On the strange hostility that grows in communities built around abstinence.
What Good Is ‘Community’ When Someone Else Makes All the Rules? (Published 2018)
Life online can offer us a sense of belonging in any number of virtual villages. But the power to control those spaces isn’t very communal at all.
Experimentally manipulating social media abstinence: results of a four-week diary study
Social media use has a weak, negative association with well-being in cross-sectional and longitudinal research, but this association in experimental studies is mixed. This investigation explores wh...
Local Communities | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Against the Couple-Form | LIES Journal
Libidinal flows cut through the social world. Amorous and sexual relations do not exist in some domain safely taped off from the rest of society. Rather they are constituent elements of nearly every aspect of social life. Desire flows and circulates amongst places of employment, intellectual debates, political organizing, artistic circles, playgrounds, and cemeteries. The elderly patient grabs at the breast of a nurse hunched over him. A governmental official strips his newly hired intern down to her leopard print thong during an important briefing in his office. The incarcerated man holds his hand up to the glass of the visiting booth, attempting to touch his wife after twenty years of their bodily separation. These flows of libidinal desire operate within and amongst broader social mechanisms, such that they help animate the dynamics of economic and political life. Often a locus of politics, desire permeates the so-called ‘public’ terrain.
The Effective Altruism Kids Aren’t Alright
On sexual violence, Slutcon, and what happens when children take on adult responsibilities.
Thoughts on Communities | unDraw Blog
Even with the best intentions and people eager to join, most attempts to create communities fail and will continue to do so.
A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent
Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.
A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent
Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.
The loneliest generation: What it is like to grow up in England today | IPPR
A connected society is one in which we care about how others are doing and, in turn, others look out for our wellbeing. It is the state and public services
Asexuality and Kink: Why Do So Many Aces Love It?
Gradients of intimacy and creating shelter: An interview with Erin Kissane
How might we use nature as an inspiration for creating online communities?
Effective Altruism Has a Hostile Culture for Women, Critics Say
Seven women connected to effective altruism tell TIME they experienced harassment and worse within the community
‘Blueskyism’, Political Violence, and Open Social Networks Under Authoritarianism
After Kirk's murder, calls for censorship and the crackdown on political places started to include Bluesky. Open social networks must now fight political suppression as well as platform monopolies.
Anti-social Punishment — LessWrong
Why do some societies exhibit more antisocial punishment than others? Martin explores both some literature on the subject, and his own experience liv…
