How might I go about being castrated?

I agree with what everyone said above. Your sex drive is normal, and I understand why you might feel guilty, but you shouldn't.

Everyone objectifies everyone else...just a little. But have you ever heard how it's the thought that counts? As long as you still treat people well, who cares how you look at them inside your mind?

And trust me, most people are bad communication when you're face to face, so I doubt anyone would be able to pick up anything like this. :) Unless of course you get very very nervous which can be noticeable to some, but once again, this is nothing to get nervous about.

I would work on controlling your anxiety, rather than your sex drive. Maybe you can get some books with cognitive exercises? Since the psychiatrist already said no to hormones, it'll be the next best thing for you and it requires no prescription.

edited 25th May '11 5:04:57 PM by Nika-senpai

@LH: Well, did she say anything else? Or was she helpful at all?

Nothing helpful at all. She said let's continue the meds I'm on. Nothing else.

edited 25th May '11 6:21:55 PM by LoveHappiness

Then I doubly second wave's recommendation to find another psychiatrist.

For me, at least — yes, a sex drive leads one to some degree of objectification.

So do many other things. Any time you're considering someone in terms of something you'd like from them, you're objectifying. Any time you're dealing with someone as their role.

The key is not to never objectify. The key is in knowing when you're doing it, knowing that they owe you nothing just because you want it, and never forgetting that they are also an individual human being that does not exist merely to satisfy your wants.

I don't think you sound like someone who would do that, LH. The very fact that you worry about it so much indicates to me that you aren't doing it.

Expanding on what Morven said, what happens inside your own mind is never wrong. Only if you make other people uncomfortable have you gone too far.

Otherwise objectify people all you want; it's not like you can avoid it. If you steadfastly avoid thinking of women as sex objects, you're still thinking of the garbage(wo)man as a garbage-collection object. You're still thinking of the mail(wo)man as a male delivery object. And hey, all those strangers you see now and then I bet you think of as objects too.

Long story short, it's not possible or desirable to think of all people as people all the time. Sometimes you think of a woman as a pair of boobs and there's nothing wrong with that. It's only wrong if you treat her like a pair of boobs.

I agree with the first sentence, but even "making people uncomfortable" is a poor standard to use for censoring your own behavior: people are made uncomfortable by all sorts of things that you will not be able to avoid, or even predict.

Staring at someone's boobies is going to be rude in most contexts, but even if you catch yourself doing it, it's good to remember that you've done no tangible harm.

It's also not a good idea to worry about whether or not you are "seeing women as people", since what precisely constitutes "not seeing others as people" is so vaguely defined as to render it useless as a criticism.

edited 25th May '11 8:24:18 PM by MostlyBenign

@MB: If you happen to make someone uncomfortable with some kind of odd behavior, you apologize sincerely but without the implication that you won't do it again on other people.

(But if whatever you do makes a lot of people uncomfortable, it's probably you and you should consider dialing it back a bit.)

In addition to that article I linked above, this is also a good guide to polite ogling.

Like I said, certain behaviors are going to make other people more or less uncomfortable, but for someone with LH's levels of anxiety, I feel it's more important to stress the fact that sometimes you cannot control these things, and as long as you're not doing something like going up to random strangers and grabbing their genitals - which I suspect isn't a problem with him - it's not healthy to guilt yourself over it.

Oh. Right.

EDIT: In fact I should probably say here that I meant "expresses their uncomfortableness to you" rather than merely "is uncomfortable". Not that it's great to make someone uncomfortable in secret, but it's not like you can do anything about it so why worry?

edited 26th May '11 5:24:21 AM by BlackHumor