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> I mean you have a choice of three holes. . .

Who needs holes?  Frot is hot, and so is mutual
masturbation.  ;->

Here's a book I just finished reading the other day:
_Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain
Sight_ by "M.E. Thomas"

In her usage, "sociopath" is pretty much interchangeable
with "psychopath": various writers make various distinctions
between those labels (and between them and "Antisocial
Personality Disorder") but the categories overlap heavily.

The author also runs a Web site:
http://www.sociopathworld.com/
for self-diagnosed sociopaths (and psychopaths) to
tell their stories.

She's a trained lawyer who has worked for prestigious law
firms in the past and who is now a **professor** of law.

Her book makes the point that kids with sociopathic (or
psychopathic) tendencies -- which are probably inborn -- can
indeed become unpleasant and dangerous adults if they
receive the wrong kind of parenting, but that with the right
kind of parenting they can eventually learn to lead productive
lives -- though they'll never learn to see the world, or care
about other people, the way "neurotypicals" do (just as
folks on the autistic spectrum can never learn to navigate
the social world as effortlessly as neurotypicals do, but can
nevertheless learn to "pass" successfully by learning
explicit algorithms for coping with other people).

And yes, psychopaths are indeed well-equipped to rise in the
ranks of modern hierarchies -- governments, corporations, and
churches.  And they make good lawyers -- they see the law as
a game, they have nerves of steel, and they play to win.

From _Confessions_, Chapter 4 "Little Sociopath in
a Big World", pp. 101-102
--------------------
Of course I was never bullied or picked on.  If anything, my
peers were afraid of me.  And I usually had enough sense to
be selective about whom I targeted -- no one too likable.
Kids love vigilantism, so I frequently went after bullies.
I remember this one set of white trash twins.  One of the kids
had something wrong with his legs, so he would show up to school
with braces or special shoes.  He far exceeded children's
tolerance for diversity.  Perhaps because they were identical
and to distance himself from the less fortunate twins, the
other one became a big bully.  He was little but scrappy, and
since he couldn't really pick on the true alphas, he would
pick on everyone else, hoping merely to establish his dominance
as a beta.  Everyone hated him, but no one wanted to provoke
his wrath.  I didn't care either way about him.  I think
maybe I scared him.  But one time he was basically forced to
confront me during an undersupervised game of capture the flag.
I had cheated somehow and his team goaded him into calling
me on it.  Words turned into shoves and pretty soon I had
him pinned to the ground and I beat the crap out of him.  Not
too long, lest we draw attention, just enough that he didn't
get up for several minutes.  The other kids loved me for that
for at least several months.  I was happy to do it.  To me,
stopping a bully was like putting out a fire.  It may not have
reached my house yet, but fires are unpredictable and they
spook the surrounding wildlife into behaving unpredictably.
The probability that it will somehow affect me is high enough
that any preventative measures on my part are often warranted.
And beating on a bully makes you a hero in people's eyes.
I guess that's why Batman does it.
====

p. 117
--------------------
By the time I was ten, I had already developed full plump breasts,
and my hips had the contours of a Greek vase.  Men openly leered,
their aggression palpable.  The adult women in the world treated
me like I was a slut, even though I had no idea why.  And so my
new body was primarily a liability at first.  If I wasn't
careful, it functioned like a suicide bomb, with collateral
damage in the form of judgment from women and harassment
from men. . .

I did, however, use my gender to great effect with many of my
disgusting, perverted teachers.  One of them I hated in particular.
My high school English teacher had given me a failing grade
on one of my assignments because my mother had turned it in
form me on a day I'd been away at a softball tournament or drum
competition.  He ridiculed me in front of the class for having
"my mommy bring it," trying to make an example of me.
This teacher was old and vindictively petty.  I never liked him.
I had seen him ruthlessly attack other students in my class,
so I never gave him any reason to target me.  Still, there
was something about my silent defiance that must have gotten under
his skin, because he finally made up something plausible to
attack me on.

"Thomas!  You may have noticed that you received an F.  I didn't
even look at your paper, so next time you can save your mommy
some time and either come in and turn in your work yourself or
don't bother turning it in at all."  I was instantly angry, but
quickly chilled.

"Screw you, fat man," I calmly retorted, and minutes later was
waiting in the principal's office.

From that time on we'd engaged in a low-grade power struggle.
I wanted to take him down, and since he had such a bad reputation,
the easiest way was just to create a paper trail of his
inappropriate behavior.  I started taking detailed notes of things
he said and did in class that were even remotely questionable.
I made friends with girls in my class, planting in their heads
the total inappropriateness of even some of his more innocuous
behavior.  He wasn't that bad a guy, really.  He was just old and
a bit of a natural chauvinist in the way that men born before
1950 typically are.  When we would take quizzes, he would project
them up on the board and have everyone move forward, ostensibly
so people in the back could see better.  He always had the
first row move their seats all the way up to touch his desk,
and in that row just happened to be a girl who frequently wore
the revealing spandex of a dancer.  I started a rumor that he had
us move like this to get a better view of her ample cleavage.
It was a very plausible story, particularly with the way his
face frequently contorted into what looked like a leer.  It may
have actually been true.  In any case, it made good gossip and
was accepted as truth shortly after it got started.

That rumor itself was not enough.  Nor was it enough when I
finally goaded him into making a lewd and demeaning commment
about my breasts.  The class was talking about a recent music
department production.

"How did you like my solo?" I sneered after listening to him go
on about everyone else in the class.

"Thomas!  You have no class.  Up there on stage, flopping all
around, letting it all hang out.  Not like these other girls,"
he said, gesturing to the dancer in front of him.  I think he
was trying to turn the class against me, but unfortunately for him
I had gotten there first.  He didn't hurt my feelings; he had
finally, unequivocally, overstepped the student-teacher boundary
in front of witnesses.

After class I asked the dancer if she felt uncomfortable about his
thinly veiled harassment.  I was the picture of worried concern.
She was touched by my sincerity.  Yes, she had heard the rumor I
started about her and this teacher (unaware that I was the one who
started it).  Yes, it did bother her.  I was the sympathetic ear.
She confessed all her discomfort and I not only listened, I validated
and fed the flame of her distress.

I used his behavior that day to paint him as out of control.  I
needed her to be afraid of him.  I needed her to be one of the
other voices raised in condemnation against him.  I told her that
we had to stop him before it got any worse.  I told her that I was
thinking of filing an official complaint against him for sexual
harassment and asked if she would be willing to verify my story
if necessary.  I made it seem as if her participation would probably
not be necessary, based on numerous contingencies, so she agreed.
She would soon find out that she would be my star witness.

