In establishing and managing the Matureman group of e-mail lists which were later taken over by Dad-Bear, I got a college education in the genre as it applies to the Silverfoxes Syndrome.

This was helpful in making my decision to launch Boxer's Foxes E-list as a specific adjunct to the Clubhouse. I knew by then that the only way to have a pleasant, mature list was literally to moderate the hell out of it. When I first started MM1 and MM2, there was a rush of people to get on a Ben Boxer list. There were hundreds of subscribers the first month. Almost immediately, the flaming began in public and in private.

I did not want that this time. I wanted a list where agitators could not get past the fire-breathing dragon at the gate (the Terms of Membership on the Boxer's Foxes page at the Clubhouse). I gambled that those who were earnestly seeking refuge from flame wars raging on all sides would seek out Boxer's Foxes with the perception that I was a friend and protector, not an ego-maniac on a moderating power-trip.

The numbers are smaller here than on my previous e-mail lists, but Boxer's Foxes will grow. I think of the men on Boxer's Foxes not as "subscribers," but as members of the Silverfoxes Clubhouse brotherhood, some of whom also hang out now at the Snooker Club. That is what the Silverfoxes Syndrome needs -- not the struggle most of us face in the world, but a haven of peace where we may refine the sense of ourselves as whole men within the infrastructure of our highly particular sexual orientation.

Boxer's Foxes is an e-mail list in an asbestos suit.