Fairfax, VA, USA. Ladies and gentlemen, kids of all ages, step right up, crowd right in, the fun’s about to begin. If you have a sensitive disposition or a squeamish stomach, please, whatever you do, do not continue reading.

Don’t say you were not warned: 9.1% of the adult population of the United States has a personality disorder. [N1]


This percentage, of course, is a minimum estimate of disorder based on upon subjects who participated in various studies. Your mileage may vary. Ten percent certainly seems a low estimate for the number of disordered personalities who assault you on the internet. Perhaps the World Wide Web offers some sort of psychological attraction that draws out the severely disordered from the privacy of their nests.

And: please note, less than 40 percent of the people with a personality disorder are under a doctor’s care. [N2] The rest are at full, unconstrained liberty to do what they please when they so please. Life is grand. And: please note, there is a statistical trend for men to be more likely to have an anti-social personality disorder than women. [N3] Who would have guessed?

But from my experience on the web, which now approaches 20 years, the conclusion that men are only more likely to be disordered is an understatement (especially if you discount the women who have hijacked radical feminism for twisted purposes). The researchers were attempting to appear fair and impartial, not to mention politically correct: there can be no marked psychological differences between men and women.

Beginning in childhood or early adolescence, men and women with antisocial personality disorder exhibit a pervasive pattern of disregard, and often violate, the rights of others. [N4] The pattern continues into adulthood.

The anti-social personality disregards social norms and laws. They repeatedly lie to achieve their desires, living for the moment, forgetting the past and not caring about the future. They seldom think ahead at the consequences of their actions. Cause and effect relationships do not exist for them. Their goal is immediate rewards and gratification.

There currently is no form of psychotherapy that works with those with antisocial personality disorder, as those with this disorder have no desire to change themselves. If they see a personal benefit, they often place others at risk, demonstrating a complete lack of remorse that their actions have harmed others and possessing a grandiose sense of self and entitlement.

By the way, teenagers routinely profile as sociopaths until they are eighteen or older.

A person with borderline personality disorder, however, exists in pervasive instability: mood swings, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. Although someone with depression or bipolar disorder normally endures the same mood for weeks, a borderline personality may experience severe bouts of anger, anxiety, and depression that last for less than a day.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior. While a person with depression or bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for weeks, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last for only a few hours to a day.

It is much more difficult to arrest someone on the internet. First you have to have to find them. If you do find them, they often just briefly disappear before returning under a different public name and persona.

The internet and the social media form a haven for Antisocial Personality and Borderline Personality disorder, offering both personal anonymity and the ability to create fictitious public persona. Just look around. How many of your internet friends use their real names when they post to blogs or comment on web sites?

It’s not that difficult.

At the beginning, when I first began to transition — decades ago now — I knew I was Lisa Jain, just as I knew I was a poet. [N5] When I went online, my name was Lisa Jain, often shortened to LJ. I was and am LJ. Always have been. My previous existence was a carefully constructed, well played fabrication. On line I was me, myself, and I.

I could be no other. But before full transition, before surgery, I was torn between two worlds. People who knew me as LJ did not know of my previous existence. Still confined by the fading restrictions of my old life, I could not tell them while my body and life was still in transition. What I did tell the internet was who I actually was, the girl struggling for decades to be. If anything, I was consistent, and wrote of the life I would have lived if only the world were different. In doing so, I hurt people. Not intentionally, not knowingly, but because I knew of no other way I could survive if not as me, if not Lisa Jain.

If I could go back — and if I knew something else I could have done that would have prevented the pain I caused others — I would change it all. But I haven’t a clue. My choice, in that moment of dark night, was to become or to die. I chose life and others got hurt. I would lie in bed at night, crying that the world — my family, my kids, my job — would not yet let me be.

So I did the best I could to cope with the hand that had been dealt me. But unlike the sociopaths who now roam the web with impunity, I did not go into the web with the intention to hurt and deceive anyone. What I said, what I wrote, I truly thought, spoke, and wrote.

And I came out.

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