The Madness of Crowds

biggest issues of all. It is whether being gay means that you are attracted to members of your own sex, or whether it means that you are part of a grand political project.

If the etiquette of the workplace is so easy to work out it is surprising that it is so complex.

people only think that they would have acted better in history because they know how history ended up. People in history didn’t – and don’t – have that luxury. They made good or bad choices in the times and places they were in, given the situations and shibboleths that they found themselves with. To view the past with some degree of forgiveness is

So Thiel is no longer gay once he endorses Trump. And Kanye West is no longer black when he does the same thing. This suggests that ‘black’ isn’t a skin colour, or a race – or at least not those things alone. It suggests that ‘black’ – like gay – is in fact a political ideology. This presumption goes so deep – and is so rarely mentioned – that it i

privilege as an issue is repeatedly raised because it is assumed to be something that other people have.

rights battles are not all the same, and it should by now be clear that the T debate does not follow on seamlessly from the LGB ones.

it is worth bearing these internal frictions and contradictions in mind when people talk about the LGBT community, or try to co-opt it for any political purpose. It barely exists even within each letter of its constituent parts.

This society is indeed capitalist, but this is not its only characteristic; it is sexist and patriarchal as well, not to mention racist.

we have created a world in which forgiveness has become almost impossible,