The demons I am grappling with...

[Yukaphile]

I, um, I wasn't sure if I should write this down, but I finally figured, to hell with it. I do have a few serious issues plaguing me in my life, that hurt me, and really make it hard to be happy in my life. One of the biggest issues plaguing me is male guilt. I feel ashamed to be who I am. I see how men have behaved in the past, abusing women, raping women, that they get away with, and it sickens and shames me. It's also a sad fact of the world that the majority of killers and rapists are men, even if the majority of men are not killers and rapists. But in some cases, where men left behind huge populations of rape babies, millions of them, it... it really makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. That my sexual desire is flawed, that to man is to be immature, puerile, and all those nasty things. It got so bad at its worst that I really wanted to castrate myself. I know, I know women can be just as bad, I don't deny that, but regardless... I do respect and honor and think highly of women. I am also very sympathetic to how whether it's in war or peacetime, whether rape or consensual, when it comes to children and procreation, men get all the fun, women get all the hard work, from conception to birth. And that really upsets me. In another man, it might breed subconscious feelings of inferiority, that he is lesser than woman, and it feels like in me, that's what's happening, only I don't use it to justify hatred, I just tend to accept it. I know all this is wrong, but... I've read what certain men have done, and it scares me, it enrages me, it shames me, it sickens me, and that many of them never faced justice for their crimes really gets to me. So, I don't know... what do you guys think?

[LittleRaven]

You cannot take the sins of the world upon your shoulders - they were not made to bear that weight. You are but a grain of sand on an infinite beach, one tiny mote of light in the darkness. Your agency is limited, as is your responsibility.

But every speck matters. That your agency is limited only makes it more precious. It is not your task to right the sins of humanity, and only madness results from trying. Your job is to simply do the best you can to leave this world a slightly better place than you found it. From such tiny contribution is progress made, one infinitesimal step at a time.

[Darth Wedgius]

You're not responsible for anyone's actions but your own. It's true that the overwhelming majority of violent criminals have been men. So have the majority of those catching them. Running into a burning house? Usually a man. And for most of history, while women had to care for the children, men had to go out into the fields, down into the mines, or out to sea to scrape together enough of a living for that family. The vast majority of on-the-job fatalities are still men.
But I'm just some guy on the internet. You should really talk to a professional about these feelings. Your suffering is undeserved and it isn't doing anybody any good.

[Beastro]

Yuk, you've got some personal problems plaguing you. I don't know what they are, but the way that you are latching onto things like rape screams of it - you have pain in your life and you're looking to have it take a more solid form with which to deal with, but going down the road of pathos like this will not give you a path out, it will simply make you resent yourself all the more and seek pity more and more.

I know what it's like to want to have people look down upon you and hate you, but it will not give you the deliverance you think it will, nor will it give you the maturity to be able to finally handle these things better.

I, um, I wasn't sure if I should write this down, but I finally figured, to hell with it. I do have a few serious issues plaguing me in my life, that hurt me, and really make it hard to be happy in my life. One of the biggest issues plaguing me is male guilt. I feel ashamed to be who I am. I see how men have behaved in the past, abusing women, raping women, that they get away with, and it sickens and shames me. It's also a sad fact of the world that the majority of killers and rapists are men, even if the majority of men are not killers and rapists. But in some cases, where men left behind huge populations of rape babies, millions of them, it... it really makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. That my sexual desire is flawed, that to man is to be immature, puerile, and all those nasty things. It got so bad at its worst that I really wanted to castrate myself. I know, I know women can be just as bad, I don't deny that, but regardless... I do respect and honor and think highly of women. I am also very sympathetic to how whether it's in war or peacetime, whether rape or consensual, when it comes to children and procreation, men get all the fun, women get all the hard work, from conception to birth. And that really upsets me. In another man, it might breed subconscious feelings of inferiority, that he is lesser than woman, and it feels like in me, that's what's happening, only I don't use it to justify hatred, I just tend to accept it. I know all this is wrong, but... I've read what certain men have done, and it scares me, it enrages me, it shames me, it sickens me, and that many of them never faced justice for their crimes really gets to me. So, I don't know... what do you guys think?

