Male sexuality in the dock

Levi Bellfield was convicted yesterday of murdering two female students he stalked at bus stops in London. He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of a third woman and is suspected of carrying out 20 other attacks on women. The conviction comes 3 days after Mark Dixie was found guilty of the vicious, sexually-motivated murder of Sally Anne Bowman, and 4 days after Steve Wright was told he will spend the rest of his life in prison for the killing of five women in Suffolk.

Last week the Guardian carried an obituary of the American historian and chronicler of gay life Allan Berube. In 1993 Berube gave evidence to the Senate hearings into the US military's policy of barring gay men and lesbians. He argued that the problem that should be investigated was not homosexual behaviour, but heterosexual masculinity.

It's easy to dismiss this as po-mo rad-fem posturing. But after the depressing news of the past week, you begin to wonder...