Could you add more of a warning to that? "Disturbing throughout" doesn't really do it.

How about ---"really horrendously nauseating descriptions of a deeply sick fuck and some of the sick fuck things he did and on the whole you will regret having read it"?

How about--"if you're wondering whom Mel Gibson would choose for a biopic?"

I didn't regret reading it at all. I found it very moving. It does put you in a headspace that takes a transition to switch back to reading something lighter, though.

Actually, I like it for recognizing something that's surely true: a lot of pedophiles *do* on some level provide attention and care to kids, otherwise they wouldn't be successful. I'm sure this says something about the reasons ppl become pedophiles or the sadness of a lot of kids or both. It's worth thinking about honestly; much better than the usual demonizing around the subject.

That was among the most disturbing things I've read in my life. I don't regret having read it, but that's seriously--

Wow. I don't even know what to say.

Totally what 3 said. It was such a complicated portrait. Pedophilia is usually presented as such a black/white issue.

I honestly didn't find it viscerally disturbing the way some of you guys did.

I had some mixed reactions while reading it; I thought (having misread snarkout's link) that it was going to be about a teacher at Bob Jones who lost her faith.

It is certainly creepy when he realizes that the story about the crying kid whom the teacher wanted to hurt was about him.

Clownie, that's "Me and Mr. Jones", by Kurson's wife (as told to him). FWIW, she wasn't a teacher at Bob Jones U., but a graduate.

I don't think that was a story about pedophiles. I think that was a story about the banality of evil, about the world in which evil can flourish in a banal, even kindly form.

Which is to say, it made me ever so slightly nauseated.

(and "moving" was totally the wrong word but I can't think of the right one)

11 - inspirational? motivational? a real Christmas story?

"bowel-clenching"

Yes, I'm a big sucker for banality-of-evil material, and for the unexpectedly sypathetic POV trick. It's part of what fuels my quest to undermine the moral goodness of America's youth.

the moral goodness of America's youth

Assumes facts not in evidence.

slol, you haven't met the youth he's talking about.

That kid has the pallor and lippy smile of the truly depraved.

I went here and searched, and he's real and still there (picture included). There's something about looking people up on the IDOC website that makes it real for me. Also, I've visited that very visiting room that he's talking about.

The popular kids were right to make fun of Mr. Lindwall all along. He is a rapist, torturer, pedofile and murderer. Some people creep you out for a reason.

But they didn't: wasn't he popular with all the kids? I thought that was part of why he meant so much to the author, that he could be self-loathing but still liked.

I think joeo meant the popular kids at Lindwall's own high school. He still wrong, though.

The popular kids were right to make fun of Mr. Lindwall all along

The wisdom of repugnance wins again!

That's the thing. He was loathed when he was just a kid with a health problem. When he was a rapist/murderer he was beloved. Repugnance looks pretty stupid.

joeo's comment creeps me out, to tell the truth, more than the article did. How is making fun of somebody justified by his going on to commit horrifying crimes? I just don't get "were right to make fun of Mr. Lindwall" at all. I mean it would be different if you argued that he ought to have been killed as a child, before he was able to harm people -- I don't think I'd agree with that but at least it makes some sense. But Mr. Lindwall's peers bullying and taunting him did nothing to avert his crimes.

But Mr. Lindwall's peers bullying and taunting him did nothing to avert his crimes.

In fact, it's likely that the bullying and taunting contributed to his propensity to commit them.

Seperated at birth: Lindwall and Earl Conee.

[In Lindwall's address to the court] Mr. Lindwall described his boyhood, the cruelty he endured as his body changed, and the impossibility of living as a neuter, as God's mistake. He expressed relief that he had been stopped when he had.

Yeah. The juxtaposition of those two statements in the article--as well as a few other statements--would lead me to believe that what he endured during his youth definitely contributed to his behavior.

27 was me.

The MURDER/INTENT TO KILL/INJURE conviction doesn't seem to follow from what Kurson described in the article. Can't help but wonder whether this wasn't a more sympathetic account then, say, what we'd see from the trial transcripts.

What I mean in 29 isn't that he's sympathetic per se, only that the sympathy may result from what Kurson decided not to include in the article. Then again, after four years of teaching students how to write such articles, maybe I'm too sensitive to such omissions.

Bullying is wrong but it is silly the level of behaviour it is used to excuse.

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml

To me it makes perfect sense that Lindwall 'wanted to hurt' the student that he identified with, since he had just committed this murder and was probably reaching new peaks of self-loathing.

