[Nesacat]

I am lucky to have parents who very much encouraged my bookish tendencies and I still lay the blame for my addiction to words on my mother's shoulders. They may not have always understood the desire to bury myself in books but they supported it through all the years of finding more and more space to fit book shelves in the house.

However, it would appear that men do face ridicule if they are bookish. I've been asking around the last couple of days and it's true. those of read are deemed to be homosexual for some reason, especially if said reading is purely for pleasure. The men who didn't read got very upset and defensive about it and I was treated to an entire tirade which included words like pansy and queer and faggot and a whole slew of others in several languages. Aside from the blatant abuse of some very lovely words, I was pretty startled. I'd not expected such a violent reaction at all, nor did I know so much anger and hatred almost simmered under the surface of executives and bankers and corporate people.

It was, I thought, a reaction totally uncalled for. Why does this thought of reading as a habit cause such a violent reaction.