In Defense Of Going Out is Ramona Emerson‘s plea to urbanites to appreciate the simple joy of the house party. It contains her definition of friendship: “Friends are just people you’re not interested in sleeping with because they are the wrong gender or have some other gross defect.” Which I find funny in and of itself, but also my disagreement with it hints at why I’m not super good at monogamy.
Slutever’s Karley Sciortino wrote a great Year in Sex, 13 highlights from the worlds of love and sex in 2015, for Vogue. The things I know about I agree with her on, the things I don’t know about are now on my reading list.
Freddie deBoer: “Gawker commenters enraged that politician claims he can do the work of democracy by converting opponent’s supporters [story]. This is where trendy progressivism is now: I’d rather my political opponents not be convinced so that I can keep feeling superior to them.”
Avens O’Brien: “I think this also applies to certain libertarians.” Uh, yeah.
This is my Bloggingheads interview with Kevin Glass, who I find to be incredibly fair-minded, incredibly consistently.
Oh man. It’s now illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender in New York City for employment, public accommodations, and housing. There are two, in my opinion, good justifications for anti-discrimination legislation. As an anarchist I don’t support new legislation. But I do support rolling back discriminatory laws, such as redlining. Though I don’t support ADL, I can still admit when the reasoning is solid and evidence is good.
One good reason for ADL is to correct for discrimination caused by government interference. For example, the government has fucked up the market for housing so thoroughly in favor of whites and against non-whites that it’s perhaps justifiable to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race for housing to try to begin to try to rectify that wrong. The other good argument for ADL is when without them POC can’t access any accommodations or they’re very hard to get to.
BUT HOLY FUCK NO in this case. First of all, where is the evidence that any gender has a hard enough time accessing employment, public accommodations, or housing that legislation is necessary? Second, the New York City Human Rights Law (“NYCHRL”) also prohibits discriminatory harassment and bias-based profiling by law enforcement. This is where trans individuals are objectively being fucked right now, figuratively and literally. Trans people are much more likely to be homeless and sex workers, both populations abused by police officers. If the NYC Commission on Human Rights wants to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender, fining businesses who don’t hire enough trans people is not the way to go. The thing to do is:
1. Force police to accurately report on the gender identities of the people they harass.
2. Set up a Commission on Human Rights sub task force to investigate accusations of police abuse against trans individuals.
3. Decriminalize sex work so that trans victims of abuse can come forward about abuse without fear of arrest, imprisonment, criminal records, or being forced into “rescue” programs.
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