I came away from the story wondering whether Lindwell really had used less-psycho techniques to entrap victims. The story is clearly supposed to give the impression that he did, that his empathy with children was something he used to lure them. But I got the reverse impression; that his empathy was genuine (the end of the story especially made me think that) and that to go through with a sexual assault he had to go through this elaborate dehumaning ritual with the hitchhiker -- a ritual which probably became a form of sexual release in itself, and would have escalated into intentional murder.

Very good and well-written. I know that community very well, having worked nearby for fourteen years and having spent many a lunch hour there, often in Sunset Foods. I must have seen some of these cool kids, grown a bit.

And very good about evil: Lindwall is and does terrible things, but was an ally, friend and protector against real evil of a different kind. Sorting that out and coming to terms with it is impressive. Friend of mine used to live in the Trailer Park "near Northbrook," I used to drive him home sometimes from work. But I never knew this story.

One of these days one of you philosopher types might consider writing up a Hannah Arendt argument for our times. Unless someone's already done it.

joeo -- Did you mean in 19 that the cool kids "were right to" feel repulsed by Mr. Lindell? That would seem more defensible to me than that they were right to make fun of him.

I think the Clown aMn is trying to tell us about the bodies in his crawlspace.

How much googling did we decide was necessary to classify someone as an internet stalker?

Because if FL continues to post links to pictures of my former professors, he's going to drive me mad with curiosity as to his identity.

36 - The evidence is all there:

- for a time, he adopted a handle used by an inappropriate teacher at LB's school
- he then switched to a handle associated with clowns
- John Gacy was a clown
- the guy in the article said that he could have become John Gacy if he hadn't been caught

Therefore, the article is about Clownæsthesiologist

Damn, you guys figured me out. And I've been so happy since they allowed us internet access here at the Joliet.

I think JoeO has a point, though I've horrified some of my geekier friends by making a similar argument based purely on anecdotal and self-serving evidence. To wit: as a girl, I always tended to stick up for and collect underdogs as friends. At some point, though, a lot of these friends started to skeeve me out, and I never really got terribly close to any of them. In high school, a few of them turned out to be really fucked-up and kinda dangerous kids.

So I kinda developed a rationalization for the ambivalent feeling of empathy for, but wariness of pariahs (which incidentally came into play when explaining to PK last night that the young man we talked to for about half an hour downtown was probably homeless, and yes it's very sad, but no, people don't usually invite those people home to sleep with them, and yes, it's okay and there's a reason why even though he was really nice you felt a little weirded out by his just coming up and talking to us--he was breaking normal social rules). The cause/effect relationship between peer abuse/pariahship isn't at all clear, no matter what that article says: plenty of kids get abused by peers and don't turn into serial killers, after all. I kind of suspect that a great deal of morally objectionable exclusionary behavior is based on a sense that people who seem a little off, socially, may very well be dangerous.

Which isn't an excuse for bullying at all; we shouldn't act on those feelings. But I do think it's a reason not to pass judgment on the underlying impulses for social ostracism.

(A friend of mine and I came up with a descriptor of this theory, which I explained in objectionable evo-psych terms as being very much the way monkeys will socially ostracize other monkeys whose parents were abused (or whatever--I came up with this after watching some long-ago nature show). Her summary was, "the monkey isn't a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, which will flourish if only you give it enough love. It's a monkey.")

You may all abuse me now for being an asshole.

27: Yes, but he also said to the writer that his court statement at the time was utter bullshit. I don't think we can necessarily assume that a pedophile on trial is the most reliable witness in the world. (Nor can we assume everything he says is a lie, of course.)

I won't abuse you, I think you're right. I was tormented, but got stronger — probably always was stronger. Kurson probably was too. I think the form ostracism takes in school is despicable, but that there is no link clear to me between how we're treated and what we become.

there's a reason why even though he was really nice you felt a little weirded out by his just coming up and talking to us--he was breaking normal social rules

Yeah, so how do you expect anyone to get a date?

His seemingly horrible parents must have had something to do with it, too. They either failed to blunt the blow of his ostracization or actively worsened it.

I mean, isn't the line between the ostracized person who goes crazy and the one that doesn't merely defined by whether they did, in fact, ever find people to love them? Parents, friends, whatever. This man was abandoned. I would posit that's the reason for his psychosis.

40: The problem is, these underlying impulses are often pretty inaccurate, particularly in kids.

