I just had a very therapeutic stream of consciousness writing
session, and I want to point out some of the progress I just made.
Yet again, in case someone is new to the blog, I’ll
summarize my one big anger topic: Sex. Porn is wrong; objectifying women is
wrong; sex and nudity in the media is disgusting... which is all true, but it
affects me a little too much. It’s perfectly fine to be against it – it isn’t
healthy, however, for the sight or mention of it to make me start sobbing or
start screaming and breaking things.
The point people ignorantly first make is that I must be
insecure. That’s incorrect. Old insecurities paired with the REAL reasons,
however, do build out a full case for why I feel this way. It is an extremely
complex and robust issue for me. It’s going to take a long time to uncover all
the issues that support it and tackle them one by one.
I get nervous when I write on this topic, because it is extremely
personal.
Here’s what I’ve determined. I’ve felt this way since the
beginning of high school. I think these feelings started off as judgments I
learned from my parents paired with, yes, my own insecurities. That’s how it
STARTED. But it transformed into a completely untouchable fact for me as more
life experiences added layer after layer to this issue. So as I began resolving
those insecurities, the issue had already taken on a life of its own with more
and more support from life. I need to start peeling away each layer and
resolving it to get back to a healthy stance on the issue.
And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
The other day a co-worker pointed out that I got checked
out. Even now, when I am several pounds overweight. I’ve realized that I might
actually be keeping weight on so that I will not be objectified by men, because
it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I don’t like being hit on or looked at.
I want to look “nice” and feel good about my style and my body, but when guys
cross the line into objectification… I don’t feel like a human being anymore. I
feel like an object, and I hate that, and I hate them for thinking of me as a
piece of meat. I hate them for seeing me as something they can use for their
own satisfaction instead of respecting me as a human being. And I guess I’ve
determined that those concepts are mutually exclusive – you can’t have both,
it’s one or the other. There’s one problem.
That puts me in quite a pickle, doesn’t it? How is a guy
supposed to like me if he isn’t attracted to me? “Easy,” my ego shoots back. “I
want a guy who isn’t attracted to, well, anyone… and he gets to know me and
falls in love with WHO I AM. So it won’t happen ‘at first sight’, it happens
after he gets to know who I am and what I’m all about. And clearly he would
feel the same way – he doesn’t want someone to just be interested in him for
his looks or what he can provide, but for who he IS and the MORALS and VALUES
he lives by.” Yep, and that’s how I think. Logical enough.
But the “who I am” thing is easily residual from the
insecurity. You may suggest that all-of-the-above are required for someone to
like you.
Here’s the thing, though. I need to accept that sex and
arousal are not inherently bad. That is difficult for me to accept. But sex
itself is not respectful or disrespectful; selfish or loving. It is neutral.
Sex can be out of love, or it can be out of selfish hedonism. That meaning is
on the people involved. I used to know that. I used to completely know that.
Just because I’ve now witnessed people take on the darker, colder side of the
matter doesn’t mean it has to ruin the whole concept for me. Somehow it turned
into “it has to be one or the other” when that was never the case. I let the
perversions of others taint how I saw sexual relationships, because they made
it wrong and dirty, and people talk about it and show it EVERYWHERE, so somehow
my mind declared that it is/was always dirty and perverse, which made me no
longer want anything to do with it. It killed the love and joy I once
associated with it. And if you want nothing to do with something, it is easy to
declare it as bad and refuse to understand anything.
So that’s the immediate problem I need to work through at
the moment. I vilified those feelings, because I removed love from the picture –
because THEY do. “They” meaning guys I know, movies, tv, the media… everyone
everywhere, as far as I can tell. But it doesn’t HAVE to be evil. It can be
from love. I have to REMEMBER that. I once knew that. There was just SO much
evidence that no one else felt the same way that I got depressed about it. But
that’s not how it works…. There are millions of people, and their own motives
and opinions can’t be known, and those that are known do not get to declare
their meanings as “fact” for something that has no connotation. Sex has no
connotation! It is neither good nor bad! It just IS! Just because people act on it in bad and
immoral ways does not MAKE it bad. That’s where I went wrong. I let them make
it bad. I let them change my whole view just based on how tv and movies and jerks
I’ve known portray it.
I made some other minor realizations, too, but this is
obviously the outermost layer of the issue. So that is some progress, and a concept
I can be working on: to remember how it felt for it to be about love. Remember
how I once felt, and stop trying to jump into the minds of all the sick
perverts everywhere and declaring that that’s the reality of the matter. There
is no singular reality about it – it is an individual and case-by-case basis
concept. I don’t need to hate everyone that thinks I’m attractive. I don’t need
to be afraid of looking good or being sexy. I don’t need to be AFRAID of being
objectified. I don’t need to hate sex so much.
That’s where I’m at for now.
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