When I got home I told my mother about what had happened in class --
strictly the facts, nothing about our power struggle or my
preparations to get him fired.  I told her about how "violated" I felt
and about how I was not the only girl toward whom he had behaved
this way.  I knew my mother felt bad about all of the times growing
up that she had failed me, so she'd be inclined to help me here.
I told her I had found out that you make sexual harassment claims
against teachers directly with school district.  Would she like to
come with me to the district office the next morning to start the
paperwork?  My father was completely opposed to the idea, which I
think made it all the more appealing to my mother.

I gave my statement and enlisted a small cadre of loyalists to paint
him in as bad a light as they could.  He was supervised for several
weeks.  There was always someone else with him whenever he was
on campus, I noticed with delight.  Officially he received a
"strike," an official censure; unofficially I believe he was forced
into early retirement and had to give up his position as head of
the English department, which to me was success.  I was never one to
be greedy or get caught up in the "principle of the thing."  I
wasn't trying to get him fired to protect future generations of
vulnerable young girls.  I was trying to get him fired to show him
that he was vulnerable, and to me, a helpless little girl.

Still, it was a good lesson in the limits of the formal justice system,
one that I would face again shortly in law school.  This was not
the only time I tangled with a teacher, but no matter what I did
and to whom I reported them, none were ever fired or even removed
from their positions.  And while I gained the satisfaction of causing
them pain, I garnered a reputation for making trouble.  Maybe I
lied, cheated, and bullied in order to achieve their destruction,
but it was nonetheless true that they were bad teachers who should
not have been allowed around kids.  One teacher was an idiot who
favored the popular kids over the unpopular ones, ignoring their
talent in order to bask in the social acceptance that he never received
when he was a student in high school himself.  Another was sexually
obsessed with his students and paid special lascivious attention to
the ones with large breasts (including me) and low self-esteem
(not including me).  I wasn't doing a public service in trying to ruin
them.  I just couldn't stand that such unfit people could have
authority over me.  And that was the double injustice of being a
young sociopath and a girl, too.
====

> Well, the "are some gays masculine?" is somewhat irrelevant.
> Fighting over what proportion of the 2% gays "pass" for
> masculine is pointless since it's most men who should be
> attracted to other men.

Whatever Lt. Col. Fehrenbach called himself during
his 20 years in the Air Force, he certainly wasn't
publicly "gay" (whether he thought of himself as such
I have no way of knowing.  I suspect he did, if only because
that's the most convenient contemporary label for men who seek out
sex with men.).  During those years, his sexual
partnering was probably similar to that of the
(heterosexually) married men who are on
the down-low.  In the era of DADT, service members who
wanted (or needed) to have sexual contact with members
of their own sex were likewise on the "down-low",
frequently with other down-low service members.

But as discreet as Fehrenbach was during those two decades,
after he was questioned by the police after a hookup
that went very wrong
( http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/air_force_may_boot_pilot_who_revealed_he_is_gay_to.php )
he certainly **became** "gay" not only to the Air Force, but to the media,
and he took on a **political** role as a gay activist
(being invited to a Gay Pride reception at the White House,
and so on).

I guess I bristle at bit at the notion that the word "gay"
(which labels a political identity as much as
a sexual or social one) must be restricted to the
guys who like to do drag and lipsync to Lady Gaga,
but must **exclude** the "real men" who just happen
to like dick (who are not "g0y" or "cockrub warriors"
or "androphiles" either, but are simply indistinguishable
from the 90% of men in general who **would** like dick
if their wives or their churches or their upbringing
didn't rule it out for them.  And that anybody who self-identifies
(or is labelled by the world as) "gay" is only, at best,
"passing" for masculine rather than actually being masculine.
That forced exclusion has the air of gerrymandering
categories simply to create a zone of safety for
a guy who likes dick but isn't comfortable
with **faggots** (like -- maybe -- "Alan" in
_The Boys in the Band_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_in_the_Band
which, if you haven't seen it, is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVD39bDowQo
and also contains a full spectrum of gay types.
And don't forget that **some** of that classic
gay "camping" is a "fuck you" reaction to straight
society's rejection and disgust -- a good deal
of it unfortunately internalized as well
(as also illustrated in the movie).

That's not to say I believe it's a **requirement** of being
gay to like glitter or dressing up like RuPaul, or listening
to Lady Gaga (or Barbra Streisand or Judy Garland),
or that butt sex is a requirement, either.  I've never
been a "proper faggot" (as it was put to me many
years ago) in any of those departments.

And it's not to deny, either, that **some** human beings
with an X and a Y chromosome seem both to come naturally
by the mannerisms (or some exaggerated caricature thereof)
typical of the humans with two X chromosomes, and to be sexually
attracted to other XYs.  Another movie you should
see if you haven't:  _The Naked Civil Servant_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Civil_Servant_%28film%29
also on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ymbgf0MDE8

The author of "Reclaiming Natural Manhood" seems to want
to draw a similar line around the word "homosexual"
as you draw around the word "gay" -- he insists
on identifying "homosexuals" with India's "hijras" -- men who dress
up as and take on the mannerisms of women, who
solicit men as female prostitutes would, and who serve
their customers sexually as passive recipients of anal penetration.
And he **defines** the (discreet) sexual contacts (to
orgasm, presumably) between two masculine men such as
took place (he claims) before India was "heterosexualized"
by western influences, as **not homosexual**.

Re the question of whether all gay men are "effeminate"
(FSVO* "effeminate")

*FSVO = "For Some Value Of"  ;->

Seemingly on the inarguably masculine (apart from sexual
orientation) end of the spectrum there's this guy (an Air Force pilot
who was discharged after he was accidentally outed when the Don't
Ask Don't Tell policy was still in effect but probably on its way out,
who then challenged his discharge in court, and finally
won in the sense that he was allowed to serve until he was
eligible for retirement with full benefits):

http://nclrights.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/lt-victor-fehrenbach.jpg
http://www.victorfehrenbach.com/page/bio.php


And at the other extreme, there's the recent and rather startling case of
Kristin (formerly Chris) Beck, who had a 20 year career as a Navy SEAL
and was (at least on the surface, as described by ABC News) a
"man's man", but who after retiring from the Navy has come out
publicly as a transgender woman.

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/meet-transgender-navy-seal/story?id=19315578#.UbdtndiqLzg
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/transgender-navy-seal-kristin-beck_n_3383015.html
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/06/exclusive-transgender-former-seal-tells-her-story/?hpt=ac_t2
http://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Princess-Journey-Coming-Transgender/dp/1935866427/

The news stories say that her book describes Ms. Beck as going to gay
bars in Florida dressed as a woman, which seems to imply that she's
seeking female partners as a (transgendered) **lesbian**, but
her sexual orientation (as opposed to her gender identity)
isn't explicitly disclosed anywhere I've seen.


It's complicated, isn't it?

> . . ."slow to warm up" kids can [eventually]
> master something as long as they're not expected to do it
> at the lock-step pace required of average kids. . .

