If you haven’t already read Laurie Penny’s brilliant and unnerving account of her surreal evening as Milo Yiannopoulos’ guest at the Gays for Trump shindig he held in Cleveland earlier this week, stop whatever you’re doing and read it now. Then come back and discuss.
If you need more persuasion: It’s a sharp and scary analysis of “how trolls took the wheel of the clown car of modern politics,” as Penny puts it, and it’s full of weird details about the event and Penny’s strange non-relationship with Milo, whom she describes as “a charming devil and one of the worst people I know” and someone she simply can’t convince she’s not actually friends with.
Perhaps the oddest part of Penny’s piece, though, is her description of her encounter with a fellow we all know too well: Roosh Valizadeh, whom she describes all too accurately as a “headline-hunting nano-celebrity in the world of ritualised internet misogyny.”
“He asks me what I’m doing here,” Penny writes. “I ask him the same question.”
It’s a good question, given that Roosh is a raging homophobe who bans gays from commenting on his sites.
The interaction that follows is the most surreal episode in a deeply surreal evening. Roosh is tall and well-built and actually rather good-looking for, you know, a monster. I have opportunity to observe this because he puts himself right up in my personal space, blocking my view of the room with his T-shirt, and proceeds, messily and at length, to tell me what my problem is.
Number one: my haircut, and he’s telling me this as a man, makes my face look round. This is absolutely true. Number two: I seek to destroy the nuclear family, and disturb traditional relationships between men and women. This is also true, although I remind him that the nuclear family as it is currently conceived is actually a fairly recent social format. He insists that it’s thousands of years old, and asks me if I truly believe that it’s right for gay men to be able to adopt children. I tell him that I do. He appears as flummoxed by this as I do by his presence at what is supposed to be a party to celebrate Gay republicans. He’s here for the same reason I am: Milo invited him.
So, yeah.
For what it’s worth, I think Penny overstates Milo’s “weaponised insincerity.” He’s certainly a cynical enough opportunist, who jumped aboard GamerGate and then on the alt-right car of the Trump Train not because he gave a shit about any of the alleged issues involved but in order to promote himself. But he’s hardly the boy with the “fewest f*cks to give.” He actually gives a lot of f*cks, at least about himself. Like most narcissists, he’s acutely sensitive to slights and lashes out at anyone who pierces his vanity — much like his adopted “daddy” Trump.
But if you want to know how we got to this weird place we’re in now, Penny’s piece offers some invaluable insights.
Hmm, she makes it sound like Milo’s only in this for the shits and giggles. Like he’s just out there having fun and soaking up the attention — only his definition of “fun” leaves a blazing trail of harm in its wake. I wonder if he believes in anything or if he’s just hooked his wagon to the group of people most likely to give him attention for his type of trolling.
@OoglyBoggles
So Milo is the Trump movement’s online Ernst Rohm? Ok, I can see some similarities.
Though Milo is probably hoping he doesn’t play through his game and get the same ending Rohm got.
I’ve finally got around to watching Ghostbusters.
Whilst I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped, I’m very aware that this is a very important film. If I was twelve, this would be my favourite movie, and I’d have great role models. I think it has changed the way women are treated by Hollywood for good. One of the things I found refreshing was that by media standards, with the possible exception of Kate, these women are considered ‘old’. Seeing women in their forties obviously having loads of fun in an action movie made me smile. My friend took her thirteen year old son to see it as well, so I’m going to ask him what he thought when I see him, hoping he hasn’t been on any poisonous internet sites that have brainwashed him.
My favourite character was Holtzmann, she not only reminded me a bit of myself, but also the character Mac from Chicken Run! Who is the female engineer who designs the flying machine for the chickens to escape the poultry farm (when they are let down by their smooth talking American rooster, go figure) the little cameo from Sigourney Weaver was a bonus 🙂
http://media.salon.com/2000/06/chicken_run-293×307.jpg
@ Virgin Mary
“What kind of pies?” 🙂
Hey everyone, been awhile since I checked this site, so there’s a number of things that came up that I wanted to discuss. Pardon my own hamster wheel 🙂
@Kat: Speaking as a cis-het white male myself, I can say that a great deal of the things we discuss in election years do not directly affect me, so I can see how someone who is not involved with other people may feel like they don’t have skin in the game, to use an old term. That makes it much easier to treat politics as a form of mental gymnastics, rather than something that affects real people. I personally found that I started to care a lot more about politics when I started getting to know people from less privileged backgrounds than myself, and found that these things actually matter. I was fortunate in that that happened early in college, so I had less opportunity to make an ass of myself in public.
