It seems that the legitimacy of an -ism grievance, at least insofar as it deserves to be bandied about by legal scholars, depends soley upon its being asserted by a fellow human being. This in turn suggests that any assertion by any person has an equal legitimacy, again in the attenuated sense that it deserves valuable time spent in its consideration. This would seem to make my own Wendy’s-ism, the fanboy’s sexy-ism, and Rosa Park’s claim of racism to be initially equally legitimate. Only rationalism run amuck, completely unmoored from any metaphysical/moral foundation would end up in such a place. Can’t we just say that sexyism is retarded and move on?

Intellectual courage, however, is not the same thing as intellectual coherence. My question, then: What is the analytical basis for saying discrimination based on immutable/irrelevant traits is *disjunctively* palatable but *conjunctivley* intolerable? York simply fiats that it is: there is no reason given other than “common sense norms of fairness.”