This reminds me of yet another story.  ;->

I got a bicycle at the age of 3, before I was anywhere
big enough to be able to ride it.  But eventually, with
the help of the usual set of training wheels, I was able
to propel myself up and down the street and around the
block on that bicycle (I skipped the tricycle stage of
infant transportation ;-> ).

So far so good, but what wasn't so good is that I was the
absolutely **last** kid in my age group to shed the training
wheels.  I might have blundered right into trying to ride a bike
with training wheels to junior high school, with no doubt
unfortunate consequences, if something hadn't intervened.

My father had tried a few times to teach me how to ride the bicycle
properly, but predictably (it was the standard pattern between
us for anything by then -- from his earliest failed attempts to interest
me in throwing and catching a ball right on down the line)
I dug in my heels and resisted (like the kid in
that "family swimming pool time" YouTube video),
and he inevitably lost his temper, and no doubt finally
threw up his hands, thought "to hell with it", and turned
his back on the problem.  But one summer afternoon (I remember
it as being summer, anyway), Harry G. (the father of the
Gerry G. who lived across the street from us and who
shepherded me to school in early years), took pity on me
(or something) and offered to teach me to ride without the
training wheels.  And I accepted his offer.  Either the
time was just right, or I realized that this might be my
last chance, but in any case he took the trouble, and within an hour
I was riding without training wheels.  I don't know what
his "knack" was, but I suspect that, not having any ego on
the line (**he** wasn't the guy with the pussy son -- well,
he was, but in the "normal" way ;-> ) he just had the
patience not to scare me off the way my own father always
did.  So I was elated that I could finally ride a bicycle,
and I'm sure Harry G. was tickled that he'd done a good
deed.  So I came home later that night, and my father was
in the kitchen, and I (not realizing I was walking into
a mine field) told my parents that Harry G. had taught
me how to ride my bike without the training wheels!
And my father was **furious**!  "Right.  You could do
it for Harry G. but you wouldn't do it for me.  How do
you think that makes me look, that I couldn't teach my
own damn son how to ride a bike without the damned
training wheels?"  Oops.  So I slunk away.  But at least
I learned how to ride the bike.

My Boy Scout experience must also have been rather a
disappointment to my father.  The town we lived near had
gotten a charter for a brand-new troop, and I think
I found out about it from somebody at school (this would
have been 7th grade) -- in fact, I think it was the
same guy who asked me one day, while we were sitting
in his bedroom, if my dick ever got stiff if
I happened to be thinking about certain things.
So I joined Troop 603, and got the uniform, and the manual,
and started going to the meetings.  It lasted not quite
a year, I think.  The new troop was short on members, and
I actually somehow got **appointed** as patrol leader
of the Wolf Patrol (or Rat Patrol, or whatever the hell it was;
I can't remember), even though I was only a Tenderfoot
Scout, but I was soon replaced by a properly-elected
leader.  And I never advanced in rank beyond Tenderfoot,
which is probably something of an accomplishment in itself.  ;->
I stuck around long enough to go on a camping trip (accompanied
by my father) and slept in a sleeping bag in a tent
in the freezing cold of winter.  And I spent a few weeks
at a nearby Scout camp in the summer.  And then I quit.
I don't remember the actual quitting as being particularly
traumatic, or being resisted by anybody.  Maybe I used
the pressures of school as a good excuse to stop spending
the time.  But there are a couple of vivid memories.
I remember that, in order to go swimming at the camp,
you had to wear a tag that indicated your swimming ability.
The tags were white and circular, with a wavy black line
splitting the circle in two, and if the tag was completely
white that meant you couldn't swim **at all**, and if
the bottom was colored-in red that meant you were a
beginner-level swimmer, and if the bottom was colored-in
red and the top colored-in blue that meant you were a
really good swimmer.  I seem to recall there was a test you
had to take to get the colors.  Well, in spite of the
swimming lessons I'd taken at the local public pool, I
was one of only two kids whose swimming badges were all white.
(And the other kid was despised even more than I was.
I still remember his name, but I won't write it here.)
Maybe because of this, or maybe because of other petty
humiliations, I remember one evening at that camp going
to my Scoutmaster, Mr. Stuart, in tears.  "What's the matter?"
he asked.  "I can't do anything."  "What do you mean?"
"I'm just no good at anything."  "Well," he replied,
making a grab for mitigating possibilities, "I've heard
you're a whiz at math!"  "No, not really."  I remember
wanting **something** very badly from Mr. Stuart.  It wasn't
sexual (though I can believe it might have **become**
sexual if he'd been inclined that way; though, on second
thought, I would have been far too naive and terrified
to go there), but I wanted a real daddy at that moment,
and he was willing to treat me kindly, but he was at a
loss to know what to say beyond that "whiz at math" guess,
and I really didn't know what I expected him to say or do.
Maybe I needed to be held, or something.  But it was perfectly
true -- I was "no good at anything" by the prevailing
standards of the guys in the camp, and I really had no business
being there.  So I quit, and that was that.  But before I
did, during that summer at camp, I did catch an eyeful of
one of the other scoutmasters -- a well-built man's man
much admired by my father, who lived a few streets away
from us and was the father of a boy's boy and a girl's girl --
taking a shower in the nude.  I think that was the second
adult male penis I ever saw, apart from my father's.

> > "Dad, gay son, swimmingpool an[d] gay brother with cam"
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOotrvIYB78
>
> The father is a terrible, sadistic bully. . .
> Wow, I'm so glad this video exists.

You know, it crossed my mind later to wonder how
that video came to be on YouTube.  It's on a channel of
heterogeneous content called "PiP media", and with
122,056 views it's the second-most-frequently viewed clip
on the channel, far ahead of nearly all of the other
clips.

I suspect it wasn't actually posted by the brother
who cammed the incident.  Maybe he shared it with
friend(s) or relative(s), who may in turn have shared it
with others, so that finally it escaped control
altogether and ended up as one of YouTube's miscellaneous
clips.

The title's characterization of the two boys as
"gay son" and "gay brother" may also have been chosen by
the poster simply as a kind of disparagement of their
behavior (the one boy's cowardice at the pool, and the
other boy's presumed lack of respect for privacy in
filming an unflattering family scene without anybody
else's knowledge or permission) rather than based on
any accurate information about their sexual orientation.
As in, they're both acting "so gay".

But I too regard at as a fascinating documentary fragment,
whatever its provenance.

