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If you care I'll offer the leftist perspective on this. Of course this story is bigger than usual due to Brinton's identity. But Brinton isn't to blame for their outsized persona. I think Brinton's personal life adequately sums up how they came to be the person they are today.
Backstory:
Brinton grew up with homophobic parents who sent him to a conversion camp for two years after he came out. These camps are notorious for being both ineffective (clearly lol) and inhumane. Brinton's experience was so bad that they contemplated suicide while at the camp. Once out of the camp, Brinton was motivated to prevent others from having their same experience and started a successful political campaign to end conversion camps nationwide. After, they earned graduate degrees at MIT and starting working for several liberal think-tanks. The Biden administration then offered them a position which Brinton accepted. Despite having high-value degrees & work experience, Brinton received criticism for being a diversity hire. Then the suitcase incident happened.
Here's how Brinton's life would have gone if we lived in a Leftist Utopia™️:
Brinton grew up with supportive parents. After graduating high school, Brinton earned graduate degrees in nuclear science from MIT. They then worked with liberal think-tanks until they were offered a mid-tier government job in the area of their degree & work experience. Then the suitcase incident happened
Looking at the two stories, it's clear that Brinton's real life story is heavily influenced by their identity. Their entire childhood and pre-college experience would have been very different if they were straight or if society accepted them as-is. I'm seeing a lot of people talk about how Brinton is at fault for the extra attention due to their appearance & persona. But that's not Brinton's fault (unless you believe that Brinton is just making it up). The attention that's been given to Brinton is mostly negative - people questioning their credentials, calling them a diversity grad, a freak, etc.
If any other mid tier government employee took the wrong bag from the airport and claimed it was an honest mistake, it would only make the news AFTER a guilty verdict was reached (if guilty). Instead, this has become a major story because of Brinton's identity.
So, in the most utopian dream world you can imagine, all these things are still around? Rather low definition of "utopia".
You are right, it would not be treated the in same way.
If outspoken Christian fundamentalist activist hired by Trump administration made such "mistake", it would be on front page of all respectable news sources worldwide, it would not be left to British tabloid gutter press.
(insert your favorite "imagine if the situation was reversed" meme)
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If Joe Bloggs, mid-level civil service minion, took the suitcase of Jane Doe or John Roe from the airport, had video evidence of them taking the case and ripping off the tag, denied that they took the case, then said maybe they took the wrong case but their clothes were inside it(?), then said they left the clothes that were inside in their hotel room (and the hotel says no clothes were left), and had gone around for a few weeks or a couple of months using that suitcase as their own when on trips - there would and should be questions asked, because what the hell was going on?
Yes, Brinton's public persona contributes to the publicity, as does the fact that it was a woman's property and contained her clothing. But if this was Sam Brinton, straight cis guy in a suit, and he did the same thing - then yeah, the same questions should be asked. Why did he take it? What happened to the contents? How could it be an 'honest mistake' if he didn't have a bag on the flight with him? Was he drunk? Stoned? Suffering from some mental impairment? Has he done anything like this before?
Maybe it's kleptomania. But being genderfluid queer non-binary doesn't constitute a "Get out of jail free" card, anymore than being anonymous boring cis het white male should do in a case like this.
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Yes, that's exactly what I believe. This kind of thing reminds me of the kid in my class who used to make stuff up for attention constantly. "My eyes change colour when I'm mad" being a notable standout. As far as I can tell, it's mostly the same thing minus being able to immediately and obviously prove it as bullshit on the spot. But bullshit it remains, as far as I'm concerned. Brinton is just a dude seeking attention.
What's your basis for your assumption that Brinton is lying about his rough childhood?
... while I don't think it's especially relevant for this case, some of the details in Brinton's past summaries are extremely unusual, especially for their time period. Conversion therapy doesn't work, but even into the late-90s it'd mostly turned into very creepy talk therapy and sometimes the use of psychiatric drugs to reduce sex drive. Which can still get pretty damn overtly abusive!
Brinton alleged that an unnamed therapist applied severe heat, ice, needles, and electrical shocks. There were still therapists using electroshock aversives against children in the early 2000s, but even places like the Judge Rotenberg Center (mostly for autistics) were far outliers and acting in far more circumspect ways. Most serious reports along things line date back to the early 80s or late 70s. The scientific discrediting of aversion therapy probably wasn't enough evidence against its use by some of the more extreme anti-gay actors, but the combination of increasingly bad publicity related to the tactic and changing norms related to psychiatric therapists made it much less common.
And most of the stuff is in that class. It's not that Brinton's father shamed or even beat Brinton for being gay; on coming out, his father allegedly punched the child in the face hard enough to result in one of seven ER visits, and later aimed a gun at the kid. See here for a Blue Tribe perspective. It's possible Wesen's covering for the movement now, but he does point out suspicions dating back to 2011.
