One of the many strange things about Breitbart’s alleged “tech editor” Milo Yiannopoulos is how much he cares about convincing people he doesn’t care.
The self-described “provocateur” even dressed up as a literal clown for his recent profile in Out Magazine.
You’ve no doubt heard about the Out piece already; it’s been a teensy bit controversial. But what you probably didn’t know is that Salon sent a camera crew to his photoshoot with photographer Jill Greenberg. And that along with the camera crew they sent writer (and friend of We Hunted the Mammoth) Amanda Marcotte.
“Perhaps I got a bit caught up in his self-mythologizing,” she writes in her account of what followed, “which is why I thought he would have some fun answering provocative questions while he was getting his picture taken.”
Turns out Milo did not have much fun with her questions:
I never did get good answers to my questions, though I did learn that Yiannopoulos likes to reduce feminism to “angry lesbians” supposedly tricking naive young women into getting too fat to get boyfriends.
But I did learn one important fact: Milo Yiannopoulos is not playing around. He is utterly sincere about his far right views.
He is sincere enough that he lectured me for about 15 minutes, and got so caught up in the moment that he seemingly forgot that he was half-naked while wearing a wig and make-up. He was sincere enough to get genuinely wound up during this time.
Ultimately, he was having so little fun with her questions that he — perhaps channeling his idol Donald Trump — threw a fit and demanded she leave the premises.
He was so sincere that, when the Salon team shut off the cameras in order to move into another vantage point, he demanded that I leave the room, refused to answer any more questions, and called me a “bitch.”
The best part of all this? You can watch some of these testy exchanges on video over on Salon. There are two different versions of the video posted there; the one at the top has more Milo in it.
Turns out Milo is not so much a sad clown as a mad clown.
Let it go, Axe. Just ignore it. Don’t say it. You wanna say it, but don’t. It’s over, Axe, let it go…
I’m wondering if there isn’t any use of “woman” by KafkaNoMore that means more than “female person”? I suspect their language is not implicitly including trans women.
I can’t say my grasp is perfect, but until someone helps me farthur I tend to divide things into types of ways that people can be and how we react to and accommodate one another:
*male/female (anatomy, I don’t ignore intersex but am unsure of how to incorperate)
*man/woman (instincts/social roles, personality dispositions…spectrums)
*sexual orientation (physical attraction, spectrums)
And more beyond this example.
*sexual attraction (presence/absence spectrum)
*romantic attraction
*…
This is not about Milo, I do not know enough about them to say. This is about the number of ways that a feminine male person might come to be habitually bigoted towards feminine female persons and female persons.
Sure, some probably wish they were feminine female people, but there is more than one path to bigotry than envy. From what I have read about homophobia there is more than one general type of homophobe, and while this is misogyny one of those types involve a person who somehow ended up homophobic and showed evidence of same sex attractions. And they came from authoritarian backgrounds.
I can easily imagine a person learning to socially survive by outwardly opposing what they were all the harder to keep hidden, and then finding an outlet for how they learned to behave that shares elements of how they were used to acting.
And I’m sure there are more than two ways to become someone like Milo.
This is sort of the problem, right here! It’s a textbook example of confirmation bias in action, in that it allows you to see the thing-you-believe everywhere you look. It’s exactly the same as the ‘hypergamy theory’ that the menzers have. They really do see examples of ‘hypergamy’ everywhere, and there’s no way to disprove it, so they keep digging deeper.
Meanwhile, I know you care about the things that are discussed on this blog, and that you don’t want to be sexist or transphobic, so you do care about feminist issues. That requires clarity and a desire to be deeply attached to reality. Confirmative theories can draw you away from that, and can draw you into conflict with people that you agree with and care about. Such as what’s happened here.
I really urge you to examine why you feel so strongly about this theory, and why you want to maintain belief in it when there’s evidence against it. No anger or accusations – we all get our hangups, and I could certainly be wrong about all of this too, so don’t take my word for it. I hope that the next conversations go better! Good night.
Kafkanomore – as a cisgender white gay male, I find your incessant insistence on your pet theory* disturbing. Your ongoing refusal to consider opposing viewpoints is positively repellent. Milo can, and by rights ought to be, confronted with responsible arguments. Your inexplicable foolery does not assist in this.
*”Effeminate gay men who are misogynists are that way because of the following data from the University of Assfax. Anyone disagreeing with me is a poopyhead.”
Feminine cis women can be misogynists, too. Do they have womb envy?
