fetichize

Verb

fetishize (third-person singular simple present fetishizes, present participle fetishizing, simple past and past participle fetishized)

1. (transitive) To make the subject of (often sexual) obsession.
   • Our society has fetishized personal wealth.
   1. (transitive) To view or treat (someone) in a way that reduces that person to a sexually charged, racial stereotype; to racially objectify.
      • London, the only actor who feels like she’s playing a real character and not a public-service announcement, reacts realistically to scenarios where Shelley fetishizes her Blackness, but it’s all for naught.2023 January 27, Odie Henderson, “Bungle fever”, in The Boston Globe, volume 303, number 27, page G4, column 2
2. (transitive) To make into a fetish, or magical object.
   • Isou and Lemaitre further introduced scriptural systems (metagraphics, or postwriting, and hypergraphy, respectively) that fetishize the graphic as irreducible to vocalization.2001, Steve McCaffery, Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics, page 171