I’m in Washington, D.C. this weekend. If you’re here for the Reason Rally, come find me! Meanwhile, here are some worthwhile long reads:
• Since she’ll very likely be our next president, you ought to read this in-depth profile of Hillary Clinton, the candidate and the person. To understand why she is who she is, you have to understand the male entitlement, sexist double standards, and sheer hateful prejudice that have dogged her throughout the decades of her career in public life:
She told a story about the time she and a friend from Wellesley sat for the LSAT at Harvard. “We were in this huge, cavernous room,” she said. “And hundreds of people were taking this test, and there weren’t many women there. This friend and I were waiting for the test to begin, and the young men around us were like, ‘What do you think [you’re] doing? How dare you take a spot from one of us?’ It was just a relentless harangue.” Clinton and her friend were stunned. They’d spent four safe years at a women’s college, where these kinds of gender dynamics didn’t apply.
“I remember one young man said, ‘If you get into law school and I don’t, and I have to go to Vietnam and get killed, it’s your fault.'”
• The “seven broken guardrails of democracy” that allowed someone as reckless, egotistical and brazenly unqualified as Donald Trump to become the nominee of a major political party.
• Also: “This is how it happens. It happens when you’re not looking. It happens because you weren’t looking.”
• “What if we admitted to children that sex is primarily about pleasure?” On our bizarre, shameful unwillingness to be forthright about a basic fact of life.
• While all kinds of Americans are leaving organized religion, more women are quitting than men, driving the gender gap to its lowest level ever. It seems likely that reactionary gender politics and pulpit misogyny are the reason. It’s as true for churches as it is for politicians: attacking half the population isn’t a winning strategy.
• Is the Libertarian Party ready for prime time? Judge for yourself:
Everything seems to be going well at the Libertarian conference pic.twitter.com/nQJclPGqEZ
— Christopher Woody (@chrstphr_woody) May 29, 2016