Tell that to the people who have called for the summary executions of pedophiles, or agreed when others have said it. Tell that to the COs in prisons who whisper the crimes of sex offenders to violent inmates, knowing how they might react towards the offender (even if the offender's crime was consensual sex with a teenager scarcely younger than themselves). Tell that to the frothing-at-the-mouth politicians who have made laws upon laws of such stricture that they are impossible to live by and/or absurdly unfair in proportion to the actual offenses of most SOs.

Because of the heightened nature of the moral panic surrounding this issue, there is little middle ground here. So when you judge us as inherently morally inferior to straights, you too are contributing to that mindset. Trust me, I tried for the middle ground too, hoping it would help counter some of the grave injustices I've faced since outing myself, despite never having committed any actual sex offense against anyone and having a perfectly clean legal record. I positioned myself where you are--or at least closer to where you are than where I am now, philosophically speaking--hoping that people's basic decency would shine through their prejudices if they knew I was on their side. With some it did (my family, of course, who knew me well enough to know I could never hurt a child, and some very dear friends of mine who know my sexual orientation and yet still have allowed me to take their daughter/granddaughter/niece to movies, to the fair, to the swimming pool, back to my house, etc., but that level of trust was built over years, and a handful of other friends who keep me sane), but there are still many, many people out there who would just as soon put a bullet in my head as look at me.

You want to know why I am the way I am? Because after awhile, for people like me, who were timid and emotional kids--perhaps born with some imperfection or malformation, maybe unpopular as a child because of your oddity, introverted--seeing and hearing too much of this shit poisons your soul. I am unemployed now because of this, barely able to pay my bills every month, in constant pain because of my health problems that I can't afford to get treated, lonely, kept away largely from those I adore most, still a virgin at nearly 40, constantly stressed and worried if I'm going to have a home next month, and the next month, and the next . . .

The first of next month is approaching and so are the bills. I didn't get any sleep at all last night. None. For my heart racing. I go through this every month, and every month I get a little more depressed, a little more bitter, a little more surly. I start thinking, you know, if society already sees me as a monster, what have I to lose by actually being one? I identify with monsters and have from my earliest years: Frankenstein's monster, a singular being, tormented for want of love and acceptance; Godzilla, powerful, crushing whole cities beneath his feet; Iron Man--not the comic book character but the rejected robot in the Black Sabbath song, once a hero, once loved but now feared. And all the other bêtes noires of my youth.

There are days I almost wish the world would self-destruct; maybe I can milk a little joy out of my miserable little existence still by watching it burn️ ↗. And always afterwards I hate myself for thinking and feeling that way, for my hatred of people I've never met, for my anger and self-pity, and the bullshit starts all over again. And no, I will never physically hurt a soul. I'm not the type; I just internalize everything, or lash out with my words sometimes. Healthy, huh? It's not pretty but it's the truth. And yes, society is to a large degree responsible for this. It demands honesty, but when you offer it, you are demolished if your truth doesn't fit the acceptable mold, or at best you are ignored like the outcast in that Twilight Zone episode whom no one was allowed to talk to.

Sooooooo . . . I'm not asking for your forgiveness for my being an asshole to you. I neither need nor want it. I'm just explaining how I got to this place from the shy, polite, sweet kid I once was. This shit doesn't happen overnight. Bane doesn't come to be because he's just not a people person. No, he is created from without as much as from within, a victim of a life of tragedy. And Pink doesn't lose touch with his humanity because he's antisocial; the bricks accumulate with time, with each slight, each horrific misunderstanding, each little inhumanity hurled at him from day to day. And so, there you have a Markaba. And I am one of many.

And to me there is little difference between your condescension and denial of my essential selfhood and freedave's condescension and denial of my essential selfhood. In the end they're all just bricks in the wall to me. What good is it to me to discern between the straw and the wheat piled on my back? It all contributes to my broken spine in the end. Hate rhetoric it is, for it gives just a little more velocity to the slings and arrows of the brutal battalions of , perhaps . . . sometimes . . . just the amount needed to kill.