Misogyny

TW: themes of sexual abuse, exploitation, etc Hello I am feeling a bit distressed today. I realized I have pretty “sex negative” views which I feel like many stem from OCD and trauma. Some of my feelings are good and I would argue most stem from a healthy place but I feel like they impact my life and emotional state on an unhealthy level. For example feel VERY strongly about CSA, rape, sexual exploitation of any kind, unethical sex etc. I have a strong pattern recognization ability and see how so many things people deem as “sex positive” (porn, onlyfans, casual sex etc) have a net negative effect on society (abuse, cheating, stds, etc) I think a good amount of the population agrees with these values so I don’t feel alone in that but I feel like I spend so much time being sad over these things. I used to listen to a lot of sexual music growing up (mainly mainstream pop like Ke$ha and Rihanna) and then in my teens I listened to a lot of rap. I noticed how this made me sexualize myself growing up which makes me very uncomfortable and sad. Another thing which makes me sad is how so much of the population was exposed to pornography at a young age. I recently was at a estate sale and there were old playboy magazines and this man was showing his son who looked to be about 9 the magazines and it made me so uncomfortable because that’s grooming and abuse. I didn’t know what to do so I just said “ew” but I still feel guilty I did not do anything more. I just don’t know how to cope with these feelings. I am also Catholic and the abuse crisis has deeply impacted my ability to practice my faith. Two priests whom were close to my family got exposed for sexually abusing children. This is a big reason I have not been able to go to confession (which leads me to being unable to receive the Eucharist, which is a big deal). I constantly obsess over the fact I won’t be able to tell who is a sexual predator and it brings me great distress. Also, sexual music, sex scenes in movies, sexual jokes etc all make me deeply uncomfortable. Hearing about my friend’s sexual lives also makes me very uncomfortable and sad for them, in a way, if I deem their experiences unethical. I feel very upset when people sexualize themselves. I also hate when I experience sexual feelings myself and often find myself wishing I was asexual even though I wish to get married and be a mother. I feel judged by society for being a “prude” “puritanical” etc which feels incredibly invalidating as a lot of my trauma involves exploitation under the guise of “liberation” I don’t really know where I’m going here I think I just want to know if anyone feels similarly. I don’t find many people with views and feelings similar to myself. A lot of people online who I feel like my views overlap with (other Catholics, radical feminists, etc) have views which stem from a lot of judgement and hate whereas I feel like I just want everyone to be safe and happy. I think a lot of my feelings stem from my trauma but obsessions from OCD? For my other forms of OCD (contamination, harm, etc) I feel like exposure therapy helps but I don’t know how I’d go about exposure therapy with this then without further causing more distress. I feel very nervous opening up with anyone about this theme. If you read to the end thank you so much❤️‍🩹 I am sorry if this post was triggering at all to anyone else I just didn’t know where to go to open up about this :(

I was looking up stuff about kinks, because my friend is trying to help me "get out there", and I took the bdsm test to see where I land on it. I got 100% vanilla, and I was a little embarassed so I decided to Google things like "is it normal to not have a lot of kinks" or "what % of the population is into kink" and when I scrolled down a bit, I clicked on one of the little suggestion things with the arrow that said "are men more prone to enjoying kink than women" and it revealed a blurb from the website that said that men are in fact more inclined to kink, but also mentioned that it also means they're more inclined to p*dophellia, which sort of set off all these questions in my head of like "Wait so if p*dophellia is just a kink, does that make it more likely that I have it? Because scientenists still don't know what causes it so what if events in my childhood led up to me having it to some extent" and I started kind of going down this internal rabbit hole of trying to figure out how likely it is that I have it or some form of it bc if it's just a kink and not a mental illness than it feels more feasible? Idk I'm a woman so ik it's not AS common in us but it's still possible. I'm doing a little better with redirecting my attention and cooling my anxiety but I had an onslaught of intrusive images before falling asleep like I used to have when I first started experiencing this fear. It's been really catapulting me back to the beginning and I find that I'm ruminating on when it started and if it really means I'm a p or not. I know it's classic ocd but it's hard when it doesn't feel that way ;-; anyway, I'm too scared to Google bc i know it'll be a form of reassurance but also I'm just scared of having anything related to that in my search history so I just thought I'd post here. Anyone else have conflicting thoughts like this?

I wanna start out by saying, I am really proud of how far I've come in recognizing my OCD tendencies and learned about how it can show up intersectionally for BIPOC folks who have racialized trauma and how me, being a White person, how it manifests itself for me. I'd also like to say, this is gonna be more of an analytical and reflective post. Please feel free to read and respond with any critiques or thoughts you have. I'm embarrassed about it nowadays, but it's important to acknowledge because it was a HUGE part of my teenage personality, unfortunately. I used to be a HUGE Shane Dawson fan 😭 like, his content was my strongest hyperfixation to date. So at this point in time, I feel like I'm still trying to decipher what kind of racial commentary and satire and jokes are genuinely funny and which are just perpetuating stereotypes and straight up minstrelsy. Shout out to D'Angelo Wallace for making the video essay that woke me up to seeing this issue more clearly. I try to be aware of how I can easily fall into just laughing at racial stereotypes without being aware of the serious consequences it has for BIPOC people, but at the same time, I don't want to be too worried about everything being racist and therefore that means it's bad and should be banned, cause that's also not always helpful, I've noticed. So racialized fear and polarization is something I'm deconstructing. I hate to admit this, too, 'cause it's embarrassing, but my OCD seems to latch onto racial issues. I end up obsessing about whether or not I'm causing marginalized people harm or not, particularly when it comes to racism. I believe this is because I know I was one of those White kids who was into "edgy" humor when I was a teen. I think it's just lingering guilt from knowing that was wrong, but OCD makes my guilt and rumination and therefore compulsions to "fix" it so much worse than most people. It's frustrating, but I have come a very long way in confronting and dealing with it. I'm very proud of myself for being aware that that's an issue I have. I've got to give credit where credit is due, to my biracial friend (who also happens to have OCD) for essentially helping me learn this, albeit the hard way with many arguments about racism and trauma. It's something that isn't talked about much, but we're learning to build bridges in our understanding of how mental health affects us as people with different forms of racialized trauma. Mine's not so much trauma, but social stigma, whereas his was from actual bullying and harassment and physical assault, simply because of his race. I've also learned how to recognize and deal with my own mental health issues WHILE confronting race because of Black advocates like Tony Nabors who does Racial Equity Insights, F.D. Signifier who does really great intersectional analyses on social issues pertaining to Black people, and D'Angelo Wallace for being the first Black YouTuber that made the problem with Shane Dawson video that finally helped me break out of my lowkey toxic parasocial/trauma bond relationship I had with him, lol. Does this post seem too wordy and analytical for this forum? Let me know if this isn't the right audience for this type of writing and reflection. I just wanted to talk about it because it's something I had to figure out largely on my own. Wondering if anyone else relates to this or can see themselves in this.