To be honest, even if this theory were true, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that information. It doesn’t lend itself naturally to a practical solution to the problem of misogyny – in fact, if anything, it suggests it’s insoluble.
OFFS, how many pages of flame-warring is this going to turn into?
Milo is NOT a “feminine” misogynist, he is a straight-up (sorry, GAY-up) misodge, plain and simple. He hates women and apparently blames them for his being gay (which he also hates). Meanwhile, the only woman he could legitimately blame for his predicament is his own mother, and that would be only for bringing him into this heterosexist world where a guy who’s born gay isn’t as well accepted as a guy who’s not. Which is, in fact, the REAL source of his self-loathing. It was all these macho men and their toxic, heteronormative, gynophobic masculinity who made him hate himself for being gay; it was not women who made him gay. Or hateful towards them out of some twisted envy of their femaleness. If he could just extricate his cheesy dye job from his ass for a minute and look around him, he would actually see that, and stop making noises about going in for conversion therapy (which does not work, seeing as Teh Ghey is not a disease, and religiously infused quackery is not a cure.)
Milo could certainly do with some counselling, and I hope he gets it. Self-acceptance and self-esteem can be learned — I know this much from experience. Sexual orientation can’t, and can’t be unlearned, either…and that is the root of all his trouble.
What the fuck Out Magazine. Why are you giving him a platform?
And transphobic, racist, self loathing, ignorant-of-queer-history people like him have no business doing drag.
Some of wonder whether Milo is even gay. It’s a good stage act, and make no mistake, he is an act, and Milo is a highly cultivated media persona.
But what if it is all an act?
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
I don’t personally think it’s useful to divide up “gender” into a separate category from “sex.” This was the story told by second-wave feminists, and it served a useful purpose for them, but it doesn’t seem to be very useful today.
Not only do “gender” and “sex” exist along continuums that overlap, but there is ambiguity in the term “sex.” What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean someone’s genetic code, or the way they physically look, or the hormonal balance, or the construction of their brain? And what does it mean, exactly, to be transgender? If we discard the idea that it’s just a lark, which I do, then there is some kind of physiological difference between a trans woman and a cis man. Why does that physiological difference not matter to “biological sex” whereas “has a vagina” does?
What people usually – but not always – mean by “biological sex” is someone’s phenotype. If you look like a typical woman and you have a vagina and a uterus and ovaries, then that’s what people mean when they refer to you as having “female sex.” So why not just dispense with the term “sex” and say what we mean? “A trans woman is a woman who was born with a penis and testicles.” Yeah, it’s more words, but words are free.
That is my opinion.
I think maybe Milo is torn over this, he wants to have what women have, to be admired and to be glamorous, but he is too afraid of losing his male privilege (reinforced by his Patriarchalist religious beliefs, and right wing doctrine) to fully become a woman. To his mind, being a woman is being a c–t and a whore. If he did not need to berate himself according to his doctrinal belief system, he would be free to enjoy his life as a trans woman. These beliefs were most probably drummed into him from childhood, so are hard for him to excise.
Maybe he should look at Caitlyn Jenner as a role model, an ex Olympian, Born again Christian, Republican, Trump supporting trans woman.
Your baseless transmisogynistic speculation is noted, Virgin Mary.
This thread is awful.
@visicara.
Yes it is.
Nothing nice here whatsoever.
I wish we didn’t have to discuss things like this and people could just be happy with who they are.
No. We don’t have to discuss whether or not someone’s gender is what they say it is. In fact, we shouldn’t discuss it all. Because it’s shitty.
Hear bloody hear.
Global time zones made me late to the party again. Kind of glad in a way. If we have now reached the “tidying up afterwards” phase, I’d like to have a go at some of that.
I’ve seen KafkaNoMore comment here from time to time, for I think longer than I’ve been commenting myself. I can’t remember specifics, and didn’t remember what she had said about who she was (thanks for clarifying the gender bit of that for us, KafkaNoMore, or can I call you Kafka, or KNM?). In this context, how you identify really matters how we evaluate your comments. To help everyone evaluate mine, I’m cis, (post)het, female, white, majority ethnicity, middle aged, middle class, English first language, never borne or raised a child.
KafkaNoMore, I don’t think you are a troll. Trolls have no patience for the long con of hanging around for months or years, weaselling their way into people’s trust. They need the immediate gratification of provoking outrage. You clearly didn’t expect or hope for that.
