Day 17

Day 17, Thu 25/3/10

I have moments where I catch myself perving on a woman and make myself look away. One time recently, I did that and thought: no, I shouldn't be stopping myself now, I should be just observing. But then I thought that there is no benefit in actively deciding not to follow up on a decision not to perve when it occurs to me to make that decision.

And that is one of the main points. I think I don't actually "catch myself" and "make myself" look away. I just do one thing, then reconsider and do another. At the moment, it takes conscious awareness of my behaviour and conscious thought about what the effects and implications are of that behaviour, for me to decide that it's a bad choice. But it's still the same person making both decisions.

And it's true that I am not trying to train my self by sheer strength of will and self-denial. But it is my behaviour that I am training at this stage. Underlying attitudes are being questioned and challenged, and the mental health level that are associated are being addressed but the outcome I'm looking for currently is a change in behaviour.

So it's not effective, as my experience confirms to me, to try to simply stop all my sexist behaviour following a single decision made here tonight. But it is missing the main point if I focus all my attention on looking after myself and nurturing my mental health so as to allow for better decisions. My current tactic is to actively and confrontationally expose the reality of my behaviour and its effects and consequences to my conscious mind and in that way - and perhaps others - to put as many barriers as possible in front of a decision to look at porn or perve on women again.