I think I need to stop using phrases like ‘it’s just my opinion’. It looks like many people use that as a pro-active shield against criticism, so I’ll stop using it myself.
@Tradgedy of the commas: Earlier this election cycle, I was seriously tempted to write in ‘Elizabeth II’ for president on my ballot, on the grounds that this whole ‘democracy’ experiment has obviously failed and we should beg the Brits to take us back. However, I don’t think the country will survive a Trump presidency, so I’ll have to vote for Hillary. Also, Brexit.
I did want to discuss ableism a bit. The thread has moved on a bit from that discussion, and this is going to be a long post, so I’m posting it as a separate comment to make it easier to ignore.
First: ableism is a huge deal in healthcare circles, largely because part of our job is to asses the mental health of our patients, so simple diagnostic reasoning can look like ableism and vice versa. I’ll give three examples and state what I think, and you can tell me if I’m getting this right (ableism is a term I’d never heard before crossing the Mississippi, so it’s a new concept to me). Warning: there’s going to be some medical jargon below. I’ll try to limit it, but if anything is unclear, please let me know.
1) You are about to go see a female patient with chest pain with the rest of your team. The resident who saw the patient, at the end of his presentation, states, ‘Also, I think she has borderline personality disorder as well. She has a history of cutting, and she seems to be exhibiting splitting behavior: she said all the nurses here are fantastic, but that all the staff at this other hospital were ‘just terrible”. The group briefly discusses the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder, discuss possibly consulting psychiatry, and then return to discussing the patient’s chest pain.
I think this one is simple diagnostic reasoning. There are specific symptoms leading the resident to a very specific diagnosis, which permits the group to discuss the evidence for that diagnosis. Please note: borderline PD is equally common in both genders. I’m calling this patient female because women ARE more likely to present with atypical chest pain when they have genuine cardiac pathology, which is more likely to lead to a discussion of psychosocial causes of chest pain. No sexism is intended.
2) You are a resident in clinic about to go see a patient for the very first time. Your attending warns you, ‘This patient has schizophrenia, so be careful in there. He’s never been violent, but you never know.’
This is ableism. Just because a person has a psychiatric disorder does not make them more likely to be violent, and in fact, schizophrenic patients in particular are no more likely to be violent than the regular population. I have actually seen physicians say things like that, but not on this side of the Mississippi.
3) You are doing a rotation on the hospice service, and you are about to go see a patient with metastatic cancer with the team. Your attending says, ‘this one is a difficult patient. She’s very pleasant, but I think she has an axis II diagnosis (axis II refers to the personality disorders)’.
This one is less clear, but I think it is a form of ableism, and interferes with patient care. After all, ‘difficult, non-compliant patient’ is neither a sensitive nor specific sign of a personality disorder. Also, the patient is in hospice for metastatic cancer. Being ‘difficult’ could well be part of her coping mechanism.
Sorry for the triple post, but it seemed more reasonable to split up the things I wanted to discuss re. ableism.
Has anyone run into this issue in the educational field? I was discussing all the cop shootings (both cops shooting and cops getting shot) with my sister a couple weeks ago, who is a teacher in Montana. As I may have mentioned before, her husband is in training to join the Highway Patrol, and she said, ‘yeah, I’m a bit worried about all the crazy people running around with guns’. I called her on use of that term, and we had a long discussion about what ableism is (she’d never heard the term before either). I may not have gone into it so much, but a. she’s my sister, and in my family, we talk about things, and b. she’s a schoolteacher, so she has the best opportunity to change our culture. Anyhow, I suggested she put words like ‘crazy’ and ‘nuts’ in the same category as ‘b—h’, ‘n—-r’, and ‘f—-t’, ie, words we don’t use in polite society. She said that she understood, and that she hadn’t meant the term ‘crazy’ to refer to mental diagnosis so much as ‘people who like to shoot things’.
What makes it even more concerning is that our mother is a retired special education teacher.
Very surreal.
@Saphira:
The closest thing he has to conviction is of himself, with his right-wing leanings being based on upholding the privileges it allows him within a patriarchal society (despite being gay and, to some, non-white). Well, that and he obviously defines success by how much attention he gets – no matter who it comes from.
