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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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