Lipton’s Journal/January 20, 1955/209

The affected person invariably says exactly what he feels, but he says it in a debased way. His thrust into life with all his actions and all his speech is actually a cry of pain (Affected people are always people in pain.) The cry of pain is put in a degraded form because the Affected Person knows (homeostatically) that this is less dangerous than the naked expression. But affected people are very close to being naked; they mock a mystic experience, but by implication what they have also said is that the mystic experience was there.

Affected people know that so long as they are laughed at, scorned, and ridiculed, they are still safe. No one will take them seriously, and so no one will destroy them. Which is one reason why so many homosexuals, both homo-erotic and pure, but especially homo-erotic (the homo-erotic as masked bi-sexual orgiast being in the more dangerous position) are so affected, and even often label themselves homosexual despite the social disadvantages by wearing a particular form of dress, adopting a particular form of lisp or swish (word echo).

Ergo: The Fop. The fop mocks himself, and yet by implication he is saying, “Whether you like it or not, I really am a gentleman. I am one of the privileged of sensibility.”