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.
@ pocketnerd
Phff! Hipster. In my day ‘expansion pack’ meant putting more cogs in your difference engine.
(Haven’t actually done that obviously, but do remember soldering 2k RAM chips onto motherboards for a mind boggling additional 8k!!!!)
I would say ‘Mary, what the fuck?’, but that would imply I’m even a tiny bit surprised anymore… ?
@Croquembouche
I’m not sure I’ve ever done something so good here, but I hope so…
Thank you 🙂
@Rip van Winkle
Everyone else has dealt with your nonsense, but this right here:
This shit right here can fuckin die. Neither of those games are my cuppa. Nor is 99% of FPS stuff or Last of Us/Uncharted/Watchdogs style action adventure (totes for grownups). They’re all games. A game you don’t care for, in a genre you’re not a fan of, gets a not terrible review, and, all of a sudden, it’s an ethics violation caused by [slurs] [slurring] it up for nefarious purposes. And then you got the absolute gall to imply that we hate women
(Also note: he hasn’t brought up the name of a single game journalist. Women related to games, but none are reporters or anchors or whatevs. Funny that…)
Gamergater is a morally bankrupt movement and always was. It was never about games.
My family didn’t get a PC until I was twelve, and I’ve never owned a console of any sort. My APM is dismal, my reactions are awful, and I haven’t ever really gotten into Squaresoft, Nintendo or anything like that. I am vaguely aware by cultural osmosis that there is such a thing as a Pokémon, but if asked to list them I would probably have to start guessing after the second one. I really like Anita Sarkeesian but think she doesn’t go far enough. When I find a game difficult, I turn down the difficulty settings. I have played all of five minutes of Binding of Isaac.
However, no Gamergater has ever accused me of being a fake gamer boy. In my experience they’re usually falling over themselves to try to get me to be their ally.
Funny how that happens.
@EJ (TOO)
“Funny,” indeed.
I have a friend who’s worryingly close to the alt-right spectrum, but if nothing else at all, he knows that GG’s a crock and told me so (after mocking the same phrase I batted back at Rollin’).
Speakin’ of which.
Richard Rollin’, if you’re ever gonna come back, c’mon. Take a guess as to whether I’m a beta cuck mangina or a bonbon-popping man-hating feeeeeeeeeeeemale. (Since I doubt you’ll acknowledge any non-binary representations.)
I suppose GGers like RR here would really prefer mainstream media to ignore or look down on games rather than take them seriously as cultural creations worth archiving and discussing/analysing/critiquing etc. because they want gaming to be niche/almost underground/below the radar. Then they could get back to feeling like kings of a little in-group anthill, instead of having to cope with the fact that people with different points of view from theirs might talk about their special subject.
If this causes a problem I will probably not post in this thread anymore. I have tried very hard to make this both relavent and sensitive, and if I failed I would be grateful to anyone willing to let me know how I failed.
@Policy of Madness
I’m very sorry about the length of this, but the topic deserves it.
It is useful to divide them, but if you mean it’s not useful in some contexts and to some people I would want to be sensitive to that and would be willing to consider language changes. In fact i can see that i did not sufficiently acknowledge agender and bigender people. It’s not an either-or situation because while there is often little broad agreement over what we want to attach to the word “gender”, there are patterns that should be recognized that involve nature and nurture.
I’m no second wave feminist on this, in fact in my experience o a slice of things that historically get called “masculine”, it affects both male and female people, and seems to involve more gender dysphoria on average for the female people.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15487603
That also involves inherited predispositions, and some pretty specific features like issues involving social dominance urges, sexual urges, anger and violence urges, touching urges, and sensitivity to things like symmetry, counting and checking.
I’m sure there are similar places where “feminine” characteristics involve predispositions in some people, though I would personally hesitate to try to define those things without looking a lot of people from different groups describing what they feel is associated with feminine (Some of those things will be out of my experience, some will not strictly be feminine, context also matters, it is an interesting puzzle). Yet I’m also sure that for many the characteristics we call masculine and feminine are largely programmed by culture and their own predispositions allowed a more equal set of potential endpoints when it comes to how their instincts and emotions are arranged (masculine or feminine, both or neither).