How is it flawed? That you have it at all?

Did you mean "That to be a man is to be immature, puerile and all those nasty things"?

If so, I'm sorry, that is not a healthy outlook nor an accurate one and you know it despite the desire in you to find reasons to excoriate yourself. You've chosen the actions of men and applied them to yourself and others, and it is an association that goes too far in the way you're taking it.

I don't know what set you off, but I fear you've simply not had a male figure in your life that has been counter to that. As much as I've endured under the past actions of my own father, I never went into assuming he represented men as a whole because of my grandfather and the effect he had on my mother, how much she loved and looked up to him given what kind of father he was. To me, the most masculine thing I've heard a man do was when he'd walk her and my aunt on his feet to bed because that in a nutshell is what a father is and how much a part fatherhood is of what it is to be a man, something sadly I see increasingly fractured these days.

men get all the fun, women get all the hard work, from conception to birth. And that really upsets me.

Outside of pregnancy, no. The issue that's slowly built up is the duties that come with helping women when they need it and the duty and responsibility that comes with fathering children.

There's a thing in us that is odd, we always seem to want a cause to die for. We seek many different things in order to sacrifice ourselves for, and sadly so many forget the first and most primal one men lived and died for, their family.

I'd also refer you to many women I know that would also disagree about the fun part. The issue is when the point of sex winds up doing what it's intended men can bolt. It's for that reason that many things come loaded into women right up to that vicious protectiveness many females of a species have, because it's only them that infants can count on.

That isn't always the case with us humans, but that is a result of the failure of men to take their position in picking up the slack and helping out, something which is fundamentally immature.

I know, I know women can be just as bad, I don't deny that, but regardless... I do respect and honor and think highly of women.

Whatever you do, don't ideal them. I say that for their sake. Turning your conceptions of women into paragons, if only out of some sense of self-loathing as them being better than you will not help and leaves a huge gap for resentment to take form.

It got so bad at its worst that I really wanted to castrate myself.

Have you confided this to family or a professional. I don't know to what extent you've felt this way, but it's a warning sign nonetheless of a desire for self-harm and a very severe one at that.

Whatever you do, do not do things to yourself that will stay with you, even if it's a scar on a wrist from cutting. Whatever you're dealing with you want to get out of it with as little baggage following you around as possible. Believe me, I know what I mean given the decades of dealing with depression and being able to look back and realize I don't have anything like a scar there to continue reminding me of those days. Doing what you speak of will not just harm you, but will harm whatever relationships you eventually get into. You do not want to find someone that you will want to marry and have a family with only to have this pain and the act of castration reminding you that you literally cut that route off.

In another man, it might breed subconscious feelings of inferiority, that he is lesser than woman, and it feels like in me, that's what's happening, only I don't use it to justify hatred, I just tend to accept it. I know all this is wrong, but... I've read what certain men have done, and it scares me, it enrages me, it shames me, it sickens me,

It brings to mind something, but I don't know how much of it is there: Does reading all of that illicit such a strong response because it reminds you of what you're capable of? That you have this feeling towards your sex and men in general because of the fear of what you might do?

I ask this because, when I read of such things, as much as I admit that I know I am capable of great evil given the anger I've had over things, I also know I will not many things, not because I am incapable, that I cannot do things like we are so prone to say these days, but after living with what I've had to deal with and still deal with as a legacy of abuse in my family, I chose not to make victims of my own and seek to heal the world as much as a can through my own actions day to day.

I don't know how old you are, Yuk, but I feel that you're young and you haven't found yourself in enough situations to demonstrate to yourself what you are willingly capable of and have shown yourself where your nature lies. I recommend working on demonstrating that to yourself, but not to get lost in some cause and ignore your demons, act and show to yourself that you are better than the scum of our sex.

That that isn't just your opinion but is fact.