If there’s anything that proved GamerGate was full of shit or at least that proponents lacked intelligence and awareness, it was how easily they accepted him as a figurehead…despite having mocked gamers and gaming culture in the past. Hell, they didn’t mind having Jack Thompson as part of their cause either – even though he wants to ban games because he thinks they turn people into serial killers. Apparently Anita Sarkeesian is the worst person ever because she analyzes fictional tropes (God forbid!) and Zoe Quinn had the audacity to release a free game about depression (along with, y’know, exercising agency with her romantic partners as if that should be anyone else’s business) – yet I can’t think of a single time either of them verbally shit on videogames and the people who play them.
Along with the online atheist community’s weird aversion discussing sexism and racism, but welcoming the worst people with open arms simply due to lacking a belief in a god, it’s hard to not see this “not taking it seriously” ideological approach only upholds the status quo. Even when they’re trying to appear as mavericks – they’re really just cogs in a machine or another brick in the wall.
Thanks for boosting this article. Definitely worth a read.
Yes. It sums up pretty neatly all one might suspect of Yiannopoulos’ self regarding troll-schtick. Also, the weird fellow travellers he shares the right-pundit, troll demon, bubble dimension with.
Almost worth reading for Penny’s take on Dutch, platinum blonde, coiffure model, Geert Wilders’ weird aphasia. It does seem to confirm what many of us here suspected, that his pronounced Islamophobia amounts to near monomania.
Wilders’ came to prominence after the assassination of the gay, right-populist, neo-libertarian, Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by an extremist animal rights activist. Fortuyn was smart and eloquent, where Wilders is dull and blunt. The rise of Wilders makes some on the left here, almost miss Fortuyn.
CW: Transphobia, ableisim.
Um, a little off topic, but I just saw a neo nazi on Twitter call specifically non binary people degenerates/made up, and said he wants to gas trans people. I took a screenshot and blocked him.
I never felt so directly threatened by them before, and it just… sickened me.There is also a graphic with alot of nb gender symbols on it with everything except male and female labeled “mental illness”, including the one that represented my gender. I’m mentally ill/disordered, so it really hurt. It’s being circulated by the anime Nazis.
I just want to throw up and cry. I hate what’s happening so much, that these little shits have been encouraged to act this way.
Also, I saw some #gaysfortrump stuff and I’m certain some are afraid of him. Like if they support him and be a Good Gay and throw other minorities under the bus, nothing bad will happen to them.
@joekster,
Not a snark at you here, but:
‘Its just my opinion’
As you have noticed this can be used as a shield for things that aren’t otherwise defensible. My own hypothesis is that the most useful parts of this phrase can still be preserved if we consider some things that work against it in discourse that truly wants to listen and be heard.
iii) consider omitting the word ‘just’. It’s either a way of acknowledging your own opinion’s paltriness or a way of belittling your correspondant’s reaction to it. In theory, both should be equally common, in practice (I know, citation needed) not so much;
ii) consider acknowledging that other opinions are as in/defensible for being just opinions as ours are;
i) consider using that phrase before you send your opinion out into the public all dressed up as an actual fact, instead of afterwards. Give people a heads up that it’s a teacup pig in a layette in that pram, not a baby. Opinions and teacup pigs are not so widely disliked that they have to steal attention from facts and babies.
@alan
Reality TV has certainly done its job of muddying the water for people who basically do not pay attention to what’s going on in their own country, let alone the world. Getting the EU referendum confused with Eurovision is an obvious example of that. I think one of the reasons it was conceived was to devalue the voting process and give people the kind of pretend democracy we are now seeing in party politics. The Labour soap opera is a great example. All of Trump’s campaign seems to be hoopla and pantomime, do his fans realise how dangerous he is? They aren’t voting for a TV reality show winner, they’re voting for ‘the leader of the ‘free’ world’ !!
@authorialalchemy: that is just terrible. I’m sorry you went through that. There are too many terrible people in this world, and they feel free to be terrible on the ‘net.
@croquembouche: thanks for the advice. I think part of my problem is that I know a lot of people have their egos invested in their opinions, and I use language like that in an effort to show that I don’t mind if people disagree with me. In fact, I rather enjoy arguing, not as some juvenile one-up competition, but as a way of expanding and testing my own ideas. To me, the best conversation is one in which all parties learn something.
Any ideas how to get that across without coming across as defensive?
