Beneath this fierce exterior, however, Mr. Strasburg, an Iraq combat veteran who pleaded no contest to manslaughter and gun charges in 2006, hides a tortured compulsion to understand his actions.
Lots of us put on a blithe and blasé front to hide our inner compulsions, and for a good reason: not because they're embarrassing, but because they're dull.
Short for 'purely obsessional', the word is a misnomer, as the compulsions are very much present, they're merely hidden.
Children become used to hiding their obsessions or compulsions.
All anybody who feels a need to defend James's hero can say is "He was vulnerable and hid his own distress under his compulsion to offer pain!" As we say in Brooklyn (I might have a degree from Cambridge but I still talk like I'm from Coney Island) pull the other one.
The compulsion to "know" also propagates the idea that trans people are hiding something, that we are frauds or illusionists, that we are not real.
Instead, the democratic ideal may depoliticize and hide structural issues, such as the "political economy, class, income inequity, education, and the bureaucratic compulsion to meet targets" [ 10], excluding certain people and groups (often those most in need of social assistance) as much as it includes [ 10, 18, 19].
He suffers, however, from an unusual condition, which he's at pains to hide from his colleagues: at unpredictable intervals, he's irresistibly compelled to walk in a random direction until the compulsion passes and he drops with exhaustion.
