Ever since POCD hit, I've come to a point where I've gotten desensitized on what's right and wrong. I think fiction and porn hasn't helped either.
The only thing I worry about now is if I'm attracted to someone below 18 or view sexual content of someone below 18. And I think perhaps this has made me numb to situations that are wrong, even in cases for myself.
In the past week, I've seen two posts about people just turning 18 and relationships/sexualization of them. The first post was someone on Twitter talking about this person being a predator. It was a screenshot of a Tiktok where a woman who is 23 said the kid she used to babysit at 13 just turned 18 and if she should ask her out. And to be honest, I felt nothing. I didn't regard it as wrong. My thought was "well, they're both adults now so whatever."
The next post I saw today, and I feel like this was life trying to tell me something. I'm 18 and just turned 18 a few months ago. At 17 I realized I was become desensitized and justifying morally wrong things as a teen from porn and stuff, and POCD hit so I decided I wasn't going to be attracted to minors or sexualize them even if we're the same age. But I was thinking about the morality of stuff, like people turning 18 and being an adult and everything. And I was just kind of like, well as long as someone is 18 it doesn't matter and it's okay right? Well, today a KPOP Idol, Han Yujin, literally just turned 18. I was checking the Enhypen group out and the members ages now. Specifically Sunoo and Sunghoon because I had crushes on them but I did the rest of the members too. I did know Han Yujin was 17 before, but I checked his age and it said he was 18. And my first thought was, "oh, it's okay to like him now!" And then I saw he literally just turned 18 today. It made me feel weird, but I was thinking, well he's 18. He's an adult. So it's fine, right?
Well, I opened Twitter and a Twitter post called for someone to report an account. I saw that the account in question had posted on Han Yujin's birthday. The post was "Han Yujin is 18 now. It's okay to sexualize him!" Or something along those lines. Something I myself had JUST thought about. The post had 24k likes and a few comments, with people saying it was gross, disgusting, predatory, etc. Apparently the person who made the post about Yujin was 18 though, maybe even only a few months older than Han Yujin. But no one cared and said it was disgusting and predatory/pedo either way.
And now I'm sitting here, thinking about myself and my own morality. My morals seem to stop at someone being 18 and that's that. But that doesn't seem very moral, does it? Especially with the posts I saw and what just happened. I have this mindset and I'll still have it when I'm older and basically be a groomer and a pedophile. Everyone else seems to see and understand that dating someone or sexualizing them the moment they turn 18 is grooming, pedophilic, weird, gross, etc. but I don't have the same view and see it as okay.
There are many more situations similar to this too. Where I've justified real relationships and fictional ones where someone knew someone as a minor, kid, and even in cases where they raised them. My argument every time is "nothing happened before 18, and they're an adult now." For fiction, I justify it so I can enjoy the fictional content, relationship, and sexual content of them.
It just seems like I have a predatory and pedophilic mindset, and I don't think it will change with age.