This isn't strong evidence: Wesen focuses on Brinton's unwillingness to name names, but it's not quite so completely unheard of to have difficulty with them. And there have been some reports of the use of foul-smelling chemical aversives into the mid-90s and early-00s. And violent threats aimed at gay children weren't completely unheard of in the 00s, and you'd expect some correlation between parents punching kids and parents willing to have their kids electrically shocked. But it raises some questions.
Thanks for the detailed response.
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I don't have any opinion on that. I just think is gender identity is made up for attention.
I don't really buy into the whole "non-binary" thing either.
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Criminals are usually not the most trustworthy sources, and, face, it, the whole thing was no accident.
Such accidents happen daily on every airport of the world, and are easily resolved when normal, non criminal people are involved.
https://www.quora.com/What-happens-if-someone-else-takes-your-luggage-from-the-airport
I agree that what Brinton did cannot reasonably be characterised as an honest mistake. But it seems like a bit of a jump to think "this person committed a crime, therefore we must assume that everything they have ever said about their personal life was a lie and nothing they say can be trusted." Being guilty of one crime does not imply that you are guilty of all crimes, or that you are a pathological liar.
His behavior was exactly one of pathological liar.
"yes, this was not my suitcase, but the clothes inside were mine"
WTF? Ordinary junkie stealing shit to get the next fix would find better excuse when caught. This guy is supposed to be some high IQ irreplaceable genius?
I agree, which is why I don't think Brinton is a pathological liar. I would naively predict a person who lies compulsively to have more practice at coming up with convincing-sounding lies on the spur of the moment. Brinton's behaviour seems more consistent with someone who did something stupid and then panicked when caught red-handed, than with a smooth cunning con artist effortlessly talking their way out of a tight spot.
If Brinton had been caught red-handed, but immediately came up with an untrue-but-believable explanation on the fly, that would cause me to update in favour of their being someone who routinely tells lies and gets away with it. The fact that they got caught red-handed and their "explanation" was so unconvincing (as you said yourself) suggests to me that they do not have a great deal of practice in telling lies i.e. they are not a pathological liar.
"Smooth talking con artist" who is good at his con job is not pathological, pathological lying is compulsive, absurd lying for no conceivable benefit.
We all heard about people who keep inventing fanciful, over the top tales about their past, who cannot stop talking how they are war heroes or Indian princesses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying
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I used to think like you so I know that I'm not going to convince you in a comment.
But this is still very interesting to me - one of the reasons I changed my mind on this is because I saw people in my own life (real people) come out and it made me question this reasoning. These were people that I knew for decades, people who didn't need attention, and often people who came out at a great expense (their families kicked them out, etc). I knew them well enough to know that they weren't just totally bullshitting me.
I think it's naive to think that people will go to a conversion camp for two years all for.... attention? It doesn't really follow that older LGBT people in their fifties are still doing it for the attention either. So why do you think that this is primarily attention related? If it was simply a personal choice you could turn off and on, why risk getting kicked out of your home or being discriminated against in a job interview?
I don't really know the circumstances here, but a statement like 'I went to a conversion therapy camp for two years' can leave a lot of stuff unsaid, assuming that you will envision a precocious teenager being prodded with tasers and subjected to Clockwork Orange-style aversion therapy behind barbed wire fences. When it could also mean being sent to a boring stuffy Christian camp two summers in a row to sing lame songs about Jesus. Now I don't know the specific details, and of course it can also be very unpleasant to be taught that your sexual feelings are inherently sinful and can never be acted upon. But they are still very different things, and in a society that rewards victims, there will always be a tendency to round up one's traumatic past to the nearest cliche.
In this case, Brinton was suicidal in these camps and was so disgusted by them that they went on a nationwide campaign to ban them. You can read more about their personal experience as well. It's pretty tough stuff and certainly something that you'd think a teenage would push through for attention. I do understand where you're coming from though.
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Reads to me as a "no fuck you Dad!". I'm presuming there was already some tension there beforehand and this was the latest in a long line of actions intended to upset the parents or push back on their values or otherwise frustrate the rules of their house. That's the situation I personally see most often. "I don't like my parents so I'm going to make myself hideous and demand they respect it to get back at them/show they don't own me/whatever". It's the (de-?)evolution of bringing a black guy home, or having a fling with a same-sex partner, I guess.
Because the only things that happen are a person makes themselves ugly (usually, some go low effort and don't bother), and then starts demanding special treatment from everyone around them. This leads me to believe that the special treatment is the primary goal. The cheap and petty power thrill of making people stumble over their language for you. The constant reassurance to an insecure soul that people will inconvenience themselves for you. It seems parasitic, almost.
