The second one was mentioned by Roger in the other thread.
I think the pwnage part is covered by the title.
I thought it was about some Vietnamese guy.
I have a junior cow-orker who is one of these anti-PC voters. Doesn't give a fuck about anything, too cool to think about the consequences of his choices, and votes out of spite for political correctness. The fact that Trump may well shut us down in the next budget cycle is not on his radar. As long as Anita Sarkeesian gets pissed off, that's enough.
Might as well repost this thread on the Laurie Penny story
It made me look at her and the story in a much more sympathetic light.
That Mamatas thread is the most intelligent thing I've read this year. Who is he?
He's a great follow. He's science fiction, or speculative fiction' writer in the Lovecraftian mode. Grew up not far from me and went to my alma mater too.
8: Have you read his book I am Providence? I've been considering it, but am leery that it might be a parade of in-jokes that are funny mainly to people much more deeply involved in fandom than I am.
9 No I haven't. It's been way too long since I've read Lovecraft or Derleth or anything really Lovecraftian (other than the Southern Reach trilogy I suppose but it's not part of the mythos) so I suppose I wouldn't get all the in-jokes either.
11 Which is to say I've read mostly his essays and other writing but none of his novels yet but he's been growing on me.
The first essay made sense to me as a distinct ethos but not as something shared by a lot of the population, either young or old - rather a certain kind of dropout.
An older long piece on 4chan that I found memorable, not least for the counterintuitive right-scrolling interface.
I don't think I had read anything by Penny before, but she writes nicely. She found a nice balance between reasonable empathy and appropriate loathing, though I think she's a little too generous when she says that Yiannopoulos was joking about pedophilia. Would anybody be surprised if he turned out to be a child molester?
The following bit also tips over into excessive generosity, but if anybody is allowed to be generous about Internet abuse, I suppose it's Penny:
Yiannopoulos followed the path of least resistance until, suddenly, it resisted. Now he knows just what it is to have the Internet turn on you and take away your control of the narrative.
Maybe. But in his case, losing control of the narrative means, for the time being, he has found an impediment to bullshitting people. Too bad for him, and good for the Internet!
Matt Taibbi also has some thoughts.
I read elsewhere that Milo wasn't actually fired, he just left to spend more time with other people's kids.
Would anybody be surprised if he turned out to be a child molester?
Me. Child molesters are pretty rare. He's got a record of saying horrible things for shock value, which means that I don't think there's any particular reason to take one set of horrible things more seriously than another.
But it seems perfectly reasonable to assume he really is a racist, for example.
There are a lot more racists than child molesters. There's also a difference -- how do I say this -- saying racist things is in itself an act of racism. Whatever's in your heart, if you're out there saying racist things, that is performing racism. Saying flippant things about child molestation, on the other hand, is not actually molesting a child.
There are indeed a lot more racists than child molesters, but he didn't just say racist things. He very deliberately worked to politically empower racism and racists. While that's not equivalent to molesting a child, it strikes me as something that should be taken seriously as an indictment of his proclivity for being evil.
I guess what I'm thinking is that it isn't reasonable to take what he said about child molestation as a flippant utterance given that he was, with some effectiveness, made other horrible utterances move into the realm of actual policy.
Saying flippant things about child molestation, on the other hand, is not actually molesting a child.
You read him the same way Penny does. Me, I think he was making a serious argument about 13-year-olds and consent in the exact same way that actual pedophiles do.
Similarly, I'd have no trouble believing that Rush Limbaugh is a rapist.
But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.
Now is Milo "probably" a pedophile? I don't suppose we have enough evidence to say, but I can't see any reason to be surprised if he were.
Personally, I got past the "Yiannopoulos is making some dark but basically self-mocking jokes about pedophilia and that's inappropriate but not actually an endorsement" part when I read the transcript of the one interview where he's trying to get his straight, thirtysomething male interviewer to say that he finds young teenage girls sexually attractive and would like to have sex with them. That goes well beyond "some bad stuff happened to me, also homophobia and the resulting isolation of gay teenagers tends to create situations where gay teens are sexually active with adults"; it's well over into "join me in normalizing the sexualization of young teenagers by adults".
I am not into the Penny article. What does it tell us that mere reading the internet did not? Yiannopoulos's entourage is sad little straight white boys who are overprivileged and underinformed? They have mixed feelings when confronted with actual violence? They're nice to some girls to their faces but the desire to bond with one another through misogyny quickly overpowers that? None of these things are news to me.
It may be shoeleather reporting, but it's wasted shoeleather, except from the standpoint of "Laurie Penny certainly is special; unlike other women, she can get over with the misogynists and see their human side".