@joekster
Sorry to butt in, but I often have trouble wording things in relation to my feelings, so here’s some stuff I use:
1)try self depreciation. ‘I’m not really an expert here’ or words to that effect. By belittling yourself, you’re giving the other party permission to disagree. It lets people drop their guard. Also, and this might be just me, saying something self deprecating helps me drop my ego and accept disagreement. I mean, if I already admit I’m likely being stupid, what’s the harm in someone else saying it. Then again, I’m hella awkward, so I’m not really an expert here 🙂
2)if you want a conversation, ask for it. ‘Am I wrong about this?’ ‘What do you think?’ ‘I’m trying to figure this out, any suggestions?’ Stuff like that. Being direct can sometimes feel weird, but is usually the best policy. That is, so long as you remember that direct is not a synonym for mean. Not a problem you seem to have, but it happens
3)not everything needs an argument, and even things that could use one don’t necessarily need it right now. It’s good to be open to debate, but there’s a time and place. Keep in mind that not everyone is as gung ho as you are, and sometimes you gotta read the (chat)room. There’s welcoming an argument and there’s pressuring others into an argument they don’t wanna have. There’s no shortage of the latter on the web
That’s all I got. Hope it helps. And don’t worry about being perfect with the word choice. Even if it’s slow, just get better over time 🙂
@Axecalibur: thank you for the advice. I’ll try to use it. Especially that third point.
@PI: I am a general internist, and I’ve avoided touching the whole subject of fat shaming because I really don’t want to pour salt on open wounds. I’ve seen enough people say truly horrible things to and about obese individuals that I can see it’s a touchy subject. If you want to discuss fat shaming and the obesity epidemic, I’d be more than happy to do so, but I have no desire to force anyone into a discussion they don’t want to have. If you’re interested, let me know. It’s possible that I don’t have anything to say that you haven’t already heard, but maybe I do. It’s also quite possible that I could learn from you, but it is certainly not your job to teach me anything.
Also, I addressed PI because she’s mentioned her experiences with fat shaming in a couple of threads (it sounds like PI has been hurt by this topic, and I am sorry about that). If anyone else wants to discuss this, or would rather it not be done here, speak up.
Blast, missed the edit window:
I wanted to add that the relationship between obesity and health is really quite complex, and we’re finding out more about it all the time.
Re-reading my above comments, I wanted to remove any doubt that I may sympathize with those who engage in fat shaming. It’s not OK. Shaming in general is not OK, judging people by their appearance is not OK, and selectively doing so to women is definitely not OK. Also, there is a real possibility that fat shaming targets the wrong issue entirely.
If no one requests my input on the subject, I will consider it dropped.
@joekster,
Axecalibur’s tips seem sound to me. I struggle not to come across as condescending.
In medical or science contexts being authoratitive is generally acceptable [citation needed, I know] as long as its evidence based and can be shown to be so. This style does bleed over into other interactions for me though.Maybe for you too?
As far as fat shaming goes:
We know it works to produce pain and humiliation.
We know it doesn’t work to promote healthy weight loss.
In your medical capacity, promoting healthy weight is important, but for all of us in our social capacity our input on someone else’s weight is not required unless it is solicited.
Switching between viewing something as a medical condition it is your responsibility to treat and as a facet of an individual’s life which may be none of your business can be a struggle. Keep practicing. 🙂
@croquembouche: you are definitely correct that it’s difficult to reconcile professional and personal spaces, and that the cross over leaves lots of room for misunderstandings. For example, I suspect that part of the traditional hostility between doctors and nurses is rooted in the fact that the way physicians tend to explain everything can both be misinterpreted as mansplaining (especially with a male physician and female nurse), and can easily transition into mansplaining if the physician actually is a chauvinist. Fortunately, we are training many more female physicians and male nurses, so that component should start to phase out.
I would never dream of attempting to give someone personal medical advice over the Internet. I wouldn’t feel confident that I had enough information to do so. I was thinking more of the public education angle. This raises a related question: do physicians have a responsibility to educate the public, and if so, how far does it go? I’ve spoken with physicians who argue that our only responsibility is to the people we get paid to take care of, and I’ve spoken to others who believe we have a good idea obligation to our society as a whole. Personally, I lean to the latter view, but I suspect my Methodist upbringing colors that (as Wesley said, there is no religion but social religion, no gospel but the social gospel). What do you think?
@joekster
The medical profession has only ever harmed me when it comes to fat. My whole life I’ve been put on diet after diet and as a result I’m probably fatter than I would have been and now I have no idea how to listen to my body’s hunger and fatigue cues. I spent so many years being always hungry and always tired that I can’t function normally anymore. And on top of that I have some kind of disease doctors are never interested in getting to the bottom of because they won’t treat me until I lose weight. Even though I lost 110 lbs at one point, I still couldn’t get anyone to help me. The best I got was tossed some antidepressants and told it might be celiac. She wouldn’t even discuss a diagnosis because of my insurance coverage. I feel better now on a gluten free diet but there’s still something off and I plan on seeing someone but need to brace myself for the focus on my weight and ignoring of my problems that is the only outcome talking to a doctor has ever given me.
