My one Insider piece this week was a draft blog post on Matt Manning, Nolan Jones, Blake Rutherford, and more, with all three of those guys possibly going in the top ten picks next month. Eric and I will post a top 100 ranking on Wednesday and my first mock will go up the following week. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.
I’ve signed up for Tinyletter and you can subscribe to my newsletter – which I think will be mostly links to my work – via that link.
And now, the links…
- Thomas Friedman isn’t always my bag but his piece on the potential self-immolation of the Republican Party is measured and compelling, parceling out some blame to the other side as well.
- OZY has a profile of geneticist Eric Vilain, who studies the relationship between our genes and our sexual orientations and identities. His conclusions are controversial and not always in line with the modern/progressive conventional wisdom, such as the claim that “while some gender-nonconforming boys later identify as trans women, the vast majority — more than 80 percent — outgrow their gender dysphoria by puberty, identifying as gay men.”
- This is disturbing: A representative of the American Family Association, designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that they’re sending men into women’s restrooms at Target to “test” the store’s transfriendly bathroom policy, but the AFA issued a curiously-worded denial. It seems like they’re saying they’re not “encouraging men” to do this, but the statement doesn’t deny they’ve sent members into women’s bathrooms, right?
- My friend and colleague John Buccigross was the subject of a NY Times profile that focuses on his #bucciovertimechallenge idea, which has already raised six figures for hockey-related charities. John also has excellent taste in music, by the way.
- I’m actually not a fan of James Baldwin’s signature work, Go Tell It On the Mountain, but I still recommend this profile of the influential gay African-American writer and poet from the New York Review of Books.
- Five things you can do to help your brain “stay young,” or at least to try to keep it plastic as you age.
- The Las Vegas Review-Journal has become a farce of a newspaper, as the recent dismissal of Stephanie Grimes indicates.
- I linked to this on Twitter in the aftermath of the Chiefs drafting Tyreek Hill, who beat and choked his pregnant girlfriend while at Oklahoma State, but it’s worth reposting: Women who’ve been strangled by their abusive partners are seven times more likely to end up homicide victims. Strangulation is not a felony crime in twelve states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania; if you’re in one of those states, contact your local legislator and see if you can help get the law changed.
- Meanwhile, two hosts at WHB 610 in Kansas City, including Danny Parkins (on whose show I’ve appeared many times), set up a fundraising page for a local domestic violence shelter that has already raised over $12K.
- The U.S. Department of Transportation is starting a program to try to help communities isolated or left behind by infrastructure improvements in their areas. When communities aren’t adequately served by transportation systems, their local economies suffer.
- This is fun for geography junkies: an interactive map of world regimes by type from 1816 to 2011. The good news is that the global trend toward greater democracy is still going strong. And if you look at the red (least free) countries, you’ll find several of the worst economies on earth, and maybe you’ll wonder why the fuck we’re sending $43 million a year in aid to Swaziland, especially since that country’s highly corrupt dictatorship has sold donated food for cash before.
- A quality longread from the NY Times on whether prostitution should be a crime. It’s a difficult question even if you get beyond the morality of it, since prostitution is often less than consensual, but one thing that I think is clear is that the sex workers should not be charged with crimes for their actions, as they’re very often victims themselves.
I agree; because prostitution in most of the world is the result of coercion (often tied to human trafficking), the first step should be to decriminalize it from the workers’ side. It would also give them more protection when going to the police if they get robbed/beaten/raped/etc. by their customers or in many cases their pimps/traffickers.
On a different note, I know you tend to favor fiction over non-fiction with books Klaw, but what do you think about Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time?
Haven’t read it. Should I?
I would recommend it, although it would take a bit of effort to get through if you don’t like Baldwin’s prose (which I think is common).
Regarding strangulation (thanks for using that term this time, and please note that it is a HUGELY different thing from “choking,” even if people inaccurately use the two interchangeably in this context), making it a felony is actually not a necessity, because any well trained police officer will charge a strangulation case as attempted murder/felony assault. That’s not to say that every cop will charge this correctly, but there has been a lot of training for law enforcement during the last five years or so on the dangers of strangulation and why it’s not a “simple” assault
The US already has a center right party: the Democrats. Bernie Sanders is proposing center left policies in the vein of Europe social democracies and even FDR.
It’s a classic myth that our Democratic Party in the US is much further to the right than it actually is. One quick look around the EU reveals several member nations without a minimum wage. Just how progressive/center-left is that?
And they all have universal healthcare, paid leave, much higher tax revenues.
Keith, have there been studies (or have you seen studies) about the rate of transgendered people raping people? It seems like the women and children that most people seem to be more concerned about are much more in danger of incestual or marriage rape than they are of ever being assaulted by a transgendered person in a restroom.. Should we suggest that we should outlaw marriages and family contact. Not trying to be flippant about a serious issue, it just infuriates me that no one ever seems to point that issue out. Nor do they mention the tremendous rate of sexual abuse suffered by transgendered people.
Thanks again for the links, the chats , and all your other work.
I don’t think the concern is all about the transgendered, it’s about those who would potentially take liberties by claiming they are transgendered.
ChicagoMike,
In all honesty, that is an absurd claim.
If a cis individual goes into the bathroom “posing” as a transperson, one of two things will happen: they will use the bathroom unnoticed and no harm will be done to anyone; they will do something other than that and therefore be in violation of existing laws. It is really that simple. If a cis man throws on a dress, goes into a woman’s room, and rapes or molests someone, he is guilty of multiple crimes. None of these laws will “prevent” that from happening (insofar as any laws can actually prevent anything from happening) nor are they necessary to charge him.
Further, if cis individuals do engage in criminal activity while posing as transpeople, than the issue is with cis folks, not trans folks. Perhaps we need a law that says all cis men must use the men’s room and all cis women must use the women’s room. Or just bar cis people from leaving the house at all seeing as how they are responsible for the vast, vast, vast majority of sexual assault in this country.
Transgendered people have been discreetly using public restrooms for years. A person with criminal intent could do what you say before, during, and after this issue blew up. Functionally nothing has changed except that transgendered people are in much greater danger of being singled out and falsely accused by people with an agenda.
Was in a rabbit hole and found this and thought of you, Keith: http://spinelessbooks.com/mccaffery/100/
Thoughts? Not like you NEED another book list, but it is always interesting.