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What exactly makes them a freak?
Also, why would you say that went out of their way to hire Brinton? They have dual masters' degrees in nuclear engineering from MIT & plenty of relevent work experience. I'd say they earned their position. Is that not enough for the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy?
Oh don’t be cute, you know exactly what makes him a freak. Any reasonable definition of freak would include this guy. He is undeniably an extreme, bleeding edge outlier on the spectrum of gender/sex weirdness. You may love that, but it doesn’t change his outlierness. Just be honest please
This is unnecessarily confrontational, and when the question is over what makes someone a "freak," there is a clearly a disagreement over definitions. You may think your definition is obvious and undeniable, but it is not, and you don't get to just tell people "Be honest and accept my premises." Less consensus-building, less antagonism.
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I never said they weren't an outlier? But 'freak' and 'outlier' are two completely different things with completely different social connotations, especially when talking about a person.
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Probably his appearance, along with his insistence on sharing his fetishes loudly and publicly.
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Plenty of people, even gay people and people with made up gender identities, know better than to insist on talking about their fetish for pretend bestiality while giving interviews about their appointments to the department of energy. The whole kink lifestyle is weird enough, you don’t have to go on TV talking about it.
A few years back I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast where the guest was talking about their "pet play" fetish where a bunch of gay men would pretend to be dogs and have sex. Oddly, the host of Freakonomics was very supportive, almost going out of his way to endorse this bizarre lifestyle.
How did we pivot so quickly from "whatever happens from closed doors is your own business" to celebrating sexual fetishes in public and if you don't like it you're a bigot. Normal people don't take talk about their fetishes at work.
What's doubly-bizarre is that if a straight man did this at work, he'd be taken to HR almost instantly. "You see, Alice, I practice a lifestyle of enjoying having sex with attractive big-breasted women."
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Can you link this interview? I'm not familiar with it and I wasn't able to find it
What kink lifestyle are you referring to? Is it in the same interview as above?
I think it’s this one:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/puppy-play/
Around minute 37ish. It’s a professor of something or another, and he came specifically to talk about it.
If I'm reading correctly, it looks like this was published in 2019. The commenter I was replying to specifically said that they were talking about this while also talking about their appointment to the DoE (which happened in 2022).
Oh, my bad, I thought you were replying to this:
https://www.themotte.org/post/205/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/38252?context=8#context
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Can’t find the interview, but here’s an article about him promoting his fetishism: https://wrno.iheart.com/featured/walton-and-johnson/content/2022-02-14-bidens-new-doe-hire-a-queer-activist-who-enjoys-puppy-play-gimp-kink/
Thank you. So what is your point with this? People are freaks if they talk about their kinks to an audience who wants to hear about it? Are you saying that the government shouldn't hire people who talk about their personal life?
You know what? Yes. I don't need to know shit like this about people in the public eye. I don't want to know it. If they want to talk about it to a particular audience, find somewhere private to do that.
God almighty, the whole gay rights decriminalise sodomy and later on legalise same-sex marriage was publicised as "it's nobody's business what two consenting people do in private in the bedroom". Now we have people dragging us into their bedrooms, or rather putting their bedrooms out in the public square, in order to tell us all about what they do.
Shut. The. Hell. Up. About. Your. Love. Life. That goes for straight celebs as well.
What? Where in this story is Brinton dragging you into their bedroom and forcing you to learn about what they do? Yes, there are articles that talk about Brinton's sexual kinks. Yes, you can find Brinton talking about these kinks on youtube as well.
But that is literally what people/media do: They talk about shit. If you don't like it, you don't have to click. Or read. Or listen. There is nothing being 'forced' here. Their beds aren't out in the public square - their story is in a link that you chose to click.
Since sharing your sexual kinks isn't illegal, this entire issue can be chalked up to personal preference. I read shit I don't agree with all the time and move along since it doesn't apply to me. I know you don't support this but that doesn't mean that it's automatically bad and should be done in your way. Make me an argument about why this is morally wrong and/or should be considered illegal. That's valid. But getting frustrated like this is the same thing as some Karen yelling at people blasting music in their cars. Move on.
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Yes, he is a sexual deviant. That’s in itself only one strike against him, but he has dedicated a significant portion of his life to spreading(technically ‘advocating’) his sexual deviancy. And I’m totally comfortable saying the government shouldn’t hire people who talk about how awesome it is to have sex with animals.
Just to be clear, this is just your opinion. I'd like to hear more about why you think they're a sexual deviant with more reasons than 'I disagree'.
I'm not familiar with them ever advocating for sex with actual animals, rather just some sort of creative role-playing. Otherwise we'd be in jail when girls call us daddy in bed. Regardless, I'm still interested to hear exactly why you think this sort of role play is so bad as to justify the government knowing about it.
But remember folks, there is no such thing as the slippery slope! Posting images of yourself in BDSM harness gear with your puppy subs kneeling beside you isn't any big deal! It's just normal sexual behaviour like cis het people holding hands in public!
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Pretending to have sex with animals is degenerate sexual deviancy for the same reasons lolicon is- sure, it may not be the sort of thing that should be illegal, but it's very definitely morally suspect to imitate a forbidden act as closely as can be for delectation. I don't think we should go digging to see if anyone has ever dressed up as a puppy during sex, but when you're giving public conferences about it, well, kinda don't get to claim it's totally private anymore.
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Words have commonly-accepted meanings. The commonly-accepted meaning of "deviant," as memorialized in Webster's dictionary, is "straying or deviating especially from an accepted norm" or "someone or something that deviates from a norm, especially: a person who differs markedly (as in social adjustment or behavior) from what is considered normal or acceptable"
It seems fairly noncontroversial to me that Brinton's (1) style of dress, (2) preferred pronoun, (3) self-described "sadistic" sexuality, and (4) particular interest in "pup play" puts him far outside of the norm of gender presentation and sexual behavior in the west.
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Your comments repeatedly imply that he is just a normal privacy-minded person like you or me, but the dastardly media went snooping around his private life to out him. Like here, you are telling him to justify the government digging up his private sex life as if he isn’t shouting it from the rooftops and making it absolutely front and center of his presentation and public image. Nobody has to do any snooping here. This is like that huge breasted Canadian trans teacher.
If I publicly made age-play and daddy-daughter roleplay central to my public image, and tweeted on my public, professional twitter about my sex-with-daughter roleplay I wouldn’t be surprised if HR paid me a visit.
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If he deliberately makes his private life public, people should be able to make negative inferences about him based on the information that he voluntarily made public.
I'm not so sure this info becoming public was exactly voluntary but I digress. I guess I'm the type who doesn't think that one should make negative inferences without having good reasons. So I'd ask myself what exactly I dislike about them and if it is something that I should find to be morally bad.
Without that, anyone that looks or does anything differently than you just automatically becomes a freak. Seems like a reductive way to live but to each their own.
It was involuntary that he gave an interview and multiple public facing talks discussing his very strange sex life?
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By this reasoning, he could be perpetually unwashed and swear all the time and nobody should say anything negative about that. In fact, by this reasoning, dress codes anywhere would be worthy of condemnation unless they actually pose health risks if not followed.
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I think this is a very interesting point. I'm not too familiar with Dreher but I find his article quite interesting. Under his framework, does he expand any further into where he draws the line in terms of kinks? Nazi role play of course sounds gross, but even mainstream kinks (like BDSM) also sound pretty gross too. I just don't know where to draw the line at a point where it isn't completely arbitrary.
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