So, if you really really feel the need to educate people on obesity and health, I humbly ask you to consider why this is so important to you and what you hope to accomplish, exactly.
joekster says:
How about exactly the way you did in the first paragraph of this quote? Then ask if the other party is game and respect their choice. Even when it’s between friends, arguing with more privileged people can be a huge fucking chore, so be grateful to those who humor you.
Roosh is also opportunistically carving out a niche for himself in alt-right circles. I’d guess his books are still selling fairly well, but his promotion of date rape means that other many PUA teachers don’t want to be associated with him. It’s probably accurate to say he’s not a PUA like Neil Strauss and his material is closer to being date rape howto guides. (Being confident and using psychology to establish a rapport to make more friends is fine, but I still think the less extreme PUA’s are misogynist and problematic).
Roosh isn’t even negging her correctly. A neg is a subtly aggressive insult disguised as a compliment. It works because people with higher social anxiety (both men and women) are more likely to stick around to seek someone’s approval after being insulted or blown off. High social anxiety might also make you less likely to report someone or stand up to someone who’s being aggressive.
@Kupo: I am sorry for what you have experienced at the hands of my profession. No physician should focus entirely on a single issue the way you indicate was done with you, and it’s something that is becoming increasingly common as demands for ‘efficient’ healthcare increase. Also, it’s a miserable statement about my profession that your insurance affects how your physician treats you. That is terrible, and indicates just how much American healthcare has been taken over by the insurance companies, which we should never have allowed to happen.
It seems like you’ve had a number of bad experiences with physicians, and I apologize on behalf of the profession. I know that there are at least some physicians willing to take the time to be thorough and patient with their patients, but I don’t know how common they are, and many of the ones I know are being slowly squeezed out by productivity metrics.
It is great that you’ve had some benefit from the gluten free diet. I can say that celiac disease is one of the more under-diagnosed diseases today, along with obstructive sleep apnea.
To answer the question at the end of your post, I see a great deal of misinformation floating around among both other healthcare providers and among the public about both how obesity fits into the greater picture of maintaining optimum health, and into how people become obese in the first place. As I implied above, I do feel a certain responsibility for the health of this society as a whole, and I would hope to empower anyone reading to make the most of their own health.
I actually had typed up a long screed on where I see obesity fitting into the larger clinical picture (hint: I think many of my colleagues focus on obesity too much, at the expense of lifestyle changes that are more important.) Then I re-read your post and realized that you hadn’t asked for my opinion. If you want to discuss, I’m more than willing to do so.
@A. Noyd: I’m always grateful to people for being willing to discuss subjects that are important to them, as I know they reveal a part of themselves in so doing.
One of the reasons I started asking about these things is to figure out how to make doing so less of ‘a huge fucking chore’. Thank you for responding.
@ joekster
The best thing that you, as a physician, can do on the topic of the ‘obesity epidemic’ is to treat the actual diseases/problems presented you by your patients and support progressive policies. The principal reasons for increases in diet-related/lifestyle related disease are economic/infrastructural. A combination of bad agricultural policy, bad transit and zoning decisions, wage stagnation, and numerous other factors beyond individual control are the culprits, and there’s nothing that a doctor can do about those other than work for better policies, same as everyone else.
@Dalillama: I fully agree. From what I’ve seen, too many of my colleagues are comfortable leaving it at ‘calories out have to be more than calories in’, rather than trying to dig into the underlying issues involved. It’s possible most physicians just don’t care, but given that most of us went to medical school because we wanted to help people (at least, that’s what we all told our interviewer), I suspect that much of that has to do with the 10 minute patient visit, which is one of my personal pet peeves, and an unrelated topic.
What I try to tell my own (otherwise healthy) patients is that they should get in 40 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise at least three times per week, go with the DASH diet as much as possible (lots of nuts, fruits, vegetables, etc), and reduce their intake of red meats and high-fructose corn syrup. Even if they never loose a pound, they’ll live longer and feel better.
If you’re interested, the ACC (American College of Cardiology) actually has guidelines on prevention of cardiac disease that includes lifestyle changes, and were last updated in 2014 (apologies if you’re already familiar with these guidelines).
http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1770218&_ga=1.102533569.1788047727.1469573991