The situation I've always put it to myself is a rape that happened in 1970s New York, I think it was. A women was being raped, calling for help, the whole neighbourhood heard her and no one did anything, people walked past the alleyway and even looked in and kept going. I've always said I couldn't help but try to help, even if I got hurt or died myself, because if I didn't I'd die either way, I would walk away from that alley as complete unknown to myself, everything I thought I was was a lie.

Years back I had a major moment like that with someone who later became a friend who approached me online on a message board. What I didn't know and she struggled to say until I picked up enough from our conversations and was able to fill in the blanks while she confirmed was that she was being sexually assaulted in school. I tried to help her, but she was in the US while I'm not and I didn't know where exactly she was or who to even phone. Luckily the boys got caught in the act and I felt like I'd done nothing, but she thanked me because I'd been there for her through it, and what I explained would happen did, that when her father found out he wouldn't look on her as a slut but instead cry over failing to protect his little girl, which he did.

Later she thanks me for being there and told me I'd saved her life, that she'd have probably taken some pilled and killed herself eventually dealing with things alone even if everything had gone the same way it had.

I don't say to go out and save I life, but demonstrate to yourself that you are capable of good and capable to walking away from the evil within in your nature.

But if I am wrong about what is causing your pain, forgive me.

One thing you have to do is stop reading things that bring you down like this. I know, I've had my own things that I sought knowing it would only make me feel worse in the end. Do not let such evil actions blanket the good done, even if it's the way of this Fallen World that the good seems so much less in porportion than to the evil.

[Yukaphile]

A few things to note from that long reply. One is that yes, I have a few sexual kinks that have me... well, feeling guilty. Like, I'm into vore, and lolicon, which are pretty harmless, yet I do like watching rape hentai, and yet... that's just a fantasy. It's not reality. One thing for me is that I feel completely unworthy of sex. I'm not pretty to look at, I'm ugly, and add in my sexual kinks, there you go. And I look at what other men have done, and what they have, and I guess it gets me jealous towards them. Makes me feel in certain cases for some boyfriends or husbands that they take for granted what I wish I had, not just sex, but a loving partner. I have always dreamed of having a family, and yet... I know that I'm probably unfit to be father, even though I'd be better than my own. He was abusive. I can be too childish myself sometimes. It wasn't just WWII crimes. After the election, it was also about the sheer crushing weight of what felt like virulently rabid hatred against women. It was so horrifying. And with interference from another patriarchal country no less. It can get overwhelming. I feel as if we will never get a female President in my lifetime and even if we do... she won't be anywhere as good as the first candidate we ever got, or she'll be a good little girl who plays by the boys' rules... and that hurts.

[Yukaphile]

I just really want people to like me, I really do, and... I'm always afraid of being hated and rejected. I'm very shy and awkward. It's only online where I can really open up. The world really feels like a painful place that I don't want to be in. I think in death, there would be peace. Though it's like I'm searching for something so beautiful I can't even imagine it, too beautiful for existence. I think that's why I'm sex-obsessed and dislike rape so much. I also feel as if... I can control it. Why can't these other monsters? I just want to experience heaven on this Earth. Could just be as a young infant in an abusive home, I missed the womb when I had very recent memories of it. And sex is as close to paradise as you can ever get on this wretched world. But it's more than that, as I've said. I dream of hugging, kissing, laughing together, sharing things, all the romantic, mushy stuff like holding hands, or preparing intimate dinners for one another, having picnics, or just both sitting on the couch snuggling while watching TV. I dream of that, and I abhor those animals who ruin it for other people, leave them unable to feel such joy, that I crave, that I am not worthy of. Let me also be clear that I m well aware of my flaws. I can whine, I'm petty and immature. I can be egocentric. I'm arrogant. And even a hypocrite at times, like all other human beings, with my own contradictions. I'm also very afraid of judgment and people hurting me. So just how worthy would I be for any lady out there? And I just hate how the world has treated women, now and in the past. I hate it. I can't stand it. Especially when you look back to the thirties, forties, and fifties and just how many pedophiles and rapists and sexual abusers got away with their crimes compared to today. It's discouraging and makes you lose faith with humanity.

[Yukaphile]

In a lot of ways, I think I'd be better off dead. My body limits me, and I don't wanna be here.

