Friends, online interaction and more

I've had some more "learning experiences" recently. Without naming names, or other things, I've learned that:

1. At least one theoretically enlightened person from theoretically enlightened San Francisco is either clueless enough, or else morally repugnant enough while being hung up on herself enough, to either actually believe that sexual abuse makes boys become gay men, or else to want to believe that when a man doesn't come on to her. This woman never considered the fact that a man might see what seemed like clear "control" techniques coming out of her.

1A. She appears to be less than enlightened about gay issues in general. She says I might be gay, beyond her belief that her charms weren't enough to allegedly "convert" me, in a sense that being gay is "less than." Again, someone theoretically enlightened from a theoretically enlightened bastion of liberalism.

2. That even a few, or several, months of knowing someone purely from online interactions, is not to know too much.

I won't say more, though I could say a lot more.

I am keeping this person's e-mail, though. And, not even putting it in a separate folder. I'm keeping it in my inbox. Not to stew on it, but as a reminder.

Not just a reminder to be more careful about online trust, but, as a reminder to continue my personal growth, including to be even more aware of other people's personalities.

As for this person? Beyond anger, I felt disgust.

Beyond that, though?

Without wanting to sound condescending, I feel sad for her. In my honest opinion, every personality diagnosis she made of me in that e-mail could, in my opinion, be made of her. But, part of me doesn't even care. I am safe. What she said can't harm me.

As for the gay comments, ultimately, if I am correct about where they come from in her belief system, here, I'm back to disgust and anger, because that's insulting to countless thousands of gay men who were sexually abused as boys and who weren't "made" gay by the abuse.

I have seen grown men crying, accepting in their heads but not their hearts, that they are gay, and wondering if the abuse "made them that way." This woman's e-mail to me was not (just) an assault on me but on all these men and countless others.

And, as for control issues? Even after our friendship, or what had seemed friendship, had started drifting, for her to ask if I would visit her while on vacation in California this summer seems to me to show that she's lying even to herself.