Why do people get piercings or tattoos knowing they could be discriminated against in future? (Not that I really believe it would constitute a malus to employment, if anything you'll become a diversity hire and get spotlights and positions far beyond what you deserve.) But we don't consider having face piercings a gender, and we don't consider having hand tattoos a gender. A person might feel incomplete if they were unadorned, even. Feel like they weren't being themselves. People might even get kicked out of their home for coming home with a tattoo their parents don't approve of! But crucially, they don't then demand inkself pronouns or nonsense like that. There's no impetus on other people around them to acknowledge and validate them, which means I can believe tattoos are done for the person's personal satisfaction in a way that I cannot believe for genderspecials.
ed; As for the older LGBT -- getting older as a homosexual is a constant barraging reinforcement of being told you're too old to matter and should just go off and quietly die in a hole somewhere because nobody wants or cares about you anymore. So any trend they can get in on to try and still feel "young" and "with it" will naturally be pounced upon. It's Dr Evil doing his silly little dance to try and impress Scott.
That's an interesting experience of which I'm not familiar with. I'm sure this does happen but this seems to be quite a one-sided reading of these situations. As I get older I regret giving the benefit of the doubt to adults as much as I have in the past - Parents whose kids "magically, out of nowhere" became rebellious and attention seeking always had a very different story once they were able to speak freely about their situation. We can go back and forth on this of course due to our varying personal experiences.
This is quite the one-sided take again. The only things that happen are people making themselves uglier? Uglier to whom? A woman might be uglier to you while becoming more appearing to a lesbian (no offense intended). Regardless, you're acting as though special treatment is the primary motivating factor here. What is your reasoning for that other than a personal assumption? I have to assume that you don't have much personal contact with these groups of people because this sort of reasoning is only something I read about in hypothetical right-wing publications. It's certainly not the norm.
This is a laughable comparison. You're talking about a group of people who think that sexuality is an innate trait and comparing it to jewelry that can be removed in a few hours.
You continue to make the assumption that that sexuality is as much of a choice as choosing to get a tatoo. Where are you getting this idea? Surely not from members of the LGBT community. I'm really curious to hear.
Funny, because as I get older I mostly realise that "oh god, my mother was right about everything all along". At least 90% of the time. And of course a teenager (or mental teenager) is going to have a different perspective on the matter, but that doesn't mean they're not histrionic. What I always think of is this video;
https://youtube.com/shorts/PJdmTZCWKXM
Now that's from the kid's perspective and it still makes her look like a useless waste of space. Her parents asked for a moderate contribution to living in the house post-18 and the response was to refuse, and to try to "educate" them, and hide behind mental illness to avoid doing what was asked of her. Presumably because it would involve getting off her ass and actually doing something other than fester on twitter/tiktok. This is what these sorts of identity and mental illness celebrants always remind me of.
Why wouldn't it be? Nothing else changes when you demand silly nonstandard pronouns. We are told that people can present however they want and you are obligated to kowtow to their requests instantly and without question.
I'm gay. I could hardly have more contact with them if I tried. And believe me, I try to avoid genderspecials at all costs.
I wasn't talking about sexuality at all. You're the only one talking about that. I'm talking about genderspecials; people who identify as made up, non-male/female genders and demand nonstandard pronouns. And as far as I can tell, doing so is nothing more than a fashion trend. You maybe change how you look a little (for the worse) and that's it.
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I mean... setting aside the way he dresses and his pronouns, how is it not his fault that he makes his "puppy play" fetish part of his public persona? Why can't he keep his kinks and fetishes inside the bedroom?
This 'public persona' is a part of their private life that has now been made public by the media. A lot of people do a lot of interesting shit - I'm sure if we followed other mid-tier government officials closely we'd find some interesting shit too. But it's not like they're doing anything illegal here either.
Because they don't have to? I keep my sexual life private as most people do. But I don't do that because it's against the law. I do it because I choose to do so. If someone else has a different approach, good for them. 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. Our decision on how we conduct our private lives is up to us assuming we don't break any laws. Just because we find something weird to us doesn't mean that it is or that we should immediately disapprove of such behavior.
At the end of the day, we're talking about a mid-tier official. Their personal lives are irrelevant as long as a) they're qualified for the job b) perform the job well and c) aren't a threat to national security. Brinton (assuming he's innocent lol) meets these criteria.
Nope, they were the one who posted tweets about, and photos of themself with the pups online (though they seem to have scrubbed their Instagram now). It wasn't the media that went out and dug up private photos. This is "live by the sword, die by the sword" material; Brinton deliberately made use of a public platform to be open about their, uh, non-conventional interests in order to mainstream them and remove shame around it etc. Well, then they don't have a leg to stand on when the "guy who likes to shave his head and wear lipstick and heels and do BDSM stuff is accused of bizarre crime with possibly, who knows, sexual kink undertones" reporting happens.