Kids don't only ostrasize the ones who are fucked up and/or kinda dangerous. They sometimes ostracize the quiet kid, the minority kid, the kid with an unfortunate facial blemish. They may ostrasize kids with accents, kids who go to a different church, kids who don't have the right clothes. Kids who managed to piss off the popular kid. Sure, in some cases if this goes on for long and hard enough to create a fucked up kid, but it really isn't consistent. I've been on pretty much every side of that as a kid, and looking back on it --- none of it made a lot of sense. And I've also seen more that one case where a fucked up dangerous kid was very popular.

Validating the conformist tendancies of childrens interactions for their own sake doesn't make much sense to me. I agree with you of course, that bullying isn't excuseable, but I'm also pretty comfortable asserting that the underlying impulses are largely flawed, without being particularly judgemental about people having them.

Plenty of dangerous people aren't abused at all. I don't see any reason to believe that there's a correlation between being thought to be a worthy target of abuse and actually being a worthy target of abuse.

For instance, Barack Obama, the antichrist, is very popular.

Yeah, so how do you expect anyone to get a date?

You have to soften them up on the internet first, Ben.

43: start here (PDF)

Tom's looks like the more interesting strategy.

I think it's possible *both* to endorse the idea that our adult intuitions about creepiness are better-than-random and should be acted on (e.g. when you feel like there's just something off about the guy on the elevator, get the hell away from him),

and *also* endorse the idea that this is a life-experience skill that takes long years to develop, and so will be very badly practiced by kids, who will fall for all sorts of confounders like accents, blemishes, etc.

The fact is, what B was doing with PK is helping him to develop a better-calibrated creep-detector. We aren't born with them; a few years is not enough to develop one; no number of years makes it fool-proof. but by adulthood, it's probably worth listening to. (see 'the gift of fear' for endless variations on this last thought).

and I say that as one who was picked on for what I insist were all the wrong reasons.

Yes, Ben, the only way to get a date is to go up and abruptly start talking to women you've never met before as they walk by you in the street.

I knew I was right to take vows.

Incidentally that "Me and Mr. Jones" article's good.

As someone whose childhood impulses about who was safe and who was creepy were, as far as I can tell, quite accurate, actually, I don't buy this idea that kids are bad at it. In fact, from what I've read and observed, kids are very *good* at it unless and until they learn to ignore their sensibilities because their parents teach them that their feelings of shyness are embarrassing/inappropriate ("what do you mean you don't want to give your auntie a hug?") and that their feelings of trust are unreliable ("don't talk to strangers!"). When little kids notice differences like skin color or accent or handicap, most adults get really uncomfortable and shush them, which teaches them that there's something shameful or weird about people who are brown or foreign or handicapped. I think those kind of reactions are more responsible for kids who bully outsiders than any kind of inherent immaturity; as KB says, I'm helping PK to develop his creep detector *by validating his feelings* that this young man was (1) a nice guy; (2) a little weird.

Maybe it's true that utopian kids who were never interfered with by a well- (or ill-) meaning prejudiced society would have perfectly accurate creep detectors, but such kids are vanishingly few. The actual kids who tormented wossname certaintly weren't they.

I'm not making some kind of Roussean argument here. I'm saying that I think the underlying instinct (if you will) to be wary of people who seem off is not a bad one. Of course we need to teach kids who to interpret and express it.

the underlying instinct (if you will) to be wary of people who seem off is not a bad one

Jesus said this, right?

Of course we need to teach kids who to interpret and express it.

Didn't you just say that they're better untutored than tutored?

Tell me you don't agree, Ogged.

bitchphd: Our experiences are different then. Or rather, I would say that kids creep detectors hit a lot of false positives. I've seen a lot of pretty sensless ostrasism, I think, but I guess I'm assuming that this isn't primarily coming from conditioning (even at a very young age). You may be right they are getting this from parents, but that just depresses me in a different way.

I agree with you wrt. comments about PK, and the creepy aunt so-and-so aspect. I just think that the majority of ostracism & bullying done by children is poorly targeted at best. So that's the bit I was talking about, really.

I'm also thinking that `creepy' is probably not the best differentiation along those lines. Mainly because I think of that as somethign that is detectable. But clearly there are very nasty people who slip by most detection, and odd but wonderful people that put many people off.

57: No. I said they're often tutored wrongly.

I'm about to ostracize soubz for continually misspelling "ostracism".

Tell me you don't agree, Ogged.

I follow Christ, B.

In addition, I think that people who have good instincts should trust them, and the everyone else should crawl in a hole and leave me the fuck alone already.