Gender has to do with the brain, sex has to do with the body and they are seperable, sometimes seperate, sometimes together, and sometimes absent depending on the gendered thing in question and the context in which it is considered. And no part of that should deny anyone’s experience of their own combinations and contexts or I am doing it wrong.
I hope that I just demonstrated that I’m aware of the overlapping continuums in gender, to a reasonable extent at least. I’m equally aware of the continuums for sex and other than pointing at two sets of general trends that are common enough in our species to use as variables to work out patterns (male and female), I’m not denying that people outside of that should be excluded, but I am open to better ways of talking about it.
Personally I would be happy with “desexed” language that did not exclude anyone and I’m still figuring out how I can be maximally accommodating, activist with resort to changes, and function with what we have (and I can’t say that is what we should do either).
Either way I try to keep the trends in mind and refer to them in ways that don’t implicitly make them solid categories, and I’m happy to figure out better ways. I want a society capable of working out the different ways that those variables I listed relate to patterns that can help us understand the different ways that we can behave in good and bad ways, while not being bound by them when it comes to interacting with individuals.
With respect to this thread and another complex human category, there are patterns to bigotry and probably unique versions that involve more than the cis, white male and female individuals that we use to study how the outline works. Knowing that will let us work out how to unmake bigots with understanding of the nature of the underlying bigotry. So while I don’t want to speculate about the origins of about Milo’s bigotry where I am ignorant, what we can glean about their type of person and the shape of their bigotry as a imperfect but still useful category should be done as long as we can connect it to something real. In fact I think that sort of thing will be required at some point and if bigotry is not a diagnosis it should be done even though some terminology might be shared with other sensitive things. What matters is how carefully it is done and I know a thing or two about awareness of social sensitivity and wrestling with language, but learning new things often requires mistakes.
As for sex, “Sex” is lines on a paper or screen, or sound waves (like gender). The things it appeals to are statistical collections of things with real impact both nature and nurture. Just as the impact it has on people who don’t fit the average is real. It’s not at all a lark and it is useful for understanding ourselves, but neither is it a solid immutable thing that can’t be broken up into other language symbols in society, or replaced outright (I’m comfortable with either). I don’t know which we should do, but what we have is often still useful.
I don’t think I could define a trans person very well beyond a person that feels they have a gender that does not match the gender that thier assigned sex has historically been associated with. I’m trying let to trans people and other people tell me what sex and gender is to them, and I try to incorperate that into what I know as best as I can (and will take any comments here into account).
What I also know is that anatomy and brain structures that continuously map anatomy are a foundational part of the structure of emotion, including genetalia (I can expand on this if anyone wants). Felt body states are written into our experiences, beliefs, manner of thought and actions, and that is modified by nature and nurture (which will involve genes, hormones, brain and body structures, inherited, in utero, and experiences after birth). Other people and experiences can intimately affect us in ways that implicitly involve the body through parts of the brain. Some of that will involve people who generally fit into anatomically male or female with predispositions that push towards masculine and/or feminine in terms of instincts and emotions, some will feel no push and could go either way depending on choice and social effects. Trans people are in there too, and nature and nurture will be involved in many ways. How precisely I can’t say for certain. I have some thoughts but I try to keep that to myself (and out of any implicit biases) for now. I hope that has been successful.
I’m fine with that. I’m trying to figure out how that might be made useful when it comes to thinking about a complex sort of bigotry like that of Milo’s. A feminine penis and testicle bearing person who is bigoted towards women and ovary and vagina bearing persons. Does that work?
>”That is my opinion.”
And it’s one that I hope I took seriously.
No, no, no, that’s not nearly complex enough. Brain/body duality is a good start, but we need at least two more continuums in there, maybe three. There’s “gender”, which relates to the forebrain; “sex”, which relates to the body below the navel (or “belly button”, as gender theorists call it); “masc/fem binary”, which relates to the body between the navel (“belly button”) and the lower lip; “social nature”, which relates to the body from the upper lip and up, excluding the brain; and, finally, “clelpho bunkum”, which relates to the lizard brain, the corpus callosum, and the trousers.
…okay, it’s late and I’m feeling ornery and being snarky. But, seriously. We could weave this fantastical web of theories, or we could just accept that folks’ gender is what they tell us it is, and stop trying to pour definitions into them like they’re chili chowder and we’ve forgotten the recipe.
