Milo "Finally" Crosses The Line

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/milo-yiannopoulos-book_us_58ab6c35e4b0f077b3ed221c?

So Breitbart's golden boy finally said something offensive enough to get him in trouble with conservatives. He's been disinvited from CPAC and had his book deal retracted by Simon and Schuster over comments that surfaced where he condoned relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults.

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. Milo was basically a living embodiment of chantard troll culture; why should we be surprised that along with homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny, we also get that other 4chan staple, pedophilia?

If I were being charitable, I can see this as Milo trying to process the child abuse he went through and reframe his own personal narrative. But two problems here:

1. I'll be charitable to Milo the moment he says anything that warrants being charitable or offers that same charity to any of the many marginalized groups he has done his best to raise hatred against
2. Even assuming that that's what he's doing, he does so in the worst possible way, by reviving a dangerous and harmful myth, attacking gay people, and telling his non-trivial and completely fucking insane fanbase that child abuse might not actually be that bad.

And no, CPAC and Simon&Schuster do not get credit for rescinding an invite to a person who was clearly awful before just because they became even more awful.

So yeah. With any luck, this will mean the end of this pustule on the ass of humanity having any real influence or pull. Hell, even Breitbart is sick of his shit. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

I wonder what triggered the smear campaign. Maybe going to Bill Maher and speaking at CPAC was too much. I have a feeling this will backfire hard.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

He's been disinvited from CPAC and had his book deal retracted by Simon and Schuster over comments that surfaced where he condoned relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults.

As far as his explicit comments: 13-year-old boy. Singular. Although his argument was that he, as a 13-year-old, was able to consent as if an adult... which is fair to implicitly generalize.

I find the reaction to this incident very interesting. If he was talking about 10-year-olds, that would be clear pedophilia by any reasonable understanding of the concept. However, age of consent laws — and the collective morality they represent — vary across the world. In Mexico, there are several states where age of consent is 14, 13, or even 12; theoretically, I could be a 15-minute drive away from legally fucking a 14-year-old in Juarez. Many countries in Europe set age of consent at 14 (Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc), as does China. South Korea sets it at 13. Japan's age of consent is 18 without parental approval and 13 with approval — kind of a strange policy.

Of course, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — the prominent English-speaking countries — age of consent varies from 16 to 18. And I can understand the position that all those other countries are doing it wrong; seeing as we don't have bridal shops in El Paso but bridal/quincenera shops, and a quincenera is a Mexican tradition of promoting a 14-year-old girl to 15-year-old woman, I must admit that I see an internal contradiction in that 14 thing, much less the lower ages. I'm not comfortable with an age of consent below 15 myself (which, oddly, I couldn't find a major example of — seems to go straight from 14 to 16).

Still, if you're going to label Milo as a pedophilia apologist, and you don't want to be a hypocrite, better start throwing shade on the nations of Mexico and South Korea, just for a start. (Imagine the anti-Trump hordes actually attacking Mexico for anything in this political climate!) And if you want Milo to have less than a year of moral buffer room, your list gets a fuck of a lot longer.

In conclusion, I think Milo was wrong on this, but not monstrously wrong. Not "we must shun you from all public life" wrong, not "unemployable" wrong, not "exile to Wraeclast" wrong. I just can't quite bring myself to hate over this issue alone, even if I disagree quite strongly.

Still, I think this marks an end for Milo. Parents in the US are overprotective as fuck; with the way even college students are infantilized, I wouldn't be too surprised if some states move age of consent to 20 soon. Nigh impossible to come back from this shit.

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Xavderion wrote:

I wonder what triggered the smear campaign. Maybe going to Bill Maher and speaking at CPAC was too much. I have a feeling this will backfire hard.

Or maybe it was tapes surfacing of Milo defending pedophilia. I mean, even if you're the kind of sociopath who doesn't cringe the disgusting shit Milo puts out, surely you can understand why people without such severe personality defects object to someone saying something like this:

"

We get hung up on this child abuse stuff. This is one of the reasons why I hate the left, the one size fits all policing of culture, this arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent.

I’m grateful for Father Michael . I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him.

Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody who is 13 years old and sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty, who do not have functioning sex organs yet, who have not gone through puberty.

In the gay world, some of the most important enriching, and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships are between younger boys and older men. They can be hugely positive experiences very often for those young boys.

Holy shit. Is this the alt-right's golden boy or a fucking NAMBLA spokesperson? And it's not like this is some unsubstantiated report, we have it on video. It's not a "smear campaign" when someone does or says something disgusting and reprehensible, and then people decide to distance themselves from that person. If I get up at a PR event for my company and say, "You know, I'm really glad I got molested as a kid, and it really isn't that wrong of a thing to do," it's hardly a smear campaign when my boss drops my ass like a hot potato.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Or maybe it was tapes surfacing of Milo defending pedophilia.

