Here in the US, they only hate boys...

so I guess you have us beat since if I believe you on this, (and I have no reason not to since you're right about most everything) children of both sexes are loathed in the Land of Hope and Glory. Here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, girls are idolized and held up as models for what all people should be while boys are despised and cajoled with the full force of the cultural and political forces of the time not to be boys. It strikes me, however, that the child-loathing in your native land did at one point have a silver lining. I gather that if they could afford it people sought to get rid of their sons as soon as they could -- so they packed them off to boarding schools which were obviously staffed by peds (how else to explain those lovely uniforms?). Many of those peds -- "masters" I believe you called them -- had, how shall we put this, "imaginative" ideas of proper pedagogy (e.g., the correct conjugation of Latin verbs enforced by the switching of bare, quivering boy bottoms) leading to an entire complex of fascinating fetishes that you people seem to revel in -- not to mention bringing forth a superior class of prose stylists (we do manage the occasional Gore Vidal but as a group we can hardly compete with you, why all our better journals seem to be run by Brits). But I gather the harpies now rule in your land as well as ours. (I did read Sam Leith's article -- I couldn't help but wonder if all his children weren't girls -- he only mentions his oldest who does indeed seem like an obnoxious and thoroughly unattractive piece of work -- but she's a 14 year old GURL so what do you expect, duh!) SR