@Brony
It’s a good comment IMHO. I’m at work at the moment and only have 20 more minutes for lunch so I’ll have to be more brief, but I read it and it’s a good comment.
But the brain is part of the body, and the mind is an emergent property of tangible brain function. If gender were an entirely social construct from front to back, the way feminism has historically taught us, then trans people wouldn’t exist. Western society tells us that there are two genders, and second-wave feminism said that there is no physical difference separating the two, that people are socialized to be male or female and that’s all there is to that. Trans people throw that in the garbage, and if the existence of some people renders a model unworkable, then we need to ask ourselves hard questions about our model.
Part of the problem seems to be the elision of the social aspects of gender (the socialization, expectations, requirements, obligations that society imposes on the two main genders unequally) and the gender identity aspect of gender. Trans men have the gender-identity portion of the “male gender,” but don’t get the expectations/requirements/experience of the social side of the male gender until they transition and can “pass.” And their socialization experience is always going to be different from that of a cis man, simply because they went a nonzero amount of time living under the female social regime. This doesn’t make them identify as any less male; the two sides are perhaps unconnected, perhaps loosely connected, but certainly not identical and deserving to be categorized under a single word.
Regardless, gender identity seems to be hardwired. If it weren’t, there’s no reason why trans women should exist. Where is the wiring? Is it in the hormones, the brain? It’s definitely physical in some way, and not social in the slightest, and I can’t think of a reason why that physical difference is “not sex” whereas the shape of one’s genitals is “sex.”
Language is important. Language is normative. If I talk about a red balloon, I’m implicitly saying that the term “balloon” and the descriptor “red” are the correct way to describe a particular object. By not using other words, I’m implying that there is no other correct way. We already know this, if not in those terms: if you talk about a red balloon and it turns out you’re talking about a red hot air balloon, people will call you on having left out an important detail.
By defining “sex” entirely in terms of the way people are physically shaped, we are leaving out important details, and normatively implying that those details are actually not important, not legit. A trans person will tell you otherwise.
I’m not sure why it’s important to identify him as “feminine.” There are a non-trivial number of really masculine men who do drag. Milo identifies as male, and doing drag doesn’t mean he is a feminine man. Being gay doesn’t make him feminine. I just don’t see why saying he’s anything more or less than a misogynist man is required. The only reason I can come up with for wanting to do that is to psychoanalyze him in some way, and we all know why that isn’t a good plan.
It’s interesting that he’s gay and hates gay people, but I don’t think he’s a feminine person who hates other feminine people. He just looks like a dude in drag to me. Correct me here if he’s ever identified as feminine. It’s honestly problematic to me to start categorizing people as feminine or masculine based on their sartorial decisions. I realize that it’s a thing, but it’s a social-gender thing, not a gender-identity thing.
Agree 100%. A lot of people consider makeup to be feminine. I’m a cis woman but I don’t wear makeup. I know lots of cis men who do wear makeup or have in the past. I know one who wants to but feels like he can’t because he wants to appear professional. Femininity is a lot more complicated than just what the majority of the population sees as feminine.
@opposablethumbs:
I suppose GGers like RR here would really prefer mainstream media to ignore or look down on games rather than take them seriously as cultural creations worth archiving and discussing/analysing/critiquing etc. because they want gaming to be niche/almost underground/below the radar. Then they could get back to feeling like kings of a little in-group anthill, instead of having to cope with the fact that people with different points of view from theirs might talk about their special subject.
What we obect to is agenda drive nongamers invading our spaces and demanding we conform to their psuedoliberal narrative. Now that games are cool and trendy the regressive left wants to dominate the narrative in that space. We gamers are natural nonconformists and freethinkers. We spent 40 years as outcasts vilefied by society. Well too bad we built this space with our blood sweat and tears, we EARNED it. And you can’t have it.
Holy shit, this thread exploded.
@KafkaNoMore
Your “Argument” boils down to “That [homophobic slur] is so [misogynistic slur], he’s clearly a [transphobic slur], [keyboard diagnosing], [toxic masculinity],” and you seriously don’t understand why you got pushback for it? Do you even know what fucklicking site you’re on?!
Oh, fuck this nonsense, I’m shooting David an email.