I have some very early memories of being a "sensitive" (easily
upset, cowardly, "scaredy-cat") kid.  Some kids,
for example, **love** being picked up, tossed
in the air, or being turned upside-down.
I **hated** that sort of thing, and I have a very early
memory of being terrorized by somebody (an uncle, maybe;
my father probably realized early on that was a no-go)
who tried to do that to me, and only succeeded in making
me afraid of him.  One of the things I remember
we had to do in first-grade gym class (along with
square dancing, which didn't bother me so much ;-> )
was "tumbling".  The mats would come out, and we were
supposed to do things like forward rolls, backward rolls,
and handstands.  I could **barely** manage a forward
roll, but I never learned to do a backward roll properly,
and as far as a handstand is concerned -- forget it.
I could not deal with the disorientation of being
upside down -- it terrified me.  I also have very clear
memories of the gym teacher (who was the same one in first grade
as I later had in sixth grade) -- the only female gym teacher I ever had.
She was married (Mrs. W.), but she was short, and stocky
(her posterior stuck way out in her tight shorts), and very mannish.
I couldn't help but wonder much later if she was a lesbian.  In sixth
grade, I was summoned one afternoon to Mrs. W.'s
office for criticism on my posture (I already walked
with a characteristic round-shouldered slump, with
head down, which was probably as much a reflection
of my social status by then as anything inherently to
do with the articulation of my body).  on the way back to class
after receiving Mrs. W.'s critique, I passed knots
of teachers gathered open-mouthed around radios.
It seems that President Kennedy had been shot.

I also, as a 3-year-old, was afraid of the upright
vacuum cleaner my mother used in the house.
I reacted to the noise it made the way cats do to
such things.  Later on, I sometimes accompanied my father to
the barber shop in the local suburban shopping center
that served our neighborhood.  That barber was
outfitted in a way I don't think I've ever seen
since.  After your haircut, and after having the
hair shaken out of the "dropcloth", instead of then having
the remaining hair whisk-brushed off your shoulders and neck,
the shop had a row of small cannister-type electric
vacuums, with the cannisters attached underneath the shelf
running behind the chairs, and a hose attachment
which the barber would use to suck up loose hair
off the client at the end.  These made a lot of
noise, as vacuum cleaners always do, and I was
more afraid of having one of them used on me than
I was of anything else about the process of getting
a haircut.  When I was first taken to that shop to
get a haircut, my father had to **promise** me that
the barber would be instructed not to use that
thing on me.  On other occasions, I'd accompany my
father to the local Sears automotive service center,
where there would often be lots of loud bangs
and buzzes from pneumatic wrenches or tires being
inflated on rims.  I was always alarmed (to the
point of real fear) by that, too, and I tried to keep
my ears plugged the whole time I was anywhere near
the garage.  There were other things -- silly things,
some of them.  I didn't know how to blow my nose
as a really little kid, and I hated having it
wiped or having one of my parents
hold a kleenex across my face while shouting at me to
**blow**!  It felt like I was being suffocated.  On
such occasions, my father would always lose his temper,
and I remember him once threatening to use the
"snuffer" on me (a rubber aspirator that you use
to suck mucus out of babies' noses).  My early visits
to the dentist were nightmarish, despite the dentist
ostensibly specializing in childrens' dentistry (I
remember him as a short-tempered, sadistic SOB, but
then again I may well have been his worst patient).
After losing control of the drill and nearly severing the
ligament under my tongue during one visit because of my trying
to pull away, the dentist prescribed tranquilizers that I had to
take before coming to the office.  But these came in
capsule form, and I always ended up biting them through
and then spitting the bitter contents into the kitchen sink.
So instead of being tranquilized in preparation for my visit
to the dentist, those Saturday mornings would begin with my father
raging at me, and threatening me with his belt, to try to get me
to swallow the capsule properly.  The characteristic smell
of the lobby of the downtown medical building where that
dentist had his office -- a blend of interior construction,
floor cleaner, and the disinfectants wafting from the
doctors' offices -- is an odor I would undoubtedly recognize,
likely even with a familiar pang of fear,
to this day.  The curious thing is, I eventually
outgrew all of that stuff.  I have no problem going to the
dentist today, or the barbershop, or the Sears automotive
center.  I can drive a car, even through crowded
metropolitan traffic, and I have no problem with vacuum
cleaners.  ;->  But I've certainly been told, even as an
adult, that I come across as a "wary" person.  (And one
personal "tic" that's lingered is that I **hate** to
have to use the telephone.  And I know that my being "on
edge" with strangers very often comes across as hostility.)

I had an interesting experience around swimming, which
in a way goes to show that "slow to warm up" kids can
master something as long as they're not expected to do it
at the lock-step pace required of average kids (which means
that, yes, they're "more expensive" to deal with in
that they take more time and attention -- something that
your average Republican might well think they don't deserve. ;-> ).
When I was 10-ish, give or take, my father got me a
summer membership at the local public swimming pool.
And that pool also offered swimming lessons, so I ended
up being signed up for those.  And I was my usual scaredy-cat
self in the water (just like that poor kid in the video)
and basically ended up flunking the course.  But somehow
(I can't remember how -- maybe it was the instructor's
idea), I had the opportunity to take the class a second time.
(Or maybe, come to think, the deal was that if I couldn't
pass the course, I wouldn't be allowed to use the pool.)
And the second time around, I did OK.  I never learned
how to do the Australian Crawl (a competition stroke,
where you have to learn to keep your head underwater
and gulp air by turning it sideways in coordination
with your arm movements), but I could tread water and do
anything else as long as I could keep my head above
the water.  But here's an interesting wrinkle.  The
second course ended with each member of the class having
to climb up the pool's high-dive, at the deep end,
and jump in.  Not **dive** in head-first or anything fancy, just
**jump** in, feet-first.  Now, this would have been my
chance to humiliate myself all over again, because I
would have been too scared to do it if it had been
sprung on me unexpectedly.  But for some reason that
I can't remember, I had some time earlier taken it
upon myself, during one of my regular summer afternoons
at the pool, to see if I could work up the courage to jump off the
high dive on my own.  And I had actually done it.  So when
I was asked to do it at the end of the course, since I'd done it
a few times before, I managed to do it again.  A minor,
but memorable, triumph.

Apropos of things sexual (or pre-homosexual), there was
a slightly off-color incident that happened during one
of those swimming classes.  The instructor, a grown man
who might have been anywhere from his 20s to his 40s,
came to the classes in a pair of swimming trunks, like
the rest of us.  They weren't speedos (and they certainly
weren't the long "board shorts" popular today), they
were just regular boxer-style swimming trunks.  But
one day, he was sitting in his bathing suit
on the grass in front of the row of kids (it was a
co-ed class, as far as I can recall), and I happened
to notice that his trunks had no liner.  And there it
was, plainly visible through the wide-open leg of
his trunks.  It was only the second adult male penis
I'd ever seen (apart from my own father's).
Interestingly, it had no erotic charge whatsoever for
me; I just thought it was funny, and I was dying to
poke the kid sitting next to me with my elbow and
mutter something like "Do you see what I see?", but
the instructor's eyes were right on us, so I kept
still.  The guy's name, I kid you not, was Bob Bone.
But there was no bone(r), just a big fat sausage.  ;->
I have no particular reason to believe that Mr. Bone
was deliberately exhibiting himself to the kids, but
you never know (and it would certainly behoove somebody
in his position to be a hell of a lot more careful
about that sort of thing these days).