Some people have assumed you must be a troll, because you have said some things that they – and I – find just awful. If I have the stamina after posting this, I will try to add my refutations to theirs, and try not to dogpile you. You in turn have counter-accused several people of trolling you. [Special mention to where you also accused Axecalibur of policing this forum – an MRA troll would have accused him of White Knighting. Since I’ve been here I’ve seen him speak up many times on issues that didn’t necessarily affect him intimately, then other people who were intimately affected have also spoken, and he has encouraged them to keep on speaking. If Axecalibur ever gives me the side-eye, I hope I will be giving myself a long hard look before I double down.]
When you get up in the morning, if it isn’t morning already there, please keep reading WHTM, please take the advice many have given you to put the defensiveness on hold and reevaluate what you have said. You’ve made some small efforts in this direction already. Please keep trying to keep your mind open.
Some positivity, because I’ve been very negative throughout this thing.
Here’s to trans women. All trans women. You are important. The rest of us must, must do better by you.
Here’s to closeted trans women, who are somehow being blamed for Milo Y. Keep doing what you need to be safe. Your bravery is incredible.
Here’s to every LGBT+ person whose presentation is a lot more complicated than “like a cis straight woman” or “like a cis straight man,” but who keeps getting lumped into those boxes by cishet people who have no sense of history or nuance.
Here’s to “effeminate” gay trans men, who sure as hell aren’t jealous of women for what we supposedly have.
Here’s to every woman, trans or cis, who can’t have children. You are a woman. Giving birth is not what makes you a woman. Same to any woman who has lost one or both breasts to cancer.
@Richard Roller
Always way to late to these threads, but really Richard? Really?Popping ballooned egos is Milo’s superpower? Well then he needs to aim those needles self-ward because his own ego is ironically the part of him most in need of a prick.
@Atlas Sulked
Always way to late to these threads, but really Richard? Really?Popping ballooned egos is Milo’s superpower? Well then he needs to aim those needles self-ward because his own ego is ironically the part of him most in need of a prick.
Milo’s doing just fine thanks. LOL. The tumblrinas are desperate to smear him but he just gets more fabulous every day. If we want to talk about egos on Twitter in need of a bursting how about Zoe Quinn or Brianna Wu?
@authorialAlchemy
What the fuck Out Magazine. Why are you giving him a platform?
And transphobic, racist, self loathing, ignorant-of-queer-history people like him have no business doing drag.
Because noplatforming is a form of censorship. I know you SJWs love censorship but sorry for you we still have free speech in this country.
And “no business” SAYS WHO? You do not get to tell others how to express their sexual orientation. Milo can wear womens’ clothing if he wants to. Or maybe…. you just hate women.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
You smell like Mick Dash.
Pocket Nerd said it. Criticism ain’t silencing. And there’s lots about Milo to criticize. Or should we just shut up and close our eyes when we see something that we think’s wrong? Tell me how much goodness that tactic has won in the past.
I don’t know what a mick dash is,c an we keep the ad homenim attacks to a minimum please. But dozens or hundreds of people colluding to shame and drown out a single person IS silencing and also it IS harassment. It’s called the Heckler Veto. There has been a coordinated hate campaign against Milo for years, ever since he dared to defy the self appointed defenders of “LGBT orthodoxy” by daring to stand up for ethics in game journalism. He is a famous and outspoken gay man who disagreed with their politics and that just wasn’t allowable…. now they’re trying to silence him.
By any means necessary.
Milo has received DEATH THREATS from people terrified of the truth he speaks.
This thread is fucking horrible as it is. Can we ban Dick already?
@kupo
You should think about why your knee jerk reaction is to ban people who disagree with you rather than discuss with them.
@ Richard Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
Dude. It’s been, like….two years since #GG. “Ethics in games journalism” is a punchline, and for good reason. Using it is not helping your case.
It’s not hard to understand: just because someone is part of at least one minority doesn’t mean they can’t be just as big a jackass to someone who’s part of another minority as a member of the majority can. Milo being gay doesn’t absolve him of spewing vitriol towards…anyone.
Though I had an odd dream last night about Milo (or a friend of mine that looks oddly like him) was in my Dad’s house, shooting up codeine (with these big, old-fashioned bottles of the stuff around), complaining that he was blind and he couldn’t shut his eyes. For some reason, dream-me offered him cocaine. I think he passed.
@ Richard Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
Knee-jerk? A true jerk of the knee is instantaneous. You’ve been dragging your ass around here for a good while, going on and on about obvious falsehoods. Any attempt at discussion would be fruitless, as you wish to present us with your “troooooooooooof.” We’ve heard it many times, over many years, from many people that are not you. It’s ceased to be entertaining.