Calm down, dude, no need to get so emotional over it.
(Just for fun, I’m going to bold every instance of one, just so we have a count.)
Where? Where are these “non-gamers”?
How do you define “gamer”? How do these “non-gamers” not fit that definition?
Why do you think they don’t deserve access to gaming spaces? Why do you think they’re yours? Who is this “our” you’re talking about?
Why do you think that “non-gamers” are “invading” “our” spaces? What do they have to gain?
What is the “pseudoliberal narrative”? Why is it “pseudo”? What is, in your own words, a “liberal” narrative?
Why do you think that the “non-gamers” are “demanding” that gamers “conform” to “their pseudo-liberal narrative”? What do they have to gain from this?
What is “the regressive left”, and how is it “regressive”? What was the narrative in “gaming space” before “the regressive left” got there? What is “the regressive left’s narrative”, and why do they want to change the previous one?
Says the guy who has uncritically swallowed and who is now uncritically regurgitating all of GG’s talking points and rhetoric.
You’re not a “nonconformist freethinker”, dude. You’re just as much of a “sheeple” as all those people who you think are “blinded by the media”. You’re not Neo. This isn’t the Matrix. You’re not that special.
You’re just as much a conformist and just as much a quiet Yes Man as all the other poor, deluded souls who are rallying under GG’s banner under the idea that they are the Main Character, and everyone else is an NPC. Hate to break it to you, but you’re always the NPC in someone else’s story.
You may think that you’re free from the Matrix and everyone else is trapped inside, but that’s just another Matrix, bro.
Who is this “we”? Because I’m willing to bet my Steam library you haven’t done shit for games besides barge into comments sections and shout about “ETHICS” in games journalism.
Meanwhile, people like Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu are actually out there making games, and Anita Sarkeesian is contributing valuable critique and analysis. 101 level analysis, but important analysis nonetheless.
Meanwhile, women, PoC, LGBT+ people and others have always been in your precious space. It’s our space too motherfucker. You’re just too blinded by your precious entitlement to see that.
And guess what? Space in “gaming” is vast. Infinite even. There’s more than enough room for all the games you like, and all the games you don’t.
There’s room here for everyone, and guess what? You’re gonna share.
Repeat after me, Richard: YOU DIDN’T DO SHIT TO EARN SHIT.
You’re some snot on the internet trying to claim credit for decades of hard work and community you’ve had nothing to do with.
And based on what? Your penis? The fact that you call yourself a “gamer”?
In fact, you and your GG pals have done more to harm gaming as a whole than you have to “help” with your little “anti-PC” crusade. You’ve torn down decades of integrity and respect that people like me, who are old enough to remember Jack Thompson and his bullshit, have worked hard to build by trying to be, you know, decent people instead of raging douchebags.
You know what we got from that? Games as mainstream. All your precious games that you love so much that are made by AAA developers? People like me helped build that by being decent people and not acting like goddamned children.
People like you on the other hand have done nothing but destroy all that hard work.
Pull your head out of your ass, smell the coffee, and look around you. We’ve always been here. It’s only now that we’re finally getting some attention. This is our space too. And we’re not leaving because you and your fellow man-children want to throw a tantrum that you have to share your toys with others.
Grow the fuck up.
I’ve beaten Bully five times just to fucking rub it that dude’s face. Also, it’s my favorite game. I need to get the Scholarship Edition. There’s, like, more classes to take and I think you get to see Jimmy Hopkins in an elf suit, which would be amazing. Probably 50000% more fun than the Rudolf sweater.
Also, I wanna see if I can beat up Santa.
@Roger Rabbit
I’m a gamer. Have been ever since I 1st played the original Sonic when I was about 5. I have never been vilified for liking games. I’ve never been outcasted for it. Not to speak for those that have been (and I’m really sorry about that), but the point remains. Gamers aren’t what you say they are. This coming from the same guy telling us not to pigeonhole Milo for not being correctly gay. Sorry (not sorry), but I’m not like you. To paraphrase you, “who are you to tell gamers what they are?”