From the NIH re: Klinefelter's Syndrome:

"Social development: As babies, XXY males tend to be quiet and undemanding. As they get older, they are usually quieter, less self-confident, less active, and more helpful and obedient than other boys.

As teens, XXY males tend to be quiet and shy. They may struggle in school and sports, meaning they may have more trouble "fitting in" with other kids."

Also listed as side-effects in adult males are "aggression" and "inner anger, requiring anger management".

Combine those tendencies with a sexually repressed/ skewed power-dynamic household, with a lack of appropriate diagnosis and counselling, with hormonal differences that affect personality, with bullying and social ostracism during puberty and an ensuing sociopathology isn't all that surprising.

I think it's a mistake to define Lindwall merely as a paedophile; his admission that he "had no feeling for [his] victims, nothing" in contrast to his acts of empathy and his decision to leave teaching before he "hurt [his] own students" indicates a psychological schism not unlike Ted Bundy's: Women whom Bundy knew personally were safe from him; strangers were prey. That's a psychopathology of a different sort.

Dr B's remarks on ostracising behaviour notwithstanding - yes, certainly, there are people whose body language and presentation and social responses are subtly so off the norm that they radiate a wrongness - but a considerable amount of such behaviour is based on status cliques and parental influence, on who has the "right" clothes or physical appearance, on monied v. impoverished, on ethnicity and religion or on random moods - look at the Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton swing between BFF and rabid name-calling that's such a media favourite.

A male child who suddenly develops female secondary sex characteristics at puberty has little chance in the average locker room these days; imagine what it was like 40-odd years ago, before a kid could go onto the internet, type in "boy breasts" and discover that the condition had a name, that others suffer from it, that there is treatment. Imagine what it would be like to know, deep down, that you were an abomination against nature, and never have anyone who could or would tell you differently.

the underlying instinct (if you will) to be wary of people who seem off is not a bad one

See, this is what makes B one of the cool kids.

59: Yeah, soubz, I agree that kids bully in fucked-up ways. But I'd tend to articulate that more as the difference between a *feeling* and how one *expresses* it than anything else. I don't think you get to the right place, for example, by telling a bully he shouldn't feel whatever it is he's feeling. Hell, mostly they probably do it out of insecurity anyway. I think what you do is tell them that it's not appropriate to *act* that way, while validating that no, you don't have to *like* that kid, but why is it that you don't? And is that something we can talk about? Etc.

You know, squishy-hearted liberal stuff.

61: sorry, one of those words for me

64: Actually, I never was a cool kid. I just wasn't a pariah. Unlike Ogged, that hypocrite, I truly love and understand everyone for their true inner self; I stand up for the underdogs, even when the underdogs are the cool kids. It all comes full circle, you see.

Om.

B loves you for your liver.

Kids' ability to identify and avoid creepy adults is largely distinct from their impulse to ostracize their peers, I should think.

We're talking about a kid who got mocked for having breasts. I'm pretty sure that adolescent impulses to mock the physically deformed are not the same feelings that, with maturity, evolve into "common sense."

And so, in other words, I don't think these kids were "accurate" -- because their mockery wasn't assessing his "possibility of becoming a murderer" factor; it was assessing his "his disease makes him look weird" factor. Which is an assessment neither laudable nor tutorworthy.

I hate liver.

Brains, otoh....

I was gay in high school and beaten accordingly. (Actually, I was gay and Jewish, so some of those beatings were probably choice.)

69: No, but adolescent impetuses to mock the physically different *do* stem from adolescent anxiety about physical changes and one's own normalcy. That's essentially a sympathetic problem, I think, and there are better ways to deal with it than to condemn the kids.

And I don't know that they weren't mocking his possibility of becoming a murderer. It seems reasonable to assume that his sociopathy wasn't simply the result of adolescent bullying, come on. It's entirely possible that by the time he was a teenager, he already had some weird shit going on that was only exacerbated and/or channelled by the particular nature of his pariahhood.

IANAParent, but I really don't buy that kids' instincts are innately accurate — seems like mysticism to me. Don't they just come up with heuristics about who to exclude and who to include? I know I did. And what I came up with as a dumb little kid was not only wildly off-base -- e.g. how the person looked or dressed or spoke -- but also probably would've been pretty easy for older, smarter predators to recognize and take advantage of.

SEK, I've been meaning to say that I'm glad you're here, but it's not because you're a diversity triple threat.

I was gay in high school

I'm glad you got better, Scott.

65: I may have been misreading your use of ostra****. I'm not sure that kids are that good at identifying and ostracizing the really fucked up kids, either. Sometimes they are leading the pack of bullies, for example.