> (See also
> _Is He Straight : A Checklist for Women Who Wonder_ by Bonnie Kaye
> http://www.amazon.com/Is-He-Straight-Checklist-Wonder/dp/0595004393/ )
>
> This point of view (which may be perfectly justifiable!) does not
> bode well for a "Grero" culture of fluid male sexuality (unless
> it's done on the "down-low" and in complete secrecy, which indeed
> it is in certain subcultures of ostensibly straight men today).

You know, health-care professionals, psychologists, and other
researchers have had to invent a new category for men in contemporary
culture who do **not** self-identify as "gay" but who nevertheless
have sexual contact with other males.

The label is "MSM" ("Men who have sex with men"; not to be confused with
the dietary supplement methylsulfonylmethane.  ;->  )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men

> Speaking of bad parents, have you read any of Alice Miller's
> books, especially The Drama of the Gifted Child and
> For Your Own Good.

Yes, I read _The Drama of the Gifted Child_ many years ago
on the recommendation of a (female) friend who thought that
it encapsulated her own childhood experience, and thought
that it might apply to mine as well.  I've since had other
people recommend it to me.  I'm afraid I disappointed (and
maybe even offended) my friend when I found the book a little
offputting -- I wasn't prepared to accept Miller's categorization
of such children as necessarily "gifted" (with the usual
connotations of "high-IQ", intellectually superior, what certain
modern folks might call an "Indigo child" [ugh!], etc.)

I found that Gilmartin's characterization of the "love-shy" male
captured my own experience in a visceral way -- but then of
course Gilmartin is a man talking specifically about the experiences
of boys; Miller is a woman who includes girls in her
analysis, and both people who have recommended Miller to me in
the past were also women.

I found myself getting both angry and sad to the point of tears
when I first read Gilmartin's book.  But, you know, it's not really
anybody's **fault**.  Calling people "bad parents" can miss the point
just as much as calling the children "bad kids".  It's the
**mismatch** between the parenting styles (itself partly a function
of the parents' inborn temperaments, and partly a function of
the cultural milieu), and the child's temperament, that can lead
to grief.

And of course all such analyses are terrifically politically-
charged.  I can't imagine public-school phys-ed classes being
segregated not just by gender but by "temperament" -- the
Republicans would scream that it's "coddling" (Or worse.
"It's the homosexual agenda!  They want to turn our boys into
fags!").  There's a high school in New York specifically
intended to be a safe haven for LGBTQ kids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk_High_School
And of course it garnered the expected reactions from the
expected quarters:

"State Conservative Party chairman Michael Long
criticized the creation of the school as social engineering,
asking, 'Is there a different way to teach homosexuals?
Is there gay math? This is wrong... There’s no
reason these children should be treated separately.

Supporters contend that this school is a pragmatic solution,
providing an alternative path to a diploma for students
who are unable to succeed in a mainstream high school due
to intolerance. Not all arguments against the school are
divided along partisan lines. Independent mayor
Michael Bloomberg supported the renovation of the school
while Democratic N.Y. State Senator Rubén Díaz opposed it."

Yadda yadda yadda.  It would be the same for "temperamentally
sensitive" boys being excused from playing touch football in
high-school gym classes.

Speaking of which.  Some time in late elementary school or
early junior high school, I had to do the touch football thing
in gym class, and my strategy in such situations was to stay as far
from the action as possible without literally leaving the game.
I did the same thing with softball.  Just try to get through
the damn period by pretending to be invisible, or at least as
inconspicuous as possible, and staying as far away from the
ball as possible.  It didn't always work -- sometimes gym teachers
know perfectly well what's going on, and let it slide;
and sometimes they know perfectly well what's going on, and try
to force the kid to "participate".  Anyway, one afternoon I was trying to fade into
the grass, but there was this kid who decided to teach me a lesson --
he decided he'd had enough of my shirking my "responsibility"
to put myself at risk of being mowed down.  He was a **big**
kid, and he went way out of his way to come after me and
**tackle** me.  I landed on my arm.  I didn't break it,
as it turned out, but I had to go to the doctor and have it
X-rayed.  Of course there were no consequences for the other
kid.  He wasn't all bad, though.  I remember one day
walking home from school he gave me a piece of advice for
dealing with women.  "If you don't have any muscles," he
said, "just wear bulky sweaters."  I can't say I've ever
actually made any use of that, but it's stuck with me.  ;->

By the way, "temperamentally sensitive" males (such as myself) --
**whatever** their sexual orientation, and even if they otherwise
would have had no desire to adopt female clothes or a female
role in society -- would not, from my understanding of history,
have fit Greek or Roman ideals of masculinity.  The Greeks
idealized athleticism (and the beauty of the male form
of the athletic youth); and both the warlike Greeks (the Spartans)
and the Romans (or at least the Roman aristocracy) idealized
the "manly virtues" -- strength at arms, fierceness in battle,
and so on.  In other words, the football players who **don't**
run away from the ball.  ;->

Speaking of football, though -- do you know the story of this
poor soul?  Ed Gallagher:
http://www.bentvoices.org/pix/gallagher.jpg
College football hero -- big, macho dude.
Succumbed to his homosexual urges, then panicked,
and in a fit of self-hatred tried to commit suicide by
pitching himself down the face of a dam, and **survived**,
but spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
http://www.outsports.com/2011/7/29/4051618/moment-69-ed-gallagher-survives-suicide-attempt

Dan Savage has some new(ish) videos up on the TakePartTV
channel on YouTube.
"American Savage - Airs Every Thursday by TakePart"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUIBo2ueM6k&list=PL4Ue-83YkTrwDlPP-6QGjnjcaoWfMRFUn

I gather the topics correspond to themes in his new book,
_American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith,
Sex, Love, and Politics_
http://www.amazon.com/American-Savage-Insights-Slights-Politics/dp/0525954104/

The Evolution of Cheating: Kristen Stewart to Petraeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdho-Q-dEOA

On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN-B4kEl_30

Are You Ready for Some Gay Football?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m98ujIi8OQ0

Are You Ready for Some LGBT Athletes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM9wkErfyeA

Speaking of boundaries --

In Chapter 7: "So-Called Situational Sexual Behavior"

You wrote:

> What about men whose wives fuck them with strap-ons every
> once in a while? What percentage is the cutoff? Is it homosexual
> for a man to be fucked by his wife?

Interesting you should mention this.  As a matter of fact, I know somebody who, in an attempt to

spice up his sex life, asked his wife (of how many years? Something like 15 I think. with two

kids.) to use a strap-on and had his request blow up in his face.

His wife told him that as far as she was concerned, the suggestion **made** him homosexual, and

she divorced him.  Quite possibly it was just the straw that broke the camel's back, and the

marriage had been failing for some time, but in this case the wife certainly seized on her

husband's interest in being the recipient of anal penetration to vociferously accuse him of being

unmasculine and to suggest that he was probably "really" gay.

