Eli Kahn 🏳️‍🌈
@elikahn.bsky.social
870 followers 630 following 1.5K posts
Urban/environmental policy guy, YIMBY, sci-fi/fantasy writer, liberal, atheist. Californian in the DC area. All posts represent my views, not those of my employer. where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?
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elikahn.bsky.social
many people other than me have already pointed this out, but it continues to be bonkers how many of these guys will be like “the FUTURE! TECHNOLOGY! we need to stop FEARING INNOVATION!” then turn around and go “actually biological sex is immutable and trying to change it is creepy and cheating”
elikahn.bsky.social
“lololol all these protesters are going to be blue-haired they/them SJWs from (((New York))), let’s all point and laugh” -actual elected officials, daily
elikahn.bsky.social
man, it’s just really depressing how normalized and unobjectionable it is for politicians to openly mock entire demographics of voters who are perceived as liberal

what happened to feeling an obligation to represent all your constituents?
Reposted by Eli Kahn 🏳️‍🌈
clofsnitville.bsky.social
FWIW I'm flat-out anti-monarchy. Period. Inherited power - even symbolic - is inherently problematic and anti-democratic. This is a hill I *will* die on.
clofsnitville.bsky.social
I'll admit that I'm a certified monarchy hater so take this with a grain of salt but also *this country* explicitly rejected monarchy so "no kings" is a perfectly fine slogan thanks.
elikahn.bsky.social
-are always in the lowest quartile of the bell curve of sexual adventurousness among gay men. There’s nothing wrong with that - such people exist and their preferences are valid! But if you want more realism, you need more space for sexual openness, which means you need more space for women’s lusts.
elikahn.bsky.social
Meanwhile, realistic depictions of our lives… meh. Those tend to not even do all that well *among gay men*! And to the extent that’s because they aren’t realistic, it proves my original point, because the way in which litfic about gay men is unrealistic tends to be that its protagonists-
elikahn.bsky.social
As a gay man, my freedom is primarily threatened by sex-negativity. Sex-negativity’s greatest weapon, at least in progressive & feminist spaces, is the perception that women are less horny than men and that sexual freedom is just a rebrand of male license. Women’s erotica protects us from that
elikahn.bsky.social
(I haven’t read Yanagihara’s work and can’t speak to whether that’s what she’s doing, but based on what I’ve heard it’s at least plausible, and lots of women are in fact doing this, though never at the level of acclaim Yanagihara gets.)
elikahn.bsky.social
oh this actually reminds me of my *actual* most unhinged literary opinion: erotica by and for women that fetishizes male-male relationships is not just fine, but more important for gay men’s freedom than realistic depictions of our lives are
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
oh I forgot one: Hanya Yanagihara's books are misery porn that creepily fetishize the lives of gay men and it is embarrassing that the New York literary establishment so embraces them.
rachelfeder.bsky.social
Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
Reposted by Eli Kahn 🏳️‍🌈
maiamindel.bsky.social
The media: the voters have spoken... GO WOKE GO BROKE

The Nobel Prize in Economics: I am quite fond of le wokisme, the key to economic growth and prosperity
douglasirwin.bsky.social
"Openness is a driver of growth." New Nobel laureate in economics Philippe Aghion is pro-trade and anti-tariff . . . go figure!
elikahn.bsky.social
claudius is a better and more peaceful king than hamlet sr was, and “a ghost told me to kill this guy and he got upset at a play that accused him of murder” is, uh, a flimsy rationale for killing someone

meanwhile henry v is a warmongering imperialist who thinks god gifted him two countries to rule
elikahn.bsky.social
Yeah, the rule only applies when there’s only one named character in the title!
elikahn.bsky.social
King Lear is about an abusive father getting his comeuppance!
elikahn.bsky.social
in every Shakespeare play where the title is the name of one character, that character is the villain
rachelfeder.bsky.social
Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat
elikahn.bsky.social
a couple months ago someone (who I generally like) posted a criticism of the view I happen to hold on a particular issue, and was like, “is this not just libertarianism posing as leftism?”

maybe it is! so?
elikahn.bsky.social
no longer reflexively seeing “leftist” or “radical” as virtues in themselves, and being willing to own the fact that I’m not the most leftist or the most radical person on earth, has improved my life slightly, and I think a lot of people on here would also find it helpful
elikahn.bsky.social
even agreeing that brief face-to-face convos with ~strangers are a vital part of human life even if no one says anything beyond pleasantries and even for people who strongly prefer to avoid them (dubious but plausible)

I just don’t think these ones are the ones holding everything together, y’know?
elikahn.bsky.social
another neoliberal shill view I have is that supermarket self-checkout is good, and the social interactions it replaces are not a load-bearing component of the social compact
elikahn.bsky.social
the thing is, they’re *monarchies* so we don’t even have to grapple with what their *citizenry’s* values are like

we know their leadership is bad! do the broad publics have as bad of values as their kings? I’d love to see them become democratic republics so we can find out!
elikahn.bsky.social
ie taking supplements comes partly from wanting to be prettier, more youthful, or more virile, desires that people feel stigmatized for, so they were afraid the government was going to sit in judgment of them. this kind of thing is why I remain skeptical of the call to “bring back” shame!
elikahn.bsky.social
obviously everyone benefits from knowing that the stuff they’re consuming is really what its manufacturer claims! but the fact that people responded so strongly to “they’re trying to take away your vitamins!” suggests to me that people have a lot of shame and self-consciousness around them-
elikahn.bsky.social
Notably, this included *an ad in which Mel Gibson’s house was stormed by heavily armed FDA agents there to confiscate his vitamins*
elikahn.bsky.social
in his memoir, “The Waxman Report”, former Congressman Henry Waxman describes how Orrin Hatch won a delay in the NLEA for supplements requiring the FDA to determine later whether they should be regulated under the act, and then when the FDA was like “yes, duh” the industry mounted a fear campaign
elikahn.bsky.social
as someone who consumes a ridiculous amount of protein powder, I actually really wish vitamins and supplements had not been exempted from the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act!
segyges.bsky.social
taking one or two or five supplements with poor clinical data backing them is probably at least not bad to do. taking fifty is probably dangerous.
howardoark.bsky.social
Might explain all the dead prositutes.

Jobs also was manic about supplements and died of liver cancer. Not a coincidence.
Reposted by Eli Kahn 🏳️‍🌈
laurie-merrell.bsky.social
video of people being snatched by ICE at a laundromat shows an intersection between housing and immigration enforcement. if your unit and building don't have (working, available) laundry, that's one more errand where you have to spend significant time in potentially vulnerable public space