[Darth Wedgius]

In a lot of ways, I think I'd be better off dead. My body limits me, and I don't wanna be here.

That's one reason to talk to a professional. We're just guys on the internet, drawn together by a love of sci-fi and snark. Want to know about whether the 1701-D could beat a Star Destroyer or not, and we're go-to guys. Want to know about mental health? We'll try, but we'll make mistakes.

As far as that special someone you'd like, "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical... but it is often true." Or, in other words, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

When you get married you don't get that dream woman you've wanted, who likes to cuddle when you want to cuddle, who says just the right thing at the right time, and whom you can hold hands with as you watch the sun set over a wind-swept beach. You get someone who wants to go play a video game when you wanted to watch something together, who argues with you over where to go on vacation, and who makes the same body noises that everybody else does. Your problems aren't solved; some are solved, and you get new ones in exchange.

I'm not trying to discourage your search for a soul mate, but it shouldn't be seen as the key to happiness. It's one more thing to add to a life, but it really is best if you can be happy without it.

[Beastro]

In a lot of ways, I think I'd be better off dead. My body limits me, and I don't wanna be here.

Limitations are what make life work living, even if they are frustrating and eventually leave us broken and dead in the end.

Look at something like Superman and how boring a character he is unless his limitations are brought up, because without them every danger, every crisis ends with Superman winning without any effort. His life isn't fun, and maybe that's why he goes around as Clark Kent, so that he can at least some of the time, pretend that he's just a feeble human being.

Think about if you were god-like and able to fix everything in the universe you didn't. How you'd love doing that, then living for a bit in a world free of those problems for a time, but like a vacation, it would begin to wear on you and you'd eventually become not simply bored but tormented by the perfection.

What you are saying is in the same sentiment as those that usually wish that they were dead - they don't actually want to be dead, they simply wish for what is tormenting them to end.

Like, I'm into vore, and lolicon, which are pretty harmless, yet I do like watching rape hentai, and yet... that's just a fantasy. It's not reality.

You have to ask yourself exactly why you are drawn to the latter. They say all rape is about power and it's something I dispute given situations like prison rape where I can see an angle of it just wanting some kind of sexual partner in a place full of people that act impulsively.

It would be good to talk to someone and work through what draws you to those things, and the issue with fantasy is that it is a concept of the conscious mind. By that I mean that while you consciously are aware of what fantasy is, the rest of your mind see no difference between things, it is one of the primary maintainers of depression and anxiety, that we dread and fear certain outcomes and think about how they will go wrong over and over in our minds, and the rest of our mind is not seeing a hypothetical disaster but seeing a disaster happening over and over again and going crazy panicking over what it thinks is a unending chain of crisis'.

When it comes to something involving rape. I don't know personally to what degree it appeals to you, but you need to ask yourself if it is harmless or bad enough to have made other parts of your mind desire it enough to start working on you to act on it, which is really what addiction is, aspects of the subconscious demanding things noting caring for the outcome, only wanting it over and over.

It sounds like the other side of the coin you've got with this self-loathing over what other men have done over history. An inescapable fact of sex and even relationships is the underlying current of hostility and combativeness between men and women that is why relationship often go bad not only if there is too much fighting, but not enough. Then you've things like the driver behind the popularity of something like 50 Shades of Grey and you can look at other animals and see that they hardly are friendly during sexual encounters with the usual minor actions being a male grabbing a mate by the scruff while others, like Sea Otters bite and hold onto the noses of females, which is why you see many with orange flecked noses covered in scars.

I think you haven't integrated the different sides of yourself, man. You are struggling with and hating feeling and being weak, but are also terrified of the horrible things you are capable of if you had power. It doesn't have to be black and white like that, but that means finding a balance in yourself and realizing you can be a strong, powerful person but not have to exert that power on the innocent in order to maintain it. It can be used to protect and be kept at the ready.

It speaks of the differences between different figures, like that between a warrior who fights for himself and a soldier, who fights for something greater than himself. Or a knight, however much that is laced with hypocrisy given the ideal colliding with reality.

