Am I pedo? POCD

So, I masturbate every night and before I go to bed, I look at images of cartoon/anime porn because I like it. The characters are over 18. I also look at real porn as well with adult women – it’s lesbian porn I look at.

Speaking of the cartoon/anime porn I look at, I’m in one fandom that has a female character who’s apparently 14-years old. I look at porn of the characters from this series, however the characters are always aged up and look older than 14-years old. But in the series, they are 14-years old. They are cartoon characters, it’s not live action.

I don’t masturbate to the images I look at, but I make up images in my head of the characters doing sexual acts, and one of them is of the series that has the 14-year old girl in.

I went searched for a different fandom last night and someone said on the internet that even if the characters are under 18 and you age them up 18 that it’s still weird and that you’re gross and disgusting.

So, I then typed in Google last night “am I a pedo for masturbating to cartoons?” And right at the top it said about that if you see child sexual abuse and/or are looking at that kind of content that you need to get free anonymous help. But I haven’t been looking at child porn! This statement really scared me and now I think I’m a paedophile. I can’t stop thinking about it and am scared if I am one.

I told my mum about it and she said I’m not a pedo, but it’s odd and a bit weird. Great, thanks mum.

I looked on Reddit and there’s thousands of people who like anime porn and yet I can’t help but think I’m a complete freak.

Do I sound like a pedo? I'm just so scared if I am one.

As you said- thousands of people like Anime porn. Can't say I mind it, myself- though I don't go out of my way to look at it.

And, well, Google- I don't trust Google much, and anyway, if you have OCD you ought to know that if you search for it on Google, you have it. That is, if you're afraid of it. If I'm scared of having a disease, or I was scared of being something, I know I must resist the urge to ask Dr Google, or I'll have it, for sure.

I think something a lot of pwOCD leave out, and also those people that insisted on it being disgusting, even if you up-age to 18+, that there's a difference (in my mind) between fantasy, and real-life paraphilia. I might, for example, be very into incest porn, but that in no way means that I think incest is a good thing. Fantasy is fantasy, and reality, is reality. They're not necessarily going to jump from one, to the other.

Of course, I can mount arguments all day long, and if the OCD bug has bit you bad, arguments will fall flat- to me it seems OCD frequently has to be out-stubborned. Any time I even start to think oh hey, am I a pedo? I tell myself I'm not, there's no evidence for it, thoughts that aren't actions are just thoughts, and I do not have any age-related paraphilia as part of my core sexual being- unlike, for instance, my sexual orientation (which is Bi). I think, OCD fears aside, if we can manage to think clearly, we innately know what we are sexually- for years I'd try to deny being bisexual, but, yeah, it's part of what makes me, me. I think that it's something we know when we can separate fears and obsessions from our thinking- and they you go by how you felt before you were afraid, and you think about how you acted, before you began to second-guess everything you do, and you go by that, and stick to it, in the face of OCD.