Day 3

Day 3, Thu 11/3/10
Even at intervals of one day, I get completely out of the frame of mind for thinking about sexism and porn. It takes a serious effort of concentration to bring my attention back to it again.

I haven't wanted to look at porn in these few days while I've been doing this. That's pretty normal for me. For a while after a bout of porn watching, while the consequences are fresh in my mind, I usually have little desire to look at porn.

But I've still been perving on women. I stare at women's cleavages or look up their skirts. Of course, it's actually gross and I also know about what a cold and threatening thing it can be.

I suppose my behaviour is as though it's really important to me to get that glimpse of this woman's breasts or undies. In a way I feel rich when I'm in a place where women don't cover their bodies very carefully and I see their nipples and things more often. But also I feel a certain gratitude when women prevent me from seeing their bodies without making any kind of fuss. (I mean that they just wear sensible, non-revealing clothing that takes away the issue for me.) But of course it isn't up to women to hide their bodies away, it's up to me to learn what is sexual and what is just a woman being there with no sexual meaning at all.

I was thinking yesterday or today about how, when I've got a new mindset in place, it will be a whole different experience walking around. As it is now, I see sex everywhere. Not always but anytime and all around me. Just about any sighting of a woman can be extrapolated in my imagination to become an imagining abut a sexual situation.

That is what I am giving up, fundamentally. I'm instating a situation in which most of my interactions aren't about sex at all. It's complicated by the fact that there is a sexual aspect to lots of relationships, even ones that don't involve actual sex or flirting at all. But there is a difference between understanding that and just taking sexual gratification from random situations that don't have a sexual element.