So tread carefully, married heterosexuals!

It would seem that in many cases it is women who play a significant role in policing the

boundaries of allowable sexual expression in the men in their lives.  Comments I've seen on the

Web suggest to me that for many women, it would be an absolute show-stopper if they found out

that their man had any history of fooling around with other men, or if he let slip any signs that

he might have the slightest inclination to do so.  In fact, support groups for women who have

husbands who they suspect might be gay (often run by women who have already gone through the

trauma of having their husbands "come out" and leave the marriage) encourage their readers to

take very seriously the discovery, say, of a gay porn site in a man's browser history.  E.g.,

Bonnie Kaye's support group
http://www.straightwives.com/newsletter2.html
warns:

--------------
But I also get letters from women who do confront their husbands with evidence in hand and get

denials with distorted truths giving excuses such as “Those pictures belonged to a co-worker,” or

“I have no clue how those websites got on our computer.”

For those women whose husbands eventually tell you the truth, count yourselves as lucky even

though you may not feel that way at the time. No doubt hearing the word **gay** is devastating,

but not hearing it is even worse. This month alone, I have received 32 letters from women who

asked me for advice because their husbands or ex-husbands will not admit to their homosexuality.

These women know the truth. They have stumbled on it one way or another. It has smacked them in

the face through hidden websites, email, pornography, letters, hotel receipts, phone bills, etc.

And yet, their husbands just keep lying or denying. They are not ready to be honest--and may

never be ready. Some men will never be ready to accept their homosexuality because it is too

painful or embarrassing.

These are the men whom I call the “Limbo Men.” Their whole lives are lived in limbo. They are

emotionally straight, but physically gay. They never feel totally comfortable in either world,

but they are much more comfortable “passing” in the straight world where they are accepted as

part of mainstream society.

All married gay men go through “limbo” for a period of time. In other words, they are stuck in

between both worlds hoping that by wanting the straight world badly enough they will be able to

“cross over” into it. . .

These are the men who will never leave their marriages. They will stay there until the day they

die, leading a painful existence and sharing that pain with their wives. More specifically,

pouring that pain upon their wives. We all know that misery loves company, and these men are

happy to make you as miserable as they are.

So often, these “Limbo Men” husbands luck out. They have wives who are much kinder and more

understanding than average. These are the women who will keep trying every little trick in the

book thinking someday they will get their husbands hooked. The women live an accepted existence,

looking for the crumbs in the marriage while trying to turn those crumbs into a cake. It is truly

a tragedy and waste of human life.
======

(See also
_Is He Straight : A Checklist for Women Who Wonder_ by Bonnie Kaye
http://www.amazon.com/Is-He-Straight-Checklist-Wonder/dp/0595004393/ )

This point of view (which may be perfectly justifiable!) does not bode well for a "Grero" culture

of fluid male sexuality (unless it's done on the "down-low" and in complete secrecy, which indeed

it is in certain subcultures of ostensibly straight men today).

Of course, the idealization of strict monogamy is part of this.  If you're a man, and you have to

choose and stick with **one** sexual partner, that partner will either be a woman (which "means"

you're straight) or a man (which "means" you're gay).

Nothing changes.  Except in this case, with 21st-century
technology, the brother documented everything for the
whole world to see.

Trying to force a square peg into a round hole:

"Dad, gay son, swimmingpool an[d] gay brother with cam"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOotrvIYB78

(Notice that some of the comments ignore the father's
behavior and squawk along the lines of "This is what's
wrong with our society.  I'd **never** let a kid of
mine talk to me that way.")

Gilmartin wrote:

> Hans J. Eysenck has concluded that inborn introversion is a
> natural byproduct of high native arousal levels in the cerebral
> cortex, and that these high arousal levels are caused by an
> overactive ascending reticular formation (lower brain) which
> bombards the higher brain and central nervous system when
> social or other stimuli (perceived as threatening) are presented.
> This inborn hyperarousability of introverts accounts (1) for
> their forming conditioned patterns of anxiety and other inappropriate
> emotional responses all too easily; and (2) for the much
> greater difficulty in extinguishing maladaptive conditioned
> responses in introverts as compared to extroverts

A more recent analysis of this sort of thing (at any rate, one
that ended up being marketed as a trade book) came from psychologist
Elaine N. Aron, in the late 90s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highly_Sensitive_Person_%28book%29

There's a YouTube video of an interview with a clinical psychologist
named Ted Zeff that discusses Aron's notion of the Highly Sensitive
Person (HSP) as it relates specifically to boys and men in U.S.
culture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn6pTpJytgU

He's also the author of a book (which I haven't read) entitled
_The Strong, Sensitive Boy_
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004P5NVHA/
http://highlysensitive.org/371/ted-zeff-on-highly-sensitive-boys-and-men/

Zeff also asserts that this phenomenon of "sensitivity" is
orthogonal to sexual orientation.  In the conventional view
of gender roles, though, it seems likely that "sensitivity"
in a man would be interpreted by most people as a "feminine"
trait.

In fact, I wonder if an "HSP" who self-identifies as heterosexual
might be **more** homophobic than a non-HSP heterosexual,
just because of his awareness that a lot of people might misinterpret
his personality as being somehow "gay".  (I wonder if the straight
erstwhile work friend I developed feelings for and then fell
afoul of some years ago might have been like that.)

> Alright, book will be shipped soon.

How's this for pulp-era-sleazy cover art:

http://www.fancy4glass.ca/logos-clips/express-listing-shop/The%20Fall%20of%20Valor%20Book%20by%20Charles%20Jackson%20-%20214.JPG

;->

> Sorry about your childhood!

It could have been worse.  My parents were fairly typical of their
generation.  They smoked and drank too much.

My father came from a large family, finished high school,
and had some post-high-school education (accounting courses
at a fairly prestigious state university, if I recall correctly,
but only an associate degree).  He served in the military during
World War II, at a desk job (because of the accounting training,
presumably), and later got a job with a large corporation and
quickly rose from a blue-collar entry-level position
to a lower-echelon white-collar job -- as an accountant --
where he spent the rest of his career.  He got married rather
late, at the age of 33, to a woman 7 years his senior (who had
been married before; her first husband died, I believe).
Physically, he was a bit of a runt (think Woody Allen and you wouldn't be
too far off) -- hence the bodybuilding literature (and
the set of barbells that he had, but never used as far as
I know).  He overcompensated for his puny size with a
big mouth and a rather overbearing
personality (especially when he'd been drinking).
He was a "hale fellow well met" glad-hand type, but
he also had a flashpoint temper and tended to argue
with people and hold long-lasting grudges against them.
My father was no intellectual -- his idea of a fun weekend
was to park himself in front of the TV or radio with a supply of beer
and listen to or watch whatever kind of ball game was
in season -- baseball or football.  (I **hated** to
be in the same room while that was going on, except when
at a certain point in my life I started to notice football players'
asses in their tight uniforms. ;-> ).  Some people might
say that my father had ambitions in life beyond his proper station --
his oldest surviving sister said to me a few years ago
"We were never anything but blue collar people, Jimmy,
but your father had Ambitions."  He was a Republican and
social conservative, of course (my parents **hated** JFK -- the
first election during which I was old enough to know
what was going on).  Well-educated and genteel folk --
the kind he always hoped to impress --  probably saw through
my father instantly and wrote him off as a crass blow-hard
and know-it-all with a "my way or the highway"
nasty attitude.  But for all that he was responsible --
he kept his job, bought a house in the suburbs, raised a kid,
put up with my mother, and while he may well have been an alcoholic
by today's standards he never went on benders or
crashed the car (though he did back over a bush next
to the driveway one memorable night).  The alcohol eventually
caught up with him, and he died (in the care of his
second wife -- my mother had died 12 years earlier)
of liver failure brought on by chronic drinking in
1985 at the age of 68.

