Hello everyone, I don’t know if any of you follow Florence given on Instagram but she is a feminist illustrator and author and she has recently shed some light on a topic which I feel has greatly influenced my HOCD and I hope by sharing this, this makes someone feel less alone. She asked her followers to write in to her about their earliest memories of pleasure - and thousands of predominantly women wrote in saying that at sleepovers when they were young they use to kiss their friends and “hump” one another or watch babystation or what not - the women reported feeling so ashamed of it and could not believe how many people had also done it! I myself am included in the thousands of young girls that did this before they even knew what sex or sexuality even was! She highlighted that these responses were not just from gay or bisexual women but a large majority of the women were heterosexual and they reported being very ashamed of these memories (myself included) however didn’t really bother them. This highlighted to me that I am not alone and loads of kids did this because we were kids and we “practicing” and didn’t really understand?. Unfortunately I suffer with anxiety on a very high scale and I found that my OCD presents itself when my anxiety is very high and my OCD is often centred around this! For so long I felt so alone in this experience and thought it must mean I’m gay despite not romanticising about women at all and online finding men attractive when I reached a sexually mature age - but it DOESN’T MAKE ME ANYTHING! Today I say no to OCD. I’m sure some of you have had an experience with someone of the same sex whether that be when you were a child or adult but it doesn’t define our sexuality. Sex contact, sexual attraction and sexuality are very different things. I’m proud to say yeah I find girls attractive but that doesn’t make me gay - Today I say fuck you to my HOCD.

Ok so I’m a 17 year old female, and I’ve always thought I was straight. But I just really want to know how you would know the difference between so-ocd and actually questioning your sexuality. I have nothing against the LGBTQ community (in fact I am very much a token straight friend, lol) but I saw a video about comp-het recently and it sort of felt like what I was experiencing. I don’t want to be gay, I want to be with men, I want to like men, I’ve always liked men, but now I’m questioning whether or not that’s real? Because people can be gay but not want to be right? I’m single and I always have been. I think women are gorgeous, but when I try to imagine actually having any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with a woman it feels wrong, at least most of the time it does? Sometimes I’m less sure, and I’ve never been particularly boy crazy. I’ve liked maybe 2 or 3 people in my life, (not to say I’ve never found other guys attractive, but it doesn’t seem to be as often as most people) I have no particular reason to be afraid of being gay, very supportive family, safe area ect, but I don’t want to be, does that mean this is ocd, I don’t know what’s going on every time I say I’m straight I feel like I’m lying, but that might just be because I think about it so much. The idea of being with a woman doesn’t feel like something I would want, but is that just because I don’t want to want it? People online say things with so much sureness, if you feel like this it means this. Ect.

Sorry if this is a bit of an odd post, but I’m wondering if there are any girls out there that have specifically struggled with shame around watching porn? A lot of my real-event ocd stems from watching that kind of content in the past, and for some reason it feels particularly taboo as a woman. As a young teen, I saw some genuinely disturbing things, and I think a lot of that was to do with having unrestricted access to the internet. However, despite lots of people telling me “that’s normal teen curiosity” it just never feels like it applies to me, and that I’m genuinely just a sexual deviant. I think because that kind of content is so graphic and overstimulating it’s really stuck in my brain, and I just wish I could turn back the clock and switch off the computer. I’ve recently been struggling with doing typical ‘girly’ stuff because I feel tainted and gross, and I just want to get back to feeling myself again.

I’m 25 and never ever thought this before my soocd relapse. I have a bf of 5 years. Never been a high libido kinda girl. Don’t get me wrong I do get turned on by my bf but not like every day you know? - That had always been in the back of my head, is this normal and ok? But my ocd has latched onto the most scariest what if EVER. My brain is now saying How do you know you won’t prefer to sleep and kiss girls if you haven’t tried it: and it’s that unknown that is scaring the shit out of me. I DONT AND NEVER HAVE wanted to sleep / kiss a girl. But now my intrusive thoughts is all I think about!!! I don’t want I don’t want I don’t want??? So why does my brain think BUT WHAT IF??? I know ocd thrives off uncertainty which is why I think this is happening? But I don’t wanna find out or work it out because all I want is to be with my bf and marry him!! Is this just the epitome of OCD?