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I have been near sighted all my life and yet I went most of my life without glasses because I could still see well enough to function. However by the time I was 21 my eyesight was so bad that I could no longer read the time on a clock only 6 feet away. I also couldn’t read the signs above the aisles in grocery stores. When I finally got glasses I was amazed at the detail of things that I had never truly seen before unless I was extremely close. I was super excited to see the beauty of the world.

However, sight comes at a price. For the first time I could see the humans around me and compare how they looked to each other and to me. Because of this I started falling into a trap of comparing myself to others. This was the beginning of my gender disphoria. You see I am biologically male but have never been very manly by any definition. Compared to men I’m shorter than most of them and although my muscles are very strong, I can see that I don’t have the same shape in my muscles as men often do. I also compared myself to women and became jealous of them. I saw their childlike skin and their clothes which are almost always better looking than the boring clothes I would find in the men’s section of Walmart. I began to wish I was a woman and want to wear a dress like they could. To complicate matters further, I was worried about these feelings because since I was raised as a Christian, I was worried that I might be gay. I didn’t know much about gender issues of sexual orientations. However one thing was clear. I was not straight. I do not talk the way that other men do about women. In fact I’m completely disgusted by male behavior. They seek to date women who are considered sexually attractive by society either for popularity with their male peers or they just want to have sex with them.

I was quite different from the other men. Although I can see which women look more beautiful than others according to my own standards of beauty, I also try to downplay the role of their appearance and I also aim to treat them all the same no matter how good or bad they look. Sight is the most valuable thing to me and I appreciate it more than most, however it’s important that I never use my eyes as an excuse to mistreat someone based on their appearance no matter what color, gender, or species they happen to be. My philosophy of equality and the golden rule is the foundation of my ethical veganism but it is also the source of my dark secret. I see my own body in the mirror or while I take a shower and I strongly dislike it. I often wish that I had been a girl from the start of my life because then I could wear dresses in public and nobody would criticize me for it. I also would probably not have the large amount of body hair that I do because testosterone produced by my testicles clearly gives me the facial, chest, belly, and butt hair that I do. I almost look like a gorilla or chimp because I’m so hairy and yet I’m not quite hairy enough to actually look like them. Someday I’m hoping to seek permanent hair removal most importantly on my face because I hate the way it looks and I’m tired of cutting myself from shaving.

For over ten years I have had these feelings and although I hide it well from the general public, issues related to gender and sexuality greatly upset me because they are a reminder that I will almost certainly never be able to like my own body the way that some others do. I know everybody has body image issues at times but mine are pretty extreme. There are others like me however and usually they end up being male to female transexuals. I’m still dealing with these feelings that began over ten years ago and I’m trying to think of what is the best solution. It would be nice if I could just fix my own psychology that causes me to feel this way but something tells me that life is never that easy.

Although it’s hard to admit it, I sometimes get jealous when I see married couples or people who are dating each other and refer to themselves as a boyfriend/girlfriend or significant other. This happens around valentines day when everybody seems to have somebody that is a special person to them that they spend time with. However for me I don’t believe that I will ever experience a person like that that I know very well and enjoy being around them.

The closest thing I have to that is when I go over to a friend’s house and we play video, card, or board games. I like playing games even when I’m alone but there is a lot of fun when I’m playing Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. with other people because of all the funny things that happen. Those are absolutely my favorite times because I’m away from the usual stress of life and I finally relax.

But in general, I don’t even have many people I could call friends. A lot of people know me at work and like me but they don’t know the real me and they don’t know all my secrets. I still would like there to be somebody in my life who knows everything about me but still accepts me and enjoys being around me. To this day nobody meets that description because I keep a lot of things about myself quite private. I will only share some things with people I trust but nobody except myself knows all that I have been through and how I feel about things.

And if there is such a person out there who truly comes to know me and still does not reject me, then I’ll be very glad. I know that I am not looking for a sexual relationship of any sort but I would have no problem with having such a person as a roomate for example if we got along really well. I just feel quite distant from people and lonely although I also like being alone to do the things I enjoy. I feel like I’m full of contradictions and that maybe all these feelings will go away someday but so far it hasn’t happened.

Love is a tricky word because it’s almost impossible to find two people using the word to mean the same thing. If I say that I love my job it means I get some good feeling from being useful or at least the fact that I get money for working. If I say that I love orange juice it means I like how it tastes when I drink it. I have no problem with using the word love in those contexts because there is no misunderstanding of what I mean.

However when it comes to humans, I have a great difficulty in saying “I love you”. This is because people often say that they love somebody or that they are “in love” with somebody. However this is dangerous because so much of the time it implies some kind of sexual or romantic attraction. It’s certainly not something I can say to a co-worker for example and only might get away with saying it to a close friend that I know well who does not misunderstand.

However, when I first went vegan because I learned about how animals were being treated, I started to define love differently than others do. I simply can say that I love the animals and it means I care enough about them to change everything in my life that I can to avoid funding industries which continually breed and kill them.

Compare my love for animals to the common type of sexual desire that people are mistakenly calling love. People hit puberty and then all of a sudden they start “falling in love”, dating, or doing sexual acts with people. However this “love” does not last very long. Look how quickly people break-up or divorce the person that they said they loved? Is there no committment to anybody in this world anymore?

As for myself, I’ve never dated anybody or tried to seek a sexual or romantic relationship. I don’t know what it’s about and it’s something that I’ve never experienced nor do I hope to.

However I do treat nearly everyone better than most people treat their friends, relatives, and partners/spouses. I’ve been committed to non-violence and the golden rule for years and to me it seems that the very least a person can do is not murder, rape, or say things intentionally to others that they know will hurt their feelings.

And yet I live in a world where everybody talks about love and yet are constantly fighting about religion, politics, and most are still paying for the murder of billions of animals unless they are vegan and consciously try to avoid buying products that can only be obtained by the death of animals.

I feel that until people learn to love the animals the same way I have, how can they love other humans? Just what DO people mean with all this talk about loving people? I’m still confused about it myself but one thing I know for sure, if there is any kind of love that matters at all, it must be permanent. Not something that exists one day and is gone the next.

This is a new blog I am starting and this is the first post. The name I will refer to myself from here on is Chastity. I like the meaning of this word and feel that it applies to me because of my vow of celibacy. I am not religious at all but similar to a catholic priest or nun, I believe that refraining from sexual activity is the key to a truly morally perfect life. Most will not agree with this and so I am keeping my identity private so that I can share my experiences in my life about trying to live ethically and show the world that there is true love but it does not come to those who conflate sex with love.
People say they fall in love but what they really mean is that they are hormonal and want to do something to someone else’s body. It’s not love but merely a biological function that nearly everybody does and so there is nothing special about it. People are looking for love but it always seems to require that they have sex with somebody in order to feel loved.
Look, I’m no love expert but I do think that the word love is overused and used in so many contexts that nobody really knows what it means. And maybe I really don’t know either but I can tell you what I think true love is or what it should have been.
That is going to be the main topic of this blog as I figure it out myself and talk about the difference between sexual attraction and what I call love.
The following is the definition Google gives for chastity. I hope to talk about all these synonyms and what they all mean to me.
chas·ti·ty’CHast?de/Submitnounthe state or practice of refraining from extramarital, or especially from all, sexual intercourse.”vows of chastity”synonyms: celibacy, chasteness, virginity, abstinence, self-restraint, self-denial, continence; innocence, purity, virtue, morality”a vow of chastity”
It’s hard to say how far I’ll get with this blog but I hope those who do read it will find it refreshing and enlightening.