Overall, I think we agree; particularly about the pointlessness of addressing the feeling rather than what they are doing with them.

No, but adolescent impetuses to mock the physically different *do* stem from adolescent anxiety about physical changes and one's own normalcy. That's essentially a sympathetic problem, I think,

Not to me, really. I'd put that more in the 'being a shithead' column. (Oh, not all that unusual or unlikely, but I'd still say that the proper response to an adolescent mocking the physically different is to explain that if they ever behave like that again they will never again have fun. Ever. Sympathy seems like the wrong response.)

B, why do you hate gays and Jews so much? Are you having anxiety issues about them controlling the West Coast?

B loves you for your liver.

As previously noted, I have a high-performance liver.

If kids are good at ostracizing the ones worthy of ostracism, the kids worthy of ostracism must be pretty self-loathing.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works, I understand.

But as a result of their knowing that they're worthy of ostracism naively, or because they've internalized the ostracism of their peers?

I have a high-performance liver

I could have used that liver if you weren't, slol.

But would you drink enough to be worth it?

What's wrong with the one you've got?

I agree with tom in 73 and LB in 77.

Maybe I'm missing your point, B, but I mentor a gay kid who, until recently, took quite a bit of shit from his peers at school. Should I be checking beneath his floorboards?

Okay, I'm willing to accept that I'm completely wrong about this. But only on the grounds that the collective rejection of my theory obviously means you guys have a point.

But would you drink enough to be worth it?

Could have used it, back in the day. Now, you can keep it. Not that there's anything wrong with mine, but I don't think it's supercharged.

I only disagree with you because of your veiny breasts, B.

So what you're saying, Ogged, is that you discriminate against white people.

And I feel that there is valid reason for your opinion.

Right and right.

I knew you agreed with me.

The insight is that social instincts need to be listened to, and developed. That because individuals are bullied doesn't obligate us to turn around and embrace them, as if ostracizing was always and everywhere pointless and without basis. I think we'll grant that, and that simple suppression is not necessarily the best solution.

But in this story Kurson is experiencing the kind of bullying many of us have: there's nothing wrong with him, as he knows looking back, he was just an outsider. And Lindwall, whose own having been bullied was cruel but may have been a response in part to his strangeness, helped him, as much as a teacher could and, frankly, more effectively than any teacher ever helped me.

That's where the poignancy comes from, for me. He's obviously a monster, but he's also a sensitive human being.

Wow, I managed to avoid the temptation to read the Esquire article Becks linked to, but gave in and read this one, and now I am really sad.

Curse you, Labs, you big gay depressing person!

86: but I mentor a gay kid who, until recently, took quite a bit of shit from his peers at school. Should I be checking beneath his floorboards?

No, but you might make sure he isn't visiting this site.

74: Shucks, Labs, thanks.

75: It was tough. Of course, the reason I was gay is that I spent too much "quality" time with other people's girlfriends, a nuance lost on my thuggish compatriots.

(Of course, I was also beaten for having what's referred to in the South as a "smart mouth." But the being-gay-for-sleeping-with-a-lunkhead's-girlfriend story is more flattering.)

Ben, talking unexpectedly to non-skeevy female strangers on the street is a perfectly OK way to get a date, but if one of them weirds you out, stay away. That's the message here. (I'm not saying that BPhd would necessarily weird you out.)

As for the question of whether kids' instincts are trustworthy, I'd say sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't, and that some kids instincts are more trustworthy than others. How's that for a bold stand?

There's no such thing as a pristine, unformed kid, though. Whatever a kid's "instincts" are, in large part they've been larned.

...in large part they've been larned.

Seems I'm not the only Southerner here.

Keep in mind that John thinks the South starts in Iowa.

Bet he thinks Texas is part of the South too.

Seems I'm not the only Southerner here.

There are more of here than you might suspect.

of us here

What I'm getting here is the message "bullies should be excused because they're just acting on their instincts". Bullshit. There's a qualitative difference between avoiding Person X because he/she makes one uneasy and actively tormenting Person X for something, real or imagined, that one just doesn't like. This thread has had some blaming-the-victim in it: Excusing "I beat up X because he's weird" is no different from excusing "I raped X because she was wearing a short skirt".

