Girlish boy
confounds
classmates
By Dan Sewell
The Associated Press
CARROLLTON, Ga. — Patrick
Nelson had heard there was a
cross-dressing boy enrolled at his
high school. But darned if he
could figure out just who it was.
“I looked for him the first cou
ple weeks. The honest truth — 1
didn’t even know," Patrick said.
One day, he was talking about
the mystery to a friend, who
smiled and pointed to the pretty
blonde at the desk next to his.
“I said, ‘No way, that’s too
weird!”’ Patrick recalled. "Then I
thought about it. and 1 said, 'So
what’s so weird about that?”’
But while Patrick and his
friends were willing to accept
Matthew "Alex” McLendon’s
feminine appearance and man
nerisms, others in this rural, con
servative western Georgia com
munity of about 20,000 weren’t.
And so 15-year-old Alex with
drew from school under pressure,
leaving supporters of the popular,
easygoing student wondering
what threat they had supposedly
been protected from.
■rvicA wabii i utilising tiny jjiuu
lems. She got along well with
everybody,” said classmate and
friend Meayghan Denkers. "She
wasn't trying to change anybody
to be like her or anything.”
After a heated meeting of the
board of the small, private Geor
gian Country Day School on Oct.
6, Alex was “invited to withdraw”
or face expulsion. Alex, who had
enrolled in September after at
tending public school, was cited
for wearing a tongue ring, but had
been called before school authori
ties earlier about his female dress,
makeup and hairstyle.
Most of Alex’s classmates — in
cluding some of the boys — wore
bows in their hair in protest until or
dered to remove them by the princi
pal. Some indignantly quoted their
school handbook, which urges ac
ceptance of “diversity in opinion,
culture, ideas, behavioral charac
teristics, attributes or challenges.”
“Alex represents something
that’s way beyond the experience
and the comfort zone of the very
conservative people we live
with,” said Lori Lipoma,
Meayghan’s mother and a drama
teacher at the school. “I really
think we all lost something very
precious that night.”
School officials would not dis
cuss the case.
“We make no comments on stu
dents,” said Rex Camp, chairman
of the board of the school, where
tuition is more than $5,000 a year
for the 50 or so high school stu
dents. Kindergarten and elemen
tary students are in a separate
building, but one parent of a 6
year-old expressed concern at the
board meeting about Alex’s effect
on younger children.
“I believe in sexual standards in
society, and I want my child in a
school that holds the same sexual
ethics that I do,” said Craig Neal.
Alex, who speaks in a soft, femi
nine voice, began cross-dressing
two years ago and considers him
self “95 percent girl.”
Larry Harmon, a Dade County,
Fla., psychologist who counsels
patients on sexual identity, said
such feelings appear to fit a rare
condition called gender-identity
disorder. He said it doesn’t neces
sarily imply homosexuality, and
it’s difficult to know how many
youngsters have it and why.
“I’m not homosexual,” Alex
said. “I just look like a girl.”
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