I know my readers are exceptionally loyal, and hang off my and only my every word. But if you were subscribed to or click around on the front page for other Freethought Blogs, you’d know that Daniel at Camels With Hammers has an excellent post up about being a sensitive male. That guy loves girls!? How gay!

Apparently there is this unwritten rule (of which I was unaware until Dahlen actually wrote it down) that admiring and identifying with women, rather than reducing them either to objects of lust or worship (whores or madonnas), makes you a gay man. So here are your options, straight women: real red-blooded heterosexual men who will never admire or identify with you or sensitive, admiring, identifying gay men who will never sleep with you.

And straight guys like me who have adored and crushed on and respected and learned from and admired and romantically loved and identified with and lusted after and been intimate friends with women their whole lives are suddenly in danger of appearing gay to other guys because, you know, thinking anything about some woman besides her body or her sexuality is estimable is not actually healthy or even, like, super-heterosexual but actually accidentally gay. If you love women as actual people who inspire you in multiple ways, you must want to have sex with men. Because all sensitive people want to have sex with men. And, to be clear, being gay is the worst thing any guy can be. Apparently even for gay guys, since this is the third rail of male sexuality itself, not just of male heterosexuality.

Stephen “Darksyde” Andrew explores why it’s so difficult to get politicians to represent people other than the rich:

The boiler room strategy is done because federal contribution limits are currently $2,500 per person, per cycle (This may confuse some readers who remember past election limits of $2,400, but the limits are indexed to inflation in odd-numbered years and have since gone up). Typically, you ask big donors to max out for both primary and general election — that’s 5 grand right there folks! Do the same for a spouse and that’s 10,000 bucks. Add kids or grandkids and their spouses, and a single phone call to a wealthy family can result in $30,000 or more. Even in high profile races with national visibility, a call netting 10 to 30 grand is a huge score and is candidate only closes on one or two calls a week the campaign war chest grows.

Think about what that means: all day long the candidate is talking to people who can give serious loot, in many cases he or she has called before, maybe several times, and struck up a relationship with the prospect. The candidate is having dozens of in-depth conversations a day with very wealthy people, asking them what they want to see in politics, trying to convince them that s/he sincerely cares about their day-to-day problems, and affirming if the donation is made and candidate successfully elected the prospect’s political wish list will come true.

And Stephanie Zvan is reposting her Rape Myths series from her old site, and expanding on it with “Consent is Hard”. A clue for potential rapists: the title is in scarequotes.

Will it always be immediately clear whether someone wants to have sex with you? No. Will it always be clear whether they want to have the same kind of sex you want to have? No. Will it always be clear, even when they say, “Yes,” whether they feel free to say, “No,” or are sober enough to know what they’re doing? No.

So what?

Consent is not a true-false test on which you ever need to guess the answer. Sex, aside from masturbation in private, is something that happens between two or more people. If those people are present for sex, they are present for you to communicate with them. They are there for you to talk to and listen to. They are there for you to reassure that any answer they give is acceptable.

Now that I’m done helping Jen McCreight import her archives to FtB, I’ll have more free time to blog again. Hopefully that means I’ll be able to produce posts that are even remotely as insightful and worth reading.