6/28/19 discussion of youth sex paranoia and lemonade stand arrests

Here is the link to my June 28, 2019, Twitter thread discussion about youth sex work, the paranoia of youth sex, and the way this paranoia might have led to the wave, in 2019, of kids and parents actually having the police called on them for running lemonade stands.

Twitter's platform has twisted each of my threads through 2018 and 2019 out of chronological order. This thread is very affected, and is only somewhat coherent. My apologies.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

4/8/18 discussion about American viewpoints on guilt and the law

Here is the link to a Twitter thread I made in April of 2018 regarding what I saw as various American political viewpoints regarding guilt and the law.

The thread uses the books Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality, Seduction of the Innocent, and The Secret History of Wonder Woman to look at how public opinion about guilt is often shaped more by concepts of the general intelligence of human beings, the general sinfulness or innocence of human beings, and the access human beings have to vice. It counterpoises this public opinion against the concept of due process, which uses evidence and assumes people are innocent until proven guilty.

The tweets in some of my threads have been twisted out of chronological order by Twitter's platform. This thread's coherency is pretty badly affected. My apologies.

I also have to say that, even despite the way Twitter has mangled this thread, this is still one of my favorite threads that I've ever written.

8/4/17 review of book Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham

Here is the link to my Twitter thread review of the book Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham.

The thread gives a summary of the book, some background on the book and Wertham, and some context for why I read the book. The thread discusses some of the themes of the book. It tries to guess at personal reasons, like guilt, for Wertham exploring this topic. It discusses Wertham's and our society's fear of pop culture and high achievement. It gives some criticisms of Wertham, such as his silly views on Homeric poetry. It also examines Wertham's views on homosexuality in depth, as I don't think people really understand what he spoke about on that topic. It gives my opinions on conservative and liberal views on child psychology. And it discusses Wertham's often humorous and entertaining writing style.