I guess -- I think he does mean to be taken seriously. He's trying to actually shock people, maybe with a little plausible deniability, but he wants everyone to think he means it. I'd still be surprised if he had actually molested any children.
I would be too. But he's explicitly trying to defend people who do molest children. He says when female teachers have sex with male students, the male student is the perpetrator.
Oh, fantastic. The only actual quote I saw was when he claimed to have been molested by a priest and to have found it a positive experience.
I mean, the man's entirely horrible. I was just quibbling about probabilities.
Usually when those dudes pull the move that Milo did they do it with pro-consent rhetoric saying 16 year olds or whatever can consent. I don't understand the Limbaugh/Milo anti-consent rhetoric at all.
I like the Laurie Penny article. I read it and defenses of it before I saw the criticisms of it, so I guess I was primed to be generous to it, FWIW.
What does it tell us that mere reading the internet did not?
That Yiannopoulos's base is those antisocial kids, rather than traditional conservatives who have become unusually tolerant of gay people. Call me dumb but I appreciated the reminder. When arguing with a stranger online, I assume that they're my peers or otherwise "normal" (employed, married, good family relationships, etc.) just because that's the default, but, no, there's a really high chance that they're fucked up in ways other than their political beliefs. (No offense to people who are fucked up personally but not politically; I know there are plenty of people like that in real life too. At this point "fucked up" is way too glib for what I'm trying to get at but I don't have the time to rewrite this whole thing from scratch.) Also, that they are not an organized movement, they're a cult of personality and some trolls. At least, they aren't an organized movement yet. As bad as things may be right now, if that was a movement, we'd be even worse off.
Aside from imparting facts, I found it interesting to read an up-close-and-personal anecdote-laden profile of those people. I'm intellectually aware that dry fact-based reporting is valuable but this kind is interesting too.
The Medium article, on the other hand, sucked. A few glimpses of interesting history or insightful thought buried in a mountain of pundit-like bloviating.
Let's take a look at the transcript.
I mean, sure, the prick is a provocateur, but his comments here at least take the form of a serious argument. Regarding the age of consent:
I think it's probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them, people who are sexually active younger. I think it particularly happens in the gay world by the way. In many cases actually those relationships with older men ... This is one reason I hate the left. This stupid one size fits all policing of culture. (People speak over each other). This sort of arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally destroys you know understanding that many of us have. The complexities and subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships. You know, people are messy and complex. In the homosexual world particularly. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can't speak to their parents. Some of those relationships are the most ... "
In fact, he explicitly denies that he is talking about pedophilia in a way that makes clear that is pretty much exactly what he's talking about:
"You're misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don't have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Who are too young to be able (unclear and cut off by others)...That's not what we are talking about. You don't understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I'm defending it because I'm certainly not."
Note that consent is a function of physical maturation, not actual age or mental age. That dissembling and rationalization is characteristic of an actual pedophile, whether he happens to be one or not.
No offense to people who are fucked up personally but not politically
The personal is political!
There may be an element of delightful Karmic justice in that the one time that MY manages to say something which is both interesting, genuinely shocking, and just possibly true, the entire world turns round and shits on him, as they did not when he said things that were shocking and palpably false.
I say this because late last year I was invited to supper by an elderly gay couple one of whom started reminiscing about his early sexual experiences after the first bottle of wine. The other guest and I were squirming, as was his partner, but he launched into the great defence of -- technically ephebophilia -- from the standpoint of someone who had sought out older men when he was fourteen and fifteen -- reminiscing in particular about a vicar at the local cinema who would remove his false teeth ...
This was a man who had been quite possibly been disinhibited by brain damage after a medical emergency a few years before we met, but I think he was entirely sincere in saying that he had enjoyed and sought out such experiences. It took quite a lot of rather embarrassing argument to make clear to him the objections to what had gone on.
To be clear, he didn't at any time say that he had, as an older man, been into fourteen-year-olds: that would have ended the evening; only that as a fourteen-year-old he had enjoyed his experiences with older men and indeed sought them out. That's also what I understood MY to be saying in the one transcript I have bothered to read.
the first link had some very good parts, but too long and overstates its premise by a lot.
Second piece is so horrendously badly written it made me laugh.
I can't stand to give the subject any more thought, but back before I hit my limit I was nonplussed by this series of tweets:
https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/833799320499548161
"Dear Professor Fulton, tenured medieval history professor at U Chicago. I know we don't always see eye to eye. Over the last few months, you have been writing panegyric blogs and essays to Milo, as the gorgeous avatar of Christian conservatism. . . ."
Does anyone with a much stronger constitution want to investigate? Literal holy shit.
If it makes you feel better, she's tenured but not a full professor. Maybe she can use her Brietbart articles in her promotion file?
