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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34971 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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This isn't exclusive to the LGBT community either - plenty of straight people engage in similar things and get half as much flack for it.

Can you name a single other government employee who has voluntarily talked to the media about their fetishes in comparable detail? What about celebrities in general? What passes for you as an example of a straight person doing something similar?

Celebrities is a little too low of a bar. As awkward as Brinton's seminars are, they're still not as overt as Madonna's infamous Toronto masturbation performances, and there's a small industry of shock jocks that'll describe far more than you need to know about their personal tastes on your way to work every morning.

But as you've pointed out many times, even listening to those at work is grounds for a federal investigation (what was the case with the Gadsden flag(?) you cite whenever this came up?)

Yeah, there's a very awkward contradiction, not just with the EEOC v. Sheldon, where merely wearing the wrong t-shirt can require investigation, but also cases like Reeves v CH Robinson Worldwide where a radio playing sexually-charged content was tortuous. And those aren't outliers; they're just particularly legible examples, where as most of it ends up in the penumbras of understandings of HR policies that still toss people to the curb.

There's ways to thread this needle, even if SlightlyLessHairyApe's "specifically directed" was spoiled at the time he'd written it. But it's very hard to come up with versions that don't read as post-hoc, with exceptions that conveniently cover the people the rule-marker likes and rules that cover the ones the rule-maker doesn't.

On the other hand, you need to notice the allowances and exceptions explicitly, to notice the depth of the problem.

Can you name a single other government employee who has voluntarily talked to the media about their fetishes in comparable detail?

Can you name a straight government employee that was even asked about something like this? It's not a fair comparison because different groups get treated differently.

What passes for you as an example of a straight person doing something similar?

There's plenty of BDSM conventions, fetish clubs, and other things that straight people engage in all the time. Most of us don't talk about it too much because that's not the norm. Even if we did talk about, we don't get labelled as a sexual deviant. However, there are definitely exceptions to this rule as there is in the LGBT community.

Can you name a straight government employee that decided to give public seminars on their sexually deviant lifestyle?

Not saying it hasn't happened, but that's also my point - We only care about Brinton because of their sexual identity and our current obsession with identity politics. Any other straight employee would never have faced this sort of spotlight.

Facing this sort of spotlight= advertising it about himself, apparently.

Can you name a straight government employee that was even asked about something like this?

Are you implying Sam was just blindsided about it, apropos of nothing, in a totally unrelated interview, and that their history of activism on the topic does not justify doing so?

I never said that? I did say that the media blew up this story and investigated his private life far more than any government employee due to their sexual identity. That isn't a false statement and I'm not claiming anything other than that.

Even if we did talk about, we don't get labelled as a sexual deviant

This is absolutely not true. I don't remember leftists standing up for Larry Garfield after he was fired for kinky sex stuff his employer only found out about by someone doxxing and reporting him.

It's the hypocrisy and gaslighting that's most upsetting about this. Who gets absolute freedom to do anything they want to whomever they want is strictly "who/whom," and the rules will never be applied to protect a group that isn't under the untouchable shield of "queerness."

different groups get treated differently.

One group gets to do BDSM sex play in front of children in public or get paid to come to your kids' library dressed like this, and the other is hunted for sport by the exact same groups promoting the former.

The question is why this goal is so important to these groups. Do you have any ideas from the inside?

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