While we’re on the subject. Everyone is a nonconformist. Nobody has ever or will ever completely fit into the rigid boxes the world decides we hafta. And I’m not a freethinker any more than anyone else. I have my own ideas, but I also alter my thinking based on input from others. There’s some stuff I just don’t think about period. Ya know, like everyone else. I’m not special, I didn’t “earn” a damn thing. If gaming is something you hafta bleed in order to welcomed into, then it’s wrong and needs to be changed. I wanna share my hobby with others for the sake of sharing. Maybe they can help make it even better. That’d be nice
Also, safe spaces. Irony ?
I was just typing this same thought, but I thought I’d refresh.
My goodness, this fellow is…dramatic.
@Richard Roller, an explanation for the advancement of progressive thought in video games lately is that outsider librals are infiltrating the hobby in order to ruin the fun for everyone. Yes, that’s one possible explanation. It requires that there be some sort of coordinated agenda to wreck fun just because, but it’s possible.
An alternate explanation is that there’s always been progressive voices in video games, and they’re finally speaking up. That interpretation requires no collusion, no fun-wrecking-just-’cause, no agenda. It just involves people bein’ people and doin’ people things.
Apply the principle of parsimony in order to determine which of these is more likely to be true.
(hint: you’re wrongety-wrong-wrong-wrong)
@ Richard
As I mentioned before I’m not into computer games myself, but a number of my friends are. Some have been playing for a few years, but some since the dawn of the home computer era. Those peeps are pretty hardcore. We’re talking people who have different PCs optimised for particular games and the various consoles so they can always play any release they fancy.
Since hearing about Gamergate I was curious as to their views on it. And you know what, not one of them had even heard about it.
Seriously, complete blank looks. I think perhaps you over estimate the relevance of your little cabal.
Video games aren’t a space. Anyone with access to a console or a computer can play them. This has always been the case.
I guess I’m not cool trendy now and only play the dreaded match 3 phone games and solitaire. But as a kid in the 80s and 90s, I logged considerable time on the NES and to a lesser extent, Atari. Even though I’m a feeemaale and a lifelong liberal. Almost every female friend I had played Nintendo. Nobody saw gaming as unusual. Cool kids and nerds alike played them.
The nostalgia for a time when gaming was only done by white guys is based on a fantasy. This era exists nowhere but the imaginations of gamergater so. I think this is the millenial equivalent of the nostalgia that right wing baby boomers have for the 50s. You know that thing where they fool themselves into thinking that life was a Leave it to Beaver episode. Everyone was prosperous and white. There was no crime. Women wore an apron and pumps 24/7 and never did anything but wait on men. Gay people, abortion, and atheism weren’t invented yet. Etc.
It’s pathetic really.
I think that because ggers think girls have cooties and thus only gamed with guy friends, they think girls must never have played. Anything they don’t personally experience, doesn’t exist. Now that the internet and social media are such a big part of our lives, they finally couldn’t escape the existence of women and girls in gaming.
“Richard” is banned for being tedious as hell with all that old bullshit we’ve heard a zillion times already holy crap.
I haven’t caught up with the rest of the thread.
@PeeVee
I made sure I wrote fast. The struggle is real ?
@WWTH
Now now, of course feeemales played games. It was always lame, girly games, they sucked at em, and they very soon quit to play with their EasyBakes. They played games, but they didn’t bleed for them. Real Gamer Bros are all Batman, ya see…
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcrossroads/images/a/a2/Do-You-Bleed-Meme-Header.jpg
(there’s a lot of related menstrual memes in Google image search ?)
@Alan
During E3 when Nintendo did the whole “Five fun guys” joke I mentioned it to a video game dev who works on AAA titles. He had no idea what was wrong with it. I pressed and learned he knew almost nothing about GG other than their harassment of Anita. He didn’t know about burgers and fries, Zoe, or Brianna. So even the people they’re trying to influence know nothing about them. This makes me happy.
Heh, late to check back in here.
I’ve been playing games less now than I have in the past, but I’ll yak your ear off about them nonetheless.
@David Futrelle
Thank you! The problem with gators that they haven’t gotten past a grade school understanding of… well, anything.
As for whether Milo is actually gay, the man does lie almost as much as Trump. But watch Milo’s interviews with Joe Rogan. You can find them on YouTube. I think he’s more honest with Joe because he respects him. You’ll hear Milo talk about just how much he wishes he wasn’t gay. You’ll also hear Milo admit he doesn’t want Trump to be president.