Second piece is so horrendously badly written it made me laugh.
33: I think that reacting to that as if it's an interesting, shocking, or meaningful challenge to how we think about statutory rape and molesting teenagers reflects a misunderstanding of the justification for statutory rape laws.
Pubescent and post-pubescent teenagers have sexual desires, and will in some cases desire sexual contact with adults. This is not shocking or surprising -- every teenager who's masturbating to porn is in some sense desiring sexual contact with the adults depicted. The reason for prohibiting and censuring sexual contact between young teenagers and adults is not that the teenagers never desire it, so pointing out that they sometimes do is not a meaningful challenge to that reason. (See, also, the distinction between statutory rape and rape of an adult, which recognizes the irrelevance of the minor's expressed consent. If pointing out that sometimes underage people believe themselves to be desiring or consenting to sex were relevant to the justification for those laws, they wouldn't be structured like that.)
The point of those laws is that as a society, we believe that children are generally incapable of defending themselves, physically or emotionally, against adults, and that the risk of exploitation of or damage to the child in a sexual relationship with an adult is unacceptable, regardless of the child's immediate feelings. Pointing out that damage to the child is not absolutely universal isn't a meaningful or shocking challenge to the belief that the risk of such damage is unacceptable.
Tl:dr -- What Milo said wasn't shocking or interesting; he's not challenging the justification for society's condemnation of adult sex with teenagers, he's ignoring it.
Well, you're a better organised thinker than I am: in the context, not of MY, but of the dinner party where our host had just started on the joys of being fellated by an elderly vicar who'd taken out his false teeth, it took me two or three minutes to marshal the arguments against this practice being legal when it gave both parties pleasure. Which arguments genuinely came as a shock to him. This was also bound up with interesting taboos about hospitality and politeness, at least on my part.
Sure, everything's easier to be rational about when you're sitting at a keyboard.
Huh, I just said that, and for most people it really doesn't seem to be true, does it. But it is for me.
I had a godawful argument last week with a kid who I've known since he was six, he's in his twenties now, who I ran into unexpectedly at a town hall meeting run by a local politician who I strongly disapprove of. He's apparently working for her, and was briefed with a wildly disingenuous set of talking points to reassure angry constituents with.
It was the sort of conversation I have online all the time, that doesn't bother me at all. Getting bullshitted to my face by someone I knew as a small child, though, really threw me. I wasn't particularly coherent in the argument, and felt terrible for a couple of days.
Huh, I just said that, and for most people it really doesn't seem to be true, does it. But it is for me.
True for me as well. One of the big advantages is that I can always choose to step back and not respond (or wait before responding) and take time to think things through when I feel that I'm getting myself into a muddle.
I suspect that many people don't actually want to step back from their initial reactions in an argument (which might sound judgemental, but isn't. Interest in reading and participating in online arguments seems like a niche taste. I'd happily say to anybody that, if online arguments don't seem interesting, just ignore them. So there's no reason for people to tailor their argumentation style to online forums unless that's what they enjoy).
Very true for me, too. In fact, Jammies and I conduct all of our most vulnerable figuring-stuff-out conversations over email (which is only occasional at this point, but still)
Actually, being a FPP has been unreal in sharpening my critical thinking skills. Watching you all rip my words apart in record time for a few years really helped me learn to think things through a little better. Not that I'm smarter at content, but I know how to appropriately qualify a statement or situate it in context better.
40: Yeah, I know the feeling. In some sense I like arguing, here and at a few other Web sites, but in person it's harder. It's dumb but when I see someone making a stupid argument I feel I could argue with, I often get a fight-or-flight response, heart racing and everything. A day or two after the women's march I was talking to a manager (owner? I don't know) at the hardware store and he began rambling through the standard right-wing lines about why are feminists protesting anything here when Muslims are so much worse and stuff. I was proud I managed to hammer on two or three simple and inarguable points and get out of there without becoming inarticulate.
I'm totally the opposite - so much better face to face than in writing. Really I make my best arguments at like two beers because then I'm past my awkwardness about criticizing people and into my peak vocabulary. Plus everyone else is like 2+ beer in and they don't react the same way. Once I get to that stage where I'm not putting on my mask (don't roll your eyes; smile and nod; don't raise your voice; don't make that face), I'm really great. Also a jerk. Although I've only made people cry when sober. I know I'm at least somewhat effective because people have repeated my arguments back at me (forgetting I was the one who made them in the first place).
I will admit that here and another place (MF) give me some really good talking points. I do try to give credit ('on the internet, they said...').
