Sexual desires
Posted by Cherelle-Renee on Friday, April 21, 2017
It doesn't bother me one bit if someone's sexually attracted to me. It doesn't bother me if they fantasize about me. It doesn't even bother me if their fantasy is something that I would never want to do. (I'd prefer not to know about it if that's the case, but just the fact that I popped up in someone's thoughts in such a manner doesn't phase me) In fact, I've never understood why that was supposed to be offensive to me. As a woman, I'm sometimes told to cover up and be careful how I act so that people don't have sexual thoughts about me, as if someone having sexual thoughts was something horrible. As if it means that my being the object of some hypothetical person's perfectly normal biological desires somehow negates my humanity.
The way I see it, a high percentage of adult humans have sexual urges. The average adult human is attractive enough to be sexually appealing to someone. So most of us, at some point, will be both the person having sexual feelings and the person causing them.
What does bother me is when a person can't seem to understand the difference between the real me and the me in their imaginations. What I do in someone else's imagination is none of my business. However, if someone catcalls me, makes lewd remarks, keeps trying to convince me even after I've said no, keeps doing things to I've asked them not to do, and just won't respect my personal space, my rights, my personhood, my autonomy...then there's a problem. Then, they've crossed the line between seeing me as desirable and acting like they are somehow entitled to me. Few things disgust me more than someone acting like what they want for my body, my feelings, my time, myself in general matters more than what I want for those things.
And for what it's worth, the situations I've been in when people have crossed those lines had little to do with how I was dressed or what I was doing at the time. I've been harassed by an overbearing, entitled man in a bus stop when I was wearing a winter parka and minding my own business. I've had a person who was supposed to be my friend try to molest me. I was wearing a modest turtleneck sweater and an office-appropriate pair of trousers at the time. I've also been naked or near naked in groups of people I barely knew and still felt safe and comfortable. In short, I've done things I wasn't supposed to do and been fine, I've followed precautions and still had bad thing happen, and dealt with a whole lot of situations in between.
And when I have been in bad situations, it wasn't the fact that these people felt some sort of desire towards me that was so upsetting, it was the idea that they were so determined to have what they wanted that they no longer saw me as an autonomous human being who was allowed to decide whether or not she wanted to fulfill those desires. It was that feeling that how I felt and what I wanted didn't matter to the other person.
Wanting to have sex with someone is natural. Expecting them to comply and having no regard for what they want is creepy.
The way I see it, a high percentage of adult humans have sexual urges. The average adult human is attractive enough to be sexually appealing to someone. So most of us, at some point, will be both the person having sexual feelings and the person causing them.
What does bother me is when a person can't seem to understand the difference between the real me and the me in their imaginations. What I do in someone else's imagination is none of my business. However, if someone catcalls me, makes lewd remarks, keeps trying to convince me even after I've said no, keeps doing things to I've asked them not to do, and just won't respect my personal space, my rights, my personhood, my autonomy...then there's a problem. Then, they've crossed the line between seeing me as desirable and acting like they are somehow entitled to me. Few things disgust me more than someone acting like what they want for my body, my feelings, my time, myself in general matters more than what I want for those things.
And for what it's worth, the situations I've been in when people have crossed those lines had little to do with how I was dressed or what I was doing at the time. I've been harassed by an overbearing, entitled man in a bus stop when I was wearing a winter parka and minding my own business. I've had a person who was supposed to be my friend try to molest me. I was wearing a modest turtleneck sweater and an office-appropriate pair of trousers at the time. I've also been naked or near naked in groups of people I barely knew and still felt safe and comfortable. In short, I've done things I wasn't supposed to do and been fine, I've followed precautions and still had bad thing happen, and dealt with a whole lot of situations in between.
And when I have been in bad situations, it wasn't the fact that these people felt some sort of desire towards me that was so upsetting, it was the idea that they were so determined to have what they wanted that they no longer saw me as an autonomous human being who was allowed to decide whether or not she wanted to fulfill those desires. It was that feeling that how I felt and what I wanted didn't matter to the other person.
Wanting to have sex with someone is natural. Expecting them to comply and having no regard for what they want is creepy.
Random musings from the creator of Legend's Ghost.