One thing for me is that I feel completely unworthy of sex. I'm not pretty to look at, I'm ugly, and add in my sexual kinks, there you go.

Sex is an odd thing with us humans and it's never simple. Don't assume it's so cut and dried like the internet paints it to be.

I know that I'm probably unfit to be father, even though I'd be better than my own. He was abusive. I can be too childish myself sometimes.

So was mine. Much of what I've learned and added to my notebook of "Things to do when I'm a father" is to NOT do what he did.

It's a hard decision when you reach that point, and I'm still far from it myself, but you won't get there until you start trying to work on yourself and weed out not only his bad influences, but also whatever good might have come from him while keeping out for that good which you can add to it.

I feel as if we will never get a female President in my lifetime and even if we do... she won't be anywhere as good as the first candidate we ever got

What is important is not someones sex or skin colour, or whatever you can label them with, but their competency, and I'm sorry, Hillary was a terrible candidate and you're country got stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And I speak not only for myself but many I know that absolutely loath her, her her actions as Secretary of State that have helped to so terrible weaken US hegemony in the world.

I just really want people to like me, I really do, and... I'm always afraid of being hated and rejected. I'm very shy and awkward.

That can be a complicated thing depending on your nature and how much you seek things like approval in others. The way my family is, it's left me desiring certain people who are neither passive lackeys nor jerks I continually butt heads with, but those I have an affinity with that I want to impress.

I can understand your worry though in a way I couldn't when I was younger. I was sick with GI problems as a teen and missed a lot of school. I didn't care then what people thought of me given that I knew I was sick, but in the past 5 years or so I've been trying to find a treatment for my TMD problem that fogs my mind and makes me constantly forget things and be absentminded. I've become aware of being self-conscious around people now as I worry I'm unable to think of an appropriate thing to say and say it in time.

Things are not bad as we can fear them to be though, even when they are bad, which is that blurred line between fantasy and reality the unconscious has. I'm still trying to work my way through it, whether or not I find an effective treatment, but I can't wait for it come which means I have to go out, screw up even if it's not what I intend and hope I can grow and adapt around this condition.

While the internet can help, it is not a cure. You will only suffer more if you withdrawal from challenging the fear.

It was something my maternal grandmother faced as a kid. She was very shy too, but eventually she had had enough and did things in that way my family does, which is grab the hot coal and suck it up, she got a job as a waitress and forcible worked the shyness out. It's not something that works for everyone, much less most, but you can ease yourself into things and make the ride less bumpy, but it will always be bumpy.

Fortunately dealing with other things in like I've come to enjoy the relief that comes with taking leaps of faith and having them prove my fears wrong that I can at least find something appealing to get me pushing into things.

The world really feels like a painful place that I don't want to be in. I think in death, there would be peace.

Pain and suffered can be terrible things. I know I've dealt with a good 20+ years of chronic pain, but we only grow and mature suffering. If failure wasn't bad we wouldn't feel the need to learn from it, just as we feel pain to help serve us as we navigate through this world.

The peace you seek in death, while I disagree on it being so, is nonetheless something which would be an endless torment in that it would be like never finishing something, always sitting at the starting line of a race, or being like a nut that never cracks open and grows. It's could be called a safe place, but so too could be a prison that it would be.

All I know is I suffer more in the way that destroys me love of life and that connection to what is good and meaningful in it when I never do things and then realize it's too late to do them.

Waiting is always worse than acting and failing, because it never ends.

I just want to experience heaven on this Earth.

The only way we get fleeting moments of it is by working to create it. Doing meaningful things in like and having those moments to enjoy when things are going right after all the toil and suffering to get there only add to that sense of ecstasy which is in our very nature and why such a thing as delayed gratification is a thing.

Could just be as a young infant in an abusive home, I missed the womb when I had very recent memories of it.

But a womb is a beginning, not a life. Every living thing is born and then it must grow and tackle the world to be something more, we cannot remain children forever, even if society can find ways to enable us to do so. Even if we chose to accept that, a hole will remain from what is unfulfilled in us.