This week has been weird though - I asked a pub to remove a book with a swastika on it (??? Why? They have a bunch of books around that they obviously bought by the pound and display without their dust jackets. This one had a fox in the middle and I can't remember what the book title was. But like it was out on the shelf like it was fine? No one noticed? I assured the bartender I didn't think they meant to have it out and it might not even be an anti-Semitic book but it was probably better if they just threw it away because, yeah) and also got the worst answer to a diversity-related question at an academic interview ('No, diversity is best addressed at the societal level and there is nothing I can do as one of four profs in the department. Also you guys should totally have field courses in Sweden and I'll only hire people who want to be profs'). Anyway, both of those were super stressful and I feel like I went too easy and nice in both situations.
My best in-person trick by far (which I got from the internets) is asking the other person to explain their reasoning. Especially if you provide the starting point and the ending point of their position and ask how they got from one to the other.
Even if they have an actual thought-out position, you're making them play defense instead of offense, which is much more comfortable for me.
I don't see why I should try to make you comfortable when I argue with third parties.
Because I can be a pain in the ass.
I'm always going out of my way to help others.
33, 38 became uncomfortably relevant recently when I explained to the kid what's up with Macron's personal life and made extremely clear to him that any hint of similar interest by any of his teachers would lead to a request for a restraining order fast enough to make heads spin right off. He laughed.
51: That is a fascinating situation. For one thing, it flips the gender roles. For another, it has lasted longer than many more "normal" relationships. For a third, anything to keep yet another crypto-fascist from getting elected in what used to be the free world, so if he's popular and not Le Pen, more power to him.
Also heartening that Fillon, another Russian stooge, is unlikely to win. I did not know that about EM.
Oh, the French politician. That one looked bizarre but non-predatory to me. Didn't he come back after the teacher well after he was a legal adult?
I'm turned off by Macron and appalled that it's basically a bloodless Julien Sorel standing between MLP and the presidency but hope hope hope he wins. Also glad of his statements re algerie and to his credit he's said similar in the past.
And I just looked up the story, and I was wrong. I was remembering close relationship in school, and then reconnecting several years later, but it was much closer in time than that, and close enough to definitely look predatory. Ick.
LB, how would you react if one of your 16 year old son's teachers became obsessively "in love" with him??? I'd freak the fuck out. Jesus.
55: Looks like the official story is they got together when he was 18, out of the school where they met (and indeed out of their hometown).
Arguing is something I miss a bit. I've completely lost the taste for it on-line. I basically think, 'Fuck those arseholes' and have no intention of dignifying them with an argument.
The only people I'm ever likely to get into an argument with online is someone I'm basically sympathetic to, or mostly in agreement with, so I'm in the position of thinking: 'Fuck, they are so wrong about this one particular thing.' But respect them enough to bother trying to argue.
I argue quite a lot professionally, now, but it's much more constructive bullshitting through ideas at whiteboards and much less adversarial than when I was a philosopher.
I was, without false modesty, really really good at in-person off-the-cuff arguing in the professional academic context. At just unspooling seemingly fluent, thought-through arguments against whatever the other person had just said. Almost like automatic writing, or something. Easily taking apart people.*
Massively better at it in person than I ever was in writing.
That skill is substantially gone, and I really do think it's all about practice and context.
* I mostly wasn't a dick abut it, I think. Although some might disagree. The occasional lazy posh person, aside. Those people I just wanted to pwn.
And now again that kind of relationship is being glorified in Riverdale!
60, 62: She was his prof de français in premiere, so equivalent US 11th grade, and became obsessed with him. His parents were alarmed enough to yank him from the very prestigious school and pack him off - to his vociferous protests, by all accounts - to boarding school. That fr parents of their type with a student of his type were willing to disrupt his education to such an extent at that critical stage in prep for the baccalauréat speaks volumes re their alarm. And that she wasn't vanished from the scene by the school reflects interestingly on the admin ... If you still don't think there is anything off about the sitch, maybe mentally switch their genders and see if your reaction changes. If it does, I'll note that in other circumstances we often attribute more emotional and mental maturity to young women than young men.
I hope they are personally happy in their relationship, and their age difference is not materially different from the age diff in my relationship. But then I was materially older than 16 when my better half and I met. And now I live with a 16 year old young man and no way would that situation be healthy for him.
Between the ages of seventeen and eighteen I was in a relationship with a woman seventeen years my senior. In theory, it was extra horrible as the woman in question was my boss. In practice, from my perspective it was one of my better relationships and I think of her very fondly indeed. I only regret that she may have suffered some (relatively minor) professional consequences and that I handled the breakup poorly. Other than that, being jailbait: 5 stars.
I thought this was well done, but a sarcastic duh is appropriate: http://theweek.com/articles/681360/president-trump-pitiless-warmonger
Hate is an appropriate response to this: http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/sanctimony-cities/