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Notes -
Sam Brinton Warrant Issued—Biden Official Accused of Stealing Luggage Again
So
I think it's safe to sayI believe that that Tweet thread that accused him of having a continually escalating fetish was right. IIRC there was some criticism of the Tweeter's objectivity and credentials, but I guess even a broken clock..I suppose my reaction could be called bigoted but I'm not surprised by this, nor was I surprised by the initial charges or even the claims that he was playing out a sexual fetish. In fact, I found it highly more plausible than the alternative given his bizarre behavior and reported lies when confronted.
Taken as a whole, I am more likely to distrust someone who shows such suspect behavior while also apparently being hellbent on signaling deviancy. Not a good combination.
EDIT: Strong language edit.
As far as I’m aware this is one of only two high ranking government officials with a trans identity (it could be more but these are the only two I think that are visible). And already one has been outed for sexual deviancy. Not a great base rate, and very bad optics if you’re seeking greater trans acceptance
That isn't what "base rate" means, base rate would be "rate in a larger population", not "rate among people who I've heard of in the news". Most obviously, taking 'two trans in government' as true, there are other high status positions with only few trans people - powerful executives (such as martine rothblatt ), celebrities, transgender state legislators. Each category increases the overall sample size, making 'one in two' much less obvious.
Also, they aren't transgender - "Brinton is bisexual.[9] Brinton, the first openly gender-fluid individual in federal government leadership, uses they and them pronouns.[1][5][6]". Transgender is sometimes used to include 'nonbinary/genderfluid' descriptively, but more in the 'everyone is queer uwu' sense than a literal one.
In terms of base rates, of the dozens of productive and competent transwoman software engineers I know of (whose economic value outweighs occasional purse theft) ... a decent few are 'sexual deviants', but almost none of them have committed crimes related to it.
Also, this isn't "outing" brinton as a sexual deviant, they were publicly a kink activist and did drag beforehand.
That you know of.
I don't think 'committing crimes [i.e. things like 'stealing luggage' not 'ordering unlicensed HRT'] related to sexual deviancy' is something >1 in 10 trans people do? do you disagree?
I really don't have any reasonable basis to either agree or disagree. My uninformed prior is that weirdo sex perverts (not generically LGBT, mind) probably commit roughly equivalent crimes or worse at around that rate.
Why would being into kink (one class of "weirdo sex perverts") indicate a high rate of committing crimes? It's mostly just a niche interest.
As a tangent - one example I happened to come across - aphyr, the jepsen guy, is quite kinky (obviously nsfw). Jepsen is an incredibly useful project for measuring and improving distributed systems - a good read here. So this is a serious, smart, and useful person. Yet - he isn't just kinky, he directly links from his programming blog to his mastodon account, where he RTs naked bound dudes and posts nsfw pics of himself along with posting about databases. And this with the words - "I've got a Mastodon account for snarky jokes, databases, and leather" - most won't intuit what "leather" means before they click and see a 250lb guy's ass. I've actually been to aphyr.com for programming stuff a dozen times - the technical interview series is based as shit, without noticing that. Most kinky people I either know personally, or know of, are just ... smart people who are kinky.
Tangent tangent - This is a great example of my opinion on "the LGBTs are awful deviants who are undermining civilization" - even if aphyr's homosexuality took a hundred prime age men out of the breeding pool, jepsen's utility to a networked society greatly outweighs it, and this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children. Being gay is a misuse or twisting of sexuality towards unnatural and meaningless ends, but ... it is so in a way that coexists with the infinitely complex interconnection of physical causation, and said physical causation is not bringing down society, while complex technical achievements are making society even more capable!
Oh shit, this is the guy who made me incredibly curious about Haskell!
It may not have been quite what he implied, but was still really valuable for my programming mindset.
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