Daniel (“Denial”) Harris, Diary of a Drag Queen:
No sooner did I enter a chatroom than one ill-mannered lout began taunting me about my ugliness, a refrain taken up by yet another boor, both of whom received some encouragement from the she-bitches in the room, who love the spectacle of a public stoning, having starred in such communal sports themselves, and who feel absolutely no esprit de corps, indeed who delight in the discomfiture of people they view as competition, contestants for limited resources…. I defended myself as best as I could, skewering them with my rapier wit until they lapsed into silence and I was able to retreat gracelessly from the battlefield, my self-esteem in tatters. […]
Try as I might, I cannot take this sophomoric ridicule in stride and… feel the humiliation of allowing myself to be humiliated by such small fry, by uneducated teenage boys who have turned the Internet into a bully’s playground where they gain prestige among their peers by deriding the “nerds” and “retards.” I think with despair that this is what I’ve come to: At the age of 46, after a lifetime of study, after three books and countless essays, I squander my days providing rowdy young boys with a bull’s-eye for target practice.