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@samiamsam Well, that seems to be their thing... right?
Anyone who spends that much time working themselves up over who has what tackle in a washroom at a school is very clearly imagining a lot of stuff that only someone with a taste for that sort of thing would allow to inhabit their brain more than a second.
I think a fair percentage of the population probably has underage fantasies. A much smaller percentage ever acts on it. But if a movement legitimises the obsession, then yuck.
Frankly, if that was the consistent public response of every sane politician on the subject, this whole issue would be gone by tomorrow.
Sometimes the truth is very simple. Sometimes motivations, in fact, are very base. Sometimes you do not owe these people the dignity of an ideology when what they are is just people with a sexual interest in children who have now found a way to legitimise it.
If I were a politician this is what I would say about right-wing groups demand to examine the genitals of athletes:
While it is gratifying to think their motivation for doing this is to hate on Trans folk, (Because at least then they see you - even if it's seeing you and hating you), I think the motivation is much baser.
I think this whole spurious hysteria over Trans athletes is simply window dressing for their perverse desire to examine children's genitals with the blessing of the state.
I think they should all be prohibited by law for drinking tea. It's not English. 
@12thRITS Okay, well, it's not a literary text. But for the subject matter, it is very coherent and fluent.
If I don't let nature determine my fate in terms of disease, or physical disability, or access to food or shelter, why the fuck would I let nature be the determinant of my ideological beliefs?
True, nature is not kind. Nature allows for obscene levels of suffering.
The incoherence of the right with their embrace of social darwinism is that they constantly do everything in their power as white, male, christians to inure themselves from the cruelty of nature while demanding others endure it.
@DrorBedrack Understood. Look, the author is Canadian and the north American definition of liberal is very different from the European one.
That being said, the book is excellent.
Honestly, I don't need to appeal to some shadowy big other, nature or science or religion, to justify my passionate belief in equality and diversity.
Because I have morals.
I also have concrete proof of concept: hundreds of massive, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial cities that are the most prosperous, culturally rich and diverse places on earth, where people have lived together for hundreds of years without, for most of their existences, slaughtering each other.
His conclusion is that 'liberals/libertarians' take fundamental issue with the principle of equality in society and rely on some very dodgy science to confirm their own sense of genetic superiority.
How did greedy fuckery ever gain the status of 'ideology'? But it certainly is accepted as such.
However, I have never made the argument that equality is a natural truth. Equality is an idea to embrace, to MAKE a truth, because it allows for the organisation of more ethical social systems.
RE: https://mstdn.social/@Remittancegirl/117177735508773011
So, I finished the book. It is exceptionally well-written. Super accessible. It does suffer from being an academic text in that the author over-supplies examples to make his argument. I was persuaded of his central thesis about half-way through.
However, he chooses a very specific and, for Europeans, a quite unfamiliar definition of liberalism. He conflates it with libertarianism, and makes a robust argument for why he does so.
@itsfoss Which is why I use it, and give them money.
The movie 9-5 did more to promote feminism that 99% of the intellectual texts on the topic.
I remember watching it with my mother who said - something I didn’t understand at the time - that Dolly Parton was ‘a woman’s woman’
RE: https://texasobserver.social/@TexasObserver/117106268063592160
The only thing that will appease extremist Republicans is a poor and ignorant population to act as a slave class.
Meanwhile, I'm really glad I don't hold my doctorate from the University of Houston. Once a university does shit like this, what are its degrees actually worth? How does a degree from that institution attest to a standard of knowledge?
Some days it feels like half my timeline is in Finnish.
Thank you for all the wonderful follow prompts, Sune!