Day 7

Day 7, Mon 15/3/10
I've already missed a day. It just slipped quietly by. We both noticed at one point in the day but then forgot again. I can feel the difference from having gone longer without bringing myself back to this headspace.

After I do this writing, I walk around for a while in a very conscious state. I notice my behaviour and can decide to be a decent person. But gradually it fades and I slip into the easy habit of allowing myself to behave in a creepy or even intimidating way just to grab a bit of tenuous sexual pleasure.

When I see a woman in the distance, I straight away start scanning her for chances to see her genitals. (First, in fact, I assess whether someone is a woman or not. I can do that from a great distance, although sometimes I'm wrong.) I check to see whether her top has a low neckline or gaping arm-holes and whether she is wearing anything underneath it. Even if she is I will still look though, because it may be a lacy, see-through bra or it may fall forward and expose her nipple as she leans over.

I know it's pretty gross but I want to put it all down so that it's out there in front of me and I can't just quietly do it without consciously noticing that that's what I'm doing.

I also look for wet or see-through tops. Tops that are not going to expose the woman's breasts but are still quite figure-hugging or revealing, like bikinis or tube tops also cop a long stare from me. I imagine bikini tops coming untied and tube tops being pulled down.

There are actually clips I have found on the net where one perpetrator films while another runs up to a woman in a top like these and pulls it down to expose her breasts. On some days, I find those clips very arousing. It's straight-out sexual assault and I doubt it's strictly legal to publish them. If someone described to me their enjoyment of something similar that held no sexual interest for me, I would be absolutely appalled. But I can somehow prevent that reaction because I focus so completely on my own sexual experience of it.

And I also look up women's skirts. I have actually changed direction on the street to follow a woman in a short skirt, keeping a short distance behind and waiting for the wind to lift up her skirt. I have (not just as a kid but also still these days) done the unsbutle look-under-the-desk at a girl's undies. I have placed myself at the right distance behind a woman on the stairs so I can look up her skirt as she climbs the stairs.

I think the idea that someone is so pathetically obsessed that he will go to those lengths would be the most frightening thing for me if I was a woman. And of course it is directly oppressive to try to make a random act that someone does, like walking up a flight of stairs, into a sexual situation that she hasn't chosen to take part in.

To do that and expect to get away with it with no punishment is a really clear sign of internalised sexism. I certainly don't expect to be able to treat men that way. But I definitely do anticipate that I can treat women like that and that nothing will happen to me.