My mother finished school at 8th grade and never went
any further.  She had had clerical jobs before
marrying, but never worked afterward.  She never drove
a car, so she was stuck in the house unless
one of her more automotively-skilled and mobile girlfriends
took her someplace.  I gather she had once had some
degree of physical attractiveness (think a seedier
version of Shelley Winters), but she was always overweight,
and she developed osteoarthritis and Type 2 diabetes
as she got older.  She couldn't have been a happy
person, but she did her duty too -- cooked the meals,
cleaned the house, and did the laundry.  My father's
family treated her with barely-concealed disdain --
they thought my father had chosen poorly or that
she had "caught" him.  Not only was she overweight,
and not very well educated, but she could be
shockingly childish and petulantly immature sometimes.
As my father's aged sister also said to me "She just wasn't
right in the head."  In any case, her health finally
failed and she died of a massive heart attack in
the spring of 1973, at the age of 62.  I had moved
out of the house by then.  My father was out mowing
the lawn when it happened, and when he came back into
the house, he found her dead on the kitchen floor.

I do think my parents would have been better off if
they'd skipped the conventional thing and hadn't insisted
on trying to raise a child.  Another sister of my father's
once confided in me, on the verge of adulthood, that having
a child was entirely my father's idea and at his insistence;
my mother hadn't wanted any children, and indeed
she suffered during the late-in-life pregnancy.

I'm afraid they didn't get much back for their efforts --
I was an all-around disappointment to them.
By the time I graduated from high school, I didn't
like them, and they didn't like me.

So it goes, sometimes.

> Do you think the Loveline episode is available
> here: http://www.lovelinetapes.com/ ??

I suspect not.  While one of the curators of that archive
("Giovanni" http://www.lovelinetapes.com/faq/ )
claims to have discovered Loveline via the MTV television
spinoff of the radio show (that ran
between 1996 and 2000, according to IMDb)
the archive itself seems to contain only recordings of
the radio version of the show.

The particular episode I mentioned was on MTV.

There are a handful of the MTV episodes on YouTube, but
chances are it's not there (the YouTube shows probably
ended up there because of the celebrity guests -- largely
music-industry celebrities, in the case of the TV show --
it was MTV after all).

According to Wikipedia:  "A TV version of Loveline ran on MTV
from 1996â€"2000; which was produced by Stone Stanley Entertainment.
It followed the same general format as the radio program
but featured a live audience and a female co-host. The female
co-host role was filled over the course of the series by
MTV VJ Idalis, actresses Kris McGaha, Catherine McCord,
Diane Farr and comedienne Laura Kightlinger. Loveline TV
was filmed at Hollywood Center Studios."

I don't remember the "female co-host" or the guest celebrities
from the show I saw.  Even worse, I don't remember what year
I happened to see that show.

Even if you had access to all the episodes, searching for a
particular caller's topic would be, as they say, like searching
for a needle in a haystack.

Some people seem to have enjoyed the shows (though not everyone who
has publicly commented on them on the Web!), but that terrible
advice from "Dr. Drew" in the case of the kid and his friends
caught by mom turned me off of Pinsky forever.

By the way, a little Dan Savage goes a long way with me, too.
He's smart, and funny, but he's also full of himself, and
he can get mighty nasty with people sometimes.

In the broader culture, more than three decades after my own
"Debbie B." debacle, I stumbled across what I found to
be a rather shocking example, and in a rather unexpected
place, of the continuing minefield of potential
trauma that anything related to sex can be for kids (and
not just because sex is, in itself, a powerful biological
urge).  In the 90s there was a TV show called "Loveline" that
grew out of a radio show of the same name.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveline )
It was presumably a more conventional and more
heterosexually-oriented version of what Dan Savage
does these days with his "Savage Love" podcast.
It was hosted by a macho, wisecracking (and somewhat
leering and obnoxious) comic named
Adam Carolla (later host of "The Man Show") together
with a pale-faced, tight-lipped, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing
"serious" psychiatrist named Dr. Drew Pinsky (who
today counsels celebrities on TV about their addictions,
or something).  So people would call in about their
relationship (and, gasp, tee-hee, sex!) problems, and Carolla
would vet the callers and dismiss (with comic abuse)
the ones he didn't deem serious enough for extended attention,
and turn the "serious" cases over to "Dr. Drew" for
a psychiatrist's "serious" advice.

So there was this one "Loveline" caller --
a mother -- who had burst into her young son's
bedroom (whether he was prepubescent or postpubescent
I do not recall) who was having a circle-jerk with his
little buddies.  They all had their dicks out, and fully
erect, and were masturbating with gusto.  I can't
remember whether they were watching
porn as well, or were just providing each other with
visual stimulation.  So mom shrieks a little, and drops
the pizza she's carrying, and rushes out of the bedroom.  And now
she wants to know, from the "Loveline" experts, what, if anything,
she should do about it.  So Dr. Drew takes up this case
with great seriousness, and replies that yes indeed
she must do something.  She must find the **ringleader** --
find out who instigated this outrage against morality
and propriety -- and see to it that he is punished
and that her son severs all ties with him!  I couldn't
believe what I was hearing from this guy.  Remembering
my own neighborhood scandal over the little girl and the
science book, I heard "Dr. Drew" advising this mother
to 1) Grill her own son on the facts.  Which would presumably
go something like this:  "Who was the first boy
to start talking dirty? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy
to get an erection? Was it **you**? Who was the first boy
to start rubbing his erection through his pants?  Was
it **you**?  Who was the first boy to take his penis
out of his pants?  Was it **you**?  Who was the boy
who suggested that everybody else do the same
thing?  Was it **you**? Who was the boy who brought
over the porn tape (if there was one)?  Did **you** supply
the pornography?"  And then 2) after subjecting her own
son to detailed interrogation (assuming she had the stomach
for it, after shrieking and dropping the pizza), she's supposed
to call up the parents of her son's friends and
have similar conversations with each of them.  "My son
Johnny says your son Bobby took his erect penis
out of his pants last night in Johnny's bedroom in
front of Johnny and the other boys gathered there,
and starting masturbating." Etc.  And this is
going to "get to the bottom of it" and she, and the
parents of all her kid's friends, are thereby
going to regain control of their kids' sexual
morality.  And there's not going to be any shouting,
or hung-up telephones, or legal threats, among
the parents.  And people are going to be perfectly
friendly with each other in the years to come when
they pass each other in the supermarket.  And
there's not going to be any bullying or other
humiliating fallout for little Johnny and his little
friends at school or church or elsewhere in the
neighborhood.  Riiiight!   My God, and this guy's
supposed to be a professional counsellor!  And he's
not even a Mormon -- Wikipedia calls him a "nonobservant
Jew" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Pinsky ).
I was more than a little nonplussed that nothing seemed to have
changed in more than thirty years, and that having
an M.D. degree and training as a psychiatrist from the mid-80s
and later apparently gives some adults no more insight into
handling a situation involving kids and sex than
my (non-college-educated) parents and Debbie B.'s
parents had in the early 60s.