I don't think they stole the case for the contents (women's clothes) because they can get those themself anyway, but who knows? Maybe it was all part of a 'thrill of the forbidden' indulgence. Maybe they just really liked the case and wanted it. (Why not buy one of their own?) But if you're going to be kinky in public, then this is the kind of speculation that you are inviting, because this is the world we are living in.
This is exactly what I mean by private life being made public by the media. This is usually how this sort of stuff happens - the media obtains photos (publicly available photos as well as nonpublic photos), write articles based on what they found, and then publish those photos to millions of people. The media blew this story up. Brinton merely posted about these on their personal social media channels as anyone else would do. Yes, the photos were still 'public' beforehand. But they are now hugely popular talking points because of media involvement, not due to Brinton. Now of course both sides of the media are making this a huge story for obvious reasons.
Of course, anything you put online has a chance to get out into public despite your personal intention. But that's not what I'm talking about here - you and other commentators are baselessly assuming that Brinton intentionally and willingly is using these sorts of photos to create a public persona for their brand. I'm just pointing out that the media are the ones doing this, not Brinton. The media wants us to think certain things about Brinton to drive clicks on both sides.
If you have a social media account under your own name and you share photos about your life, you have consented to those photos being viewed by anyone who cares to view them. As such, you cannot reasonably complain about your privacy being violated when people (including journalists) pull photos of you from a publicly available source when you yourself gave your consent for those photos to be viewed (and, by extension, shared) - up to and including if they use these photos to present you in an unflattering light.
A journalist gaining illicit access to your iCloud account in order to steal naked photos of you which you did not intend for public consumption? Unethical, a legitimate violation of your privacy, illegal in many jurisdictions. A journalist downloading photos which you yourself published on a public Instagram account under your own name? Fair game and entirely legitimate journalistic practice.
All of the above goes double if you are a public figure employed by the government and paid by the taxpayer.
If you share nude photos of yourself with your boyfriend, then your boyfriend shares them with other people without your consent, that is absolutely a violation of your privacy. In many jurisdictions (including my own) it is in fact a criminal offense. But if you post nude photos of yourself on a public platform, you have given your consent for those images to be seen by anyone who cares to see them. Or to put it another way, a porn star who voluntarily consents to appearing in a pornographic film cannot reasonably claim that their privacy was violated when the film is published for public consumption.
Sam Brinton's Instagram is private, although I don't know if this is a recent change. Brinton's Twitter is public, which means that any content posted there is fair game for a journalist to use, including journalists who do not share Brinton's politics.
I don't understand what the second sentence is supposed to mean. Do you mean to imply that Brinton was coerced into sharing photos about their kinks on social media? I would be very surprised indeed if someone put a gun to their head and forced them to post photos about their kinks or whatever on Instagram.
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I'm leaning towards the kleptomania thrill-seeking angle because it's the only one that really makes sense of all of the facts.
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I dunno, "it's not illegal" is a far cry from "it's not his fault." It isn't illegal for him to engage in public "puppy play," but it also isn't illegal for us to criticize his extreme and gratuitous violation of social norms.
Kanye's antisemitic speech isn't illegal either; did Adidas err by firing him?
For sure, but I'm advocating for consistency. Your 'social norms' are probably very different than mine. I don't even think criticizing someone for breaking social norms is really acceptable either - Why is this specific action 'bad'? Should we cast judgement on someone because they do things differently? etc.
It undermines the norms of monogamy and private sexuality. Why isn't it bad? If you're the one proposing a radical change in public norms, shouldn't you bear the burden?
Why are those dudes who go naked under their trenchcoats and then flash children on the subway bad? Do you agree that they're bad? What specific harm are they causing?
I can't believe this comment has 8 upvotes - you're telling me that you can't see what's wrong with directly exposing underage, nonconsenting children to sexual body parts? Or exposing themselves to any nonconsenting adult? Reading an article online about a kink is in no way comparable.
Why is undermining a norm a bad thing? Isn't that what humans have done for thousands of years to get us to this point? Sure, it's different, but that doesn't immediately make it 'bad'.
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If its that easy to undermine the norm of monogamy, then that is what should happen. People are naturally polygamous, that is why people take a lot of risk to cheat on their consort, fucking the same person gets old after a while and so less pleasurable. I thought you were gay? Ymttm you dont make it a point to make love with new guys on a regular basis?
Private sexuality is a norm that if dissolved, would allow people to enhance their pleasure by having sex in public if that is what pleases them, and by letting people who want to see other people have sex because it gives them a fluttery feeling that they like and gives them something to think about afterwards be able to satisfy these desires.
Men flashing children on the subway is not bad unless the subway owner does not allow it but I think the subway owner should allow it because of pretty much the same reason as for the prior idea.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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."
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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