My problem may not be as kinky as most you get, but it’s currently terrorizing my thoughts. While in high school and early college, I was fairly sexually repressed (right-wing, Bible Belt upbringing and all that), so I used online chat rooms to explore my sexual curiosity. I would find random pictures of people on the Internet, normal and nude, and send them to others, pretending to be the people in the photos. I used both male and female “identities,” as the gender wasn’t really what turned me on–it was the exhibitionist nature of sharing photos, even if they weren’t really of me. I only traded with others claiming to be 18 and over, and I never met anyone. It was all seemingly harmless Internet fun. Now I’m a 23-year-old heterosexual male, and I just began dating a girl I like a lot. The problem is that I’m having recurring negative feelings about those online experiences. Part of me thinks it was a terrible thing to do and that I’m an awful person for it. This same part urges me to confess what I did to my new girlfriend, which may appease my guilt but will also, I imagine, make me come off as really creepy and weird. AHHH!! –Confused and Distraught
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Ah, the religious upbringing–that hellish gift that keeps on giving you hell. Before those first pubes sprout, preachers are pounding it into our heads that there’s only one correct way to express ourselves sexually. We’re then condemned to spend the rest of our lives measuring our actual sexual desires and experiences–which tend to be messy and perverse, just as we tend to be messy and perverse–against a simplistic, unachievable, and stultifying ideal.
I’m a Pennsylvania voter and I too am appalled at what Senator Rick Santorum represents in the U.S. Senate. However, before jumping on the Bob Casey bandwagon, please note that Mr. Casey is also antichoice. The conscientious Pennsylvania voter is thus faced with a profound lack of alternatives. On balance, Casey is better than Santorum, but he’s far from a desirable candidate. –Queasy Undecided in Pennsylvania