It's also the case, unfortunately, in today's atmosphere of
near-hysteria about the potential for child abuse (and particularly child
**sexual** abuse) that even enlightened adults can be walking
a minefield if they dare to broach the subject of sex with
children, even their own children.  I suspect that in my
own parents' generation, the inhibition was mostly due
to their own hang-ups and embarrassment about the subject.
But these days, an enlightened parent giving his own child
clear information about the facts of life in all their
variety -- clear information about masturbation or homosexuality,
let's say -- might thereby incur a nontrivial risk of
hearing from the local Child Welfare department if the
kid passes on the information (and the identity of its
source) to another child (and through that child to a
paranoid adult, parent or otherwise) or directly to a paranoid adult
(a teacher, a psychologist, a minister, a guidance counsellor,
a pediatrician, or whoever).  There's a good movie from the
80s about such a situation spinning out of control:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Mother_(1988_film)
There's a cute YouTube video -- apparently an excerpt from
an episode of an adult-themed cable-TV comedy called
_Weeds_:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeds_(TV_series) --
in which "Uncle Andy" gives his (13-year-old?) nephew
"Shane" a no-holds-barred stand-up-comic style lecture
about masturbation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzOQTFwRBE
It's very entertaining, but in real life, in some
areas of the country (or in some families)
Uncle Andy could get in a lot of trouble for a
frank talk like that.

Nevertheless, would-be censors (authors of the Child On-line
Protection Act and similar legislation) have been kept
at bay to the extent that all the information a kid needs
is available on-line nowadays, in as much detail as desired.
Including an ocean of free, high-quality pornography.
Even when I was in my 20s, newsstand magazines were still
tiptoeing at the edge of the envelope of what they could show without
having their product seized by the authorities.
Especially the homosexually-oriented magazines.  In 1972
the newsstand magazines (like _After Dark_ and _Playgirl_ --
not the stuff you'd have to go to an adult bookstore
to find) could show naked men in speedos, but no genitalia.
Then a few years later, _Playgirl_ would show flaccid penises,
but no erections (maybe the occasional semi-erection).
Then came (by 1980) full erections, in a host of new titles:
_Mandate_, _Honcho_, and the rest.  But
you still had to get the magazine past the store clerk,
and you still had to pay money for it.  Now, if you
can get on Tumblr, you can get anything you'd care
to see (which may change, now that Yahoo has acquired it,
but that only means it'll go elsewhere).
This widespread exposure is deplored by the religious
right and other social conservatives.  But I can't
help but think it's overall a good thing.  And it
certainly ties into the Grero agenda -- widespread exposure,
for instance, to gay porn, is desensitizing -- it
makes people less likely to react with disgust to a
form of sex which the viewer might not necessarily want
to participate in himself, as well as, I would think,
making it somewhat more likely that a viewer might be
inclined to "sample the wares", so to speak, himself
(though this would itself be evidence, from the point of
view of the religious right, that pornography will
destroy the fabric of public morality ;-> ).  I've
been both surprised and amused to see comments, on some
of the Tumblr blogs and elsewhere, along the lines of "I'm straight
and married and have kids, but I enjoy your blog.  I have no
desire to have sex with a man, but I just love looking
at dicks!"

The very first pornography (not labelled as such) that I
reacted to **as pornography** was inadvertently supplied
to me by my father, in the form of a small collection of
bodybuilding magazines left over from before he was
married.  Apparently he didn't think there was anything
particularly embarrassing or "dangerous" about these,
since he made no attempt to hide them, and in fact some
of them were in a pile of reading material at the bottom
of a bookcase in the living room.  Though I found these within
easy reach, I nevertheless somehow knew I had to be circumspect
about looking at them.  I'd wait until my parents were out
of the house, and then get them out and look at them.
I got very aroused looking at them, but I didn't yet know
how to masturbate, so I'd just enjoy the feeling of arousal
until it was time to hide the magazines again by putting them
back exactly where I'd found them.  One cover was a
particular favorite:
http://muscletrek.com/60s/jamespark.jpg
The legs were a turn-on, and also something new --
that beautiful bulge in profile in the front of the
briefs (rather daringly prominent by the standards
of the time -- the reflection from the side of the
shiny posing trunks could have been air-brushed out, but in
this case it wasn't).  The genital bulge became my primary
erotic fetish in male imagery -- even more than exposed genitalia,
the pouch of a speedo or jockstrap or tight underwear
became the focus of arousal for me.  I did finally
learn to climax while looking at (or remembering) that
cover, many times.

It's interesting (and maybe a sign of the naivete of more
repressed times, when people just didn't think about such
possibilities) that those muscle magazines were treated so casually by
my father.  As late as 1960, respectable college professors
could have their careers ruined as a result of the police
raiding their homes and finding magazines with images
not much different from those in my father's modest collection:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/greatpinkscare/
And five years after that, decency crusaders were watching
the Charles Keating financed propaganda movie "Perversion
for Profit":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perversion_for_Profit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_J55Fawfgk
which rails against "physique" magazine as lures of
homosexuality.  And as the film's narrator, George Putnam,
warns: "We know that once a person is perverted, it
is practically impossible for that person to adjust
to normal attitudes in regard to sex."  But not
Grero attitudes, eh?

Nowadays, the magazines themselves are
collectors' items, and the images are freely available
on the Web.  A plethora of riches!  "But psychiatrists
believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal
male adult to this type of publication, though he
may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless
pervert.  Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced
youth, who in purchasing and studying this material,
becomes a pawn for these misfits -- these homosexuals! --
who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed:
'Today's conquest, they say, is tomorrow's competition.'
See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their
conquests.  Look here at the young face and bright smile
which could be the hope of the world.  But in the other
half of the picture is revealed the seduction of
the innocent."

;->