Undressing Others with My Eyes

(A troubled survivor sent this to me personally and has given me permission to use it on my blog. --Cec)

Today I was sitting in a restaurant and a family came in with a couple of good-looking young men, apparently their boys. I caught myself gazing at their faces and bodies and way checking them out. I realize I've done this most of my life with different males that I come into contact with other men. I've gotten good at doing in a way that doesn’t seem like I am doing it.

The reason I post about this now is that it hit me that I find it difficult to look at people particularly men in any other way, the way most people do. I suspect most people look at someone and see a face, expression, body language, and dress. If the occasion arises to greet them, they look at their face/eyes and judge whether they are nice or not in their response.

For most people that would be enough. But all my life it has been an intense inspection of their face, lips, eyes, nose shape, ears, hairstyle, build, as in chest, arms, abs, and hips. I think some have called it undressing them with my eyes.

People aren't just people to me and since I discovered my own body, I've been curious about what others may look like. That was the original motivation for my journey into the world of porn. I was curious as to what people, mostly guys, looked like naked. It never stopped at looking, that's another story.

I have seen young men/boys who seemed unaware of their bodies and of mine. Unless I drew their attention to that, it was just incidental to whatever we were engaged in at the time. It made me feel dirty and self-conscious and I could not understand why until now. Because I was sexualized at a young age it became a huge new secret focus, and no one around me escaped that intense pre-occupation I seem to have.

I've come to hate that about myself and I don’t know if I will ever get over objectifying people. If people knew what was going on in my head they'd probably be appalled and I'd be terribly ashamed. I guess it is the way I was "trained" to see people especially men because it seemed to be the way my father and others looked at me. I don’t really know so I am guessing here. I'm not the only one who does this. I guess as adults with knowledge of adult things it is common, but I don’t think a kid should grow up this pre-occupied with these things.

That's another layer that I need to peel off. And I need with this. I find myself doing it without even any forethought at all.