. Obviously, having a sexual relationship with your own car isn’t going to result in charges like these, and this individual is not likely to end up on a sex offender registry as there are no public indecency charges or other sexual crimes as mechanophilia is not a crime in the United States.
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It is important to remember the distinction between what is disgusting and what is unethical. Just because something is absolutely disturbing on a visceral level does not mean that it is directly (or indirectly) causing harm to any individuals. It does not require moral grandstanding (imagine having a whole carrd page dedicated to disavowing a sexual arousal to poetry just because you write poetry) or making sure the whole world knows you’re “not with those people” since you probably don’t hang out with them anyway. And if it comes down to being salty that you were blocked: maybe don’t follow people who have “no minors” in their bio…solves that problem, doesn’t it? I know that when it comes to things like this and the people who follow this substack, I’m pretty much preaching to the choir: nobody here is concerned about what their fellow human is doing in their bedroom…or their garage. Nevertheless, it’s often fascinating to see what other people are getting their panties in a twist over and remembering that some people are just fucking weird about other people’s weird fucking.