And sex is as close to paradise as you can ever get on this wretched world. But it's more than that, as I've said. I dream of hugging, kissing, laughing together, sharing things, all the romantic, mushy stuff like holding hands, or preparing intimate dinners for one another, having picnics, or just both sitting on the couch snuggling while watching TV.

And all of that which you seek will not be found in any kind of pornography, it only comes from going out into the world, living life and seeing where and with whom you can build you little niche within it.

It is wretched, but without that I don't think it would be as enjoyable. If we were doomed to live in a completely stable, unvarying climate we'd never freeze nor die of hyperthermia, never be never slightly cold nor hot, and yet we'd miss the joys that come from touching those extremes, like coming in after enduring the freezing cold to warm up or escaping the stifling heat of the day into a house cold enough that we can at least feel like we're able to breath again.

Heat can burn us, but is also gives us warmth just as the cold can freeze, but it allows us to cool down. These patterns in life are all over and the ebb and flow give us respite from living a static, unchanging nature.

I dream of that, and I abhor those animals who ruin it for other people, leave them unable to feel such joy, that I crave, that I am not worthy of.

And I wonder what you've faced in life to wonder about this, what effect it's had on you. I will say it bring to mind what my friend went through after her sexual assault.

I'm also very afraid of judgment and people hurting me.

It depends on why they are doing those things and to what end. Judgement, criticism and saying things that hurt are terrible is that is the sum total of why they are being done, but if they are done to help, to show a real flaw in us that needs to be corrected and the sense of hurt is a by product of
us having to be made aware of something about ourselves that needs to change then it isn't and those things are instead coming from people who care about you.

I faced that a few months ago trying to help my mother and trying to reason with her why she is mentally ill and needs to seek help. After hours she'd had enough and walked away while I muttered in sadness that she was mentally ill. Next thing I know I have a glass of water in my face and a diatribe going off, half of which was about what my father had do to us as a family.

It was only after calming down that she realized what she'd done and how much it showed what I was talking about. She wasn't dealing with me at all, the old battle programming she'd developed decades ago dealing with my father had kicked back in and she went off on autopilot, and at me to her horror.

That argument hurt her, but I'd do it again to coax her one step closer to realizing the harm she's endured has left her afraid of seeking help, that the rope of the demons that plague her is knotted around her within even more knots and that trying to deal with one is blocked by others.

After that weeks later one of my brothers and his family visited her with me. She tried to get out of it, hide in her bedroom, and it was hard for us to get in, but we did as she cried in shame, but afterward the visit she was happy it had happened and realized her fears were not as important as seeing her loved ones as well as living life.

And I just hate how the world has treated women, now and in the past. I hate it. I can't stand it. Especially when you look back to the thirties, forties, and fifties and just how many pedophiles and rapists and sexual abusers got away with their crimes compared to today. It's discouraging and makes you lose faith with humanity.

There's a whole wide range of things that can do that. There are plenty of things women have done too, and before you counter about being aware of that, that is precisely the point - you are aware of things that differ from what sets off this tormenting feeling about the suffering of women, but you on some level ignore it so hold onto the pain this causes.

Going back to old mom, even the thought of an animal in pain can bring her to tears. Her level of empathy is one I've never see in someone else, but she avoids things which set that off in her because of how devastating they are to her and it would rot her soul if she lingered on them.

This is a problem with staying on the internet too much. Those things which can set you off are seconds away, just enough time to give into the part that desires to look at such stuff and then get you hooked into it. Try getting out and off the internet.

Yes it sounds foolish, but it's what people need to do more. It isn't that what hurts you on the internet isn't there, but the internet is magnifying it and your chances of running into those things are far smaller, if only too that you will ruminate over them less.

And that isn't a bad thing. Like Raven said, you can't take the sins of the world on your shoulders, it crushes you and does no no any good at all, even the part of you that seeks it out.

[Yukaphile]

One of the biggest problems in getting me therapy now is that Jerry lost our cars, and he's gone off his meds, so the ACT team is about to hospitalize him because he gets delusional. We can't drive. And it's very far away, so can't go by bus. I don't know what to do.