Lol no. "The tapes" are a 13 month old podcast. Nobody cared back then because it was Milo being Milo. If you think he meant "I’m grateful for Father Michael. I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him." literally you really lack a gallows humour radar. Everything he said is correct, it just sounds bad to overprotective soccer moms and that's the whole point of this smear campaign. Maybe Milo does fuck children but "the tapes" don't prove shit tbh.

And yes it was a coordinated attack: https://archive.is/K2mj1

Salon.com even deleted their pro-pedo articles so they can attack Milo: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/833835031328124928

I don't have the hatred that OP does for him, but I agree that he's done.

The topic of sexuality below the age of consent in America is like summoning a fucking balor in the center of town. We throw 17-year olds in prison for sexting other 17-year olds, for reference.

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pneuma wrote:

The topic of sexuality below the age of consent in America is like summoning a fucking balor in the center of town. We throw 17-year olds in prison for sexting other 17-year olds, for reference.

With all the anti-Trumps doing protest after protest, I kinda want to get some professionally made signs and lightly impede traffic. We should protest shit like that. "Free [insert teenager's name here]."

Looks like ex-CIA guy and meme presidential candidate Egg McMuffin spearheaded the smear campaign. He posted a unfavourably edited version of the video and then every publisher in his mailing list released the news in waves.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

He's been disinvited from CPAC and had his book deal retracted by Simon and Schuster over comments that surfaced where he condoned relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults.

As far as his explicit comments: 13-year-old boy. Singular. Although his argument was that he, as a 13-year-old, was able to consent as if an adult... which is fair to implicitly generalize.

I find the reaction to this incident very interesting. If he was talking about 10-year-olds, that would be clear pedophilia by any reasonable understanding of the concept. However, age of consent laws — and the collective morality they represent — vary across the world. In Mexico, there are several states where age of consent is 14, 13, or even 12; theoretically, I could be a 15-minute drive away from legally fucking a 14-year-old in Juarez. Many countries in Europe set age of consent at 14 (Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc), as does China. South Korea sets it at 13. Japan's age of consent is 18 without parental approval and 13 with approval — kind of a strange policy.

In Germany, the age of consent for adults is not 14. If I had sex with a 14-year-old, I would very likely go to prison. The law demands "coercion", but in practice this standard is broad and very easy to find support for. Even if you didn't go to jail for it, you would very much be seen, societally, as a pedophile.

"

Still, if you're going to label Milo as a pedophilia apologist, and you don't want to be a hypocrite, better start throwing shade on the nations of Mexico and South Korea, just for a start. (Imagine the anti-Trump hordes actually attacking Mexico for anything in this political climate!) And if you want Milo to have less than a year of moral buffer room, your list gets a fuck of a lot longer.

Apart from cultural differences (which I and most others, liberal or conservative, will gladly decry in the cases where it leads to a child entering a relationship with someone twice their age), there are numerous other things wrong with Milo's statements. Hell, I got to listen to conservative Christians give Harvey Milk constant shit because he had a relationship with a 16-year-old. But he explicitly refers to young boys benefitting from relationships with older men, and speaks about both his own experiences being molested and brings up the age range of 13. I don't think you'll find very many people this side of the Caspian Sea who consider that kind of age gap acceptable. And in the USA, it's not just really, really unnaceptable (reason enough to distance oneself from Milo, particularly given how loud various voices on the right, including, um, Milo, have been about attacking anyone even trying to show sympathy or understanding for pedophiles who haven't molested children) but also illegal, and considered one of the more heinous crimes at that.

Then you add in the shit about how this revives a classic right-wing myth about how gay men are "targeting children" to add a sprinkle of piss to the shit sandwich that was this statement. Except that unlike most people who spread this myth in order to condemn gay people, here we have a gay person openly espousing it.

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In conclusion, I think Milo was wrong on this, but not monstrously wrong. Not "we must shun you from all public life" wrong, not "unemployable" wrong, not "exile to Wraeclast" wrong. I just can't quite bring myself to hate over this issue alone, even if I disagree quite strongly.

Well to be fair, I agree - if the vile homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny coming out of him wasn't enough, I don't see why this should be the straw to break the camel's back. I said as much in the OP. It's just another in a long list of egregiously terrible things Milo Yiannopolous has said in his career as the single most self-refuting campaigner for free speech I have ever seen.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Or maybe it was tapes surfacing of Milo defending pedophilia.

Lol no. "The tapes" are a 13 month old podcast. Nobody cared back then because it was Milo being Milo. If you think he meant "I’m grateful for Father Michael. I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him." literally you really lack a gallows humour radar. Everything he said is correct, it just sounds bad to overprotective soccer moms and that's the whole point of this smear campaign. Maybe Milo does fuck children but "the tapes" don't prove shit tbh.

And yes it was a coordinated attack: https://archive.is/K2mj1

Salon.com even deleted their pro-pedo articles so they can attack Milo: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/833835031328124928

Oh noes! Someone found shit which would rightfully end just about anyone's career that was already public but not well-publicized and made it well-publicized! This is the worst possible thing!