Yes, lots of kids get bullied or out-grouped and don't turn into sociopathic predators or mass murderers - but that's like saying "A lot of people grow up poor and don't become criminals, so we don't have to bother with trying to ameliorate living conditions for those below the poverty line". There will always be kids for whom bullying will be the proverbial straw, who will be pushed to self-destruction or violence or into psychosis. There will always be bullies who are sociopaths themselves, who get off on hurting others, and they will unerringly seek out the weakest of the herd - that's their manifestation of social instinct: Not some internal alarm that Person X is dangerous, but a sadistic delight that Person X is prey.

If you take a puppy and care for it in a reasonable manner, you are likely to end up with a friendly, social animal. If you starve it and beat it and deny it affection, you are likely to end up with an animal who is hostile and dangerous.

Wait, you're not really gay? Next you'll tell us you're "deaf" because you refuse to heed the pleas of the men you're cuckolding.

103 is a bad misreading of what I'm saying. I've repeatedly distinguished between the action of bullying, which is and should be condemned, and the question of why we find some people nervous-making. Hell, the nervous-making people might *be* the bullies.

The puppy analogy works insofar as, sure, if I train a dog to be hostile and dangerous, and you see it and think the dog's acting less than friendly, somehow, but it's not actually baring its teeth or anything, and so you ignore your sense that it's not being friendly and go over and say "aww, puppy needs love!" and it bites you, yes, I'm to blame for training it; but the idea that if you and the other people at the park just treated it the same as any other dog it would somehow not be dangerous is silly.

104: and "cancerous" owing only to the date of his birth.

106: Did SEK have cancer, too? Or did you read 104 as an ogged-directed jab?

SEK had cancer.

Or so he claims! Maybe he just had "high school cancer" (a goiter).

He had cancer, too, Labs. Try to at least pretend to care about your imaginary friends.

God damn you, w-lfs-n.

Fuck! This blog is radioactive. SEK, I'm so sorry. I'd offer you a fellatio in apology but apparently you don't swing that way.

It's not just this blog, Labs. I had cancer before I'd even heard of Unfogged, ipso facto all blogs cause cancer.

Wow. You beat cancer and gayness. Maybe you're the Highlander.

105: It's not all about you, B; there were other comments here that triggered my response, notably the ever-empathetic JoeO. But statements like this:

"That's essentially a sympathetic problem, I think, and there are better ways to deal with it than to condemn the kids [bullies].

And I don't know that they weren't mocking his possibility of becoming a murderer. It seems reasonable to assume that his sociopathy wasn't simply the result of adolescent bullying, come on. It's entirely possible that by the time he was a teenager, he already had some weird shit going on that was only exacerbated and/or channelled by the particular nature of his pariahhood."

sound an awful lot like an apologia for the bulliers. Given the particular nature of his "difference" from other adolescent boys, I think you underestimate the effect of that particular sort of abuse. I would bet it had more significance than mere parental/medical negligence. But you iterated one of my points: No matter what the existing pathology might have been, no matter how "weird" the vibes someone gives out, further anti-social behaviour on the part of his classmates is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.

You're not getting the puppy analogy at all - my point was not that one might re-socialise a rabid dog by giving it hugs and kisses, but rather that how any animal - including man - is treated in its formative years has significant bearing on its adult behaviour. Even a dog that has been merely neglected, rather than actively abused, can be made savage by the subsequent behaviour of another. Factoring in poor parenting, familial issues, whatever, there is still the issue of the importance of peer-group interaction in childhood and adolescence. When that interaction is abusive, it exacerbates any problems that may already exist.

Even when the Kid-in-Question has a good sense of self-esteem, a supportive family and a circle of friends, being attacked by other adolescents is painful. It doesn't matter that the K-i-Q knows the attackers are dullards or small-minded or knee-jerk bigots; when they follow someone, shouting epithets, it has an effect.

Ask my kid someday how it felt when the muy macho troglodytes yelled "Hey, faggot" in the halls.

There were days they were fortunate that we never taught him to shoot.

113: Does that mean ogged didn't defeat the gay? I knew it was overcompensation.

For the record: I've spent enough Friday nights and wee Saturday morns in West Hollywood to earn honorary membership in The Big Gay. I've even been dosed! And you know what they say: "Until you've been dosed in West Hollywood, you're not really honorarily The Gay."

SEK is making me think of this song.

Interesting story (especially worryingly interesting as I have a friend whose toddler son has just been diagnosed with Klinefelter's!). He was rather slow in realising the 'sensitive' kid was him though, surely? Or was that just poetic license?

You know, I already had a slight feeling of the holiday blues this year, for some reason. After reading *both* of these pieces (the teacher one and the Bob Jones one), I am feeling a full-blown kind of melancholy. Fuck.