Ugh. I’ve been hit with a nasty flu, so I will be out of commission today and probably for several more as this thing runs its course.
Which is a pity not only because I feel like crap but also because there’s lots of stuff going on. It’s (Not My) Presidet’s day, and there are anti-Trump protests around the US (and in London too, but for different anti-Trump reasons).
Meanwhle, our old friend fiend MILO was scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) but, oops, conservatives discovered that their favorite hateful bigot has, on a number of occasions, explicitly defended pedophilia oh sorry “ephebophilia.” And now he’s been un-scheduled. See the latest here!
Anyway, I’m going to go lie down. Feel free to use this as an open thread of course.
@Moggie
It would make him a superfluous addition to the team.
Jessica Valenti makes the excellent point that it is hypocritical for someone to defend Milo on the grounds of free speech, but then drop him once he starts talking about paedophilia:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/21/milo-yiannopoulos-republican-bigotry-alt-right
Welcome back, Chiomara! I have been busy with my job and don’t have as much time to devote to the comments as I used to. I still read them, but by the time I get here and can comment, it seems like either everything I wanted to say has been said, or the convo has long moved on.
re: MILO, I agree that there is a categorical difference between wanting to fuck a 6-year-old vs. wanting to fuck a 14-year-old, but trying to split the hair as to when a child ages into the second category is a distraction. Both are abuse. Neither is acceptable. Milo is making a big deal out of the categorical difference in order to elide the abuse in both categories of action. His rhetoric is that if he can get you to concede that there is a difference, you are therefore conceding that the second category is OK. It’s a form of verbal trickery. We can concede that there is a difference without conceding that one of the categories is acceptable. Our condemnation is not restricted to just one category of action. We can condemn all kinds of things simultaneously!
wrt: S&S, let me play the world’s smallest violin for them if they can’t get their advance back. They knew perfectly well the kind of person they were signing, and they did it anyway. They are not innocent lambs who have been conned by a con artist. If they can’t get their money back, I’m not going to cry for them. They are just as scummy as Milo. The only thing I’m sorry about there is that Milo is the beneficiary.
@JennyWren
Yeah, sounds like someone doesn’t realise what the “free” in “freeze peach” means. It doesn’t mean “the right to say what you like”, it means “the right to say things I agree with”. It is a common confusion.
@ Arctic Ape
My dinosaurs will be glow in the dark for purely practical reasons.
@ chiomara
Some friends and I went to a course on forensic pathology. It was really interesting (that’s was before all those “CSI” programmes). One of the lecturers had been explaining how it could be nearly impossible to tell if someone had been murdered or just died of respiratory failure if they had gone to sleep drunk.
Later that night we were all sitting around in one of our rooms when one of our party had begun to snore annoyingly loudly and wouldn’t wake up.
Just for a moment our eyes all met; then there was a little shake of our heads. But for a few seconds…
(Anyway, I won’t say what the trick is, I don’t want to give anyone any ideas!)
Rant mode on.
To me the difference between pedophilia and ephebephilia is nothing but a technicality. When people start putting energy into making sure that you’re not so mean as to call someone who preys on teenagers a pedophile, I get real suspicious. For me, street harassment was at its absolute height when I was a teenager. And I was not one of those teens that could pass as an adult if you really tried and deluded yourself. Then there was the deluge of messages I got when I created an old school pictureless AOL profile back in the mid nineties. It didn’t have much info besides “15F” but that was enough to pique a lot of interest. This sudden interest from adult men never felt anything but creepy and predatory. Street harassment decreased by probably about half when I was a college sophomore. That was the year the baby fat dropped off my cheeks and I started looking more woman than girl. Any adult who goes after teens is a fucking predator to me. A few secondary sex characteristics does not make one an adult. Kids who have started puberty are still kids and no amount of technicalities, evopsych or misunderstanding and rewriting of medieval European history is going to change that.
Okay. Rant mode off.
re: Milo’s attempt at distinction
I concur with PoM: there’s a difference, but both are Bad Things. It might be easier to kill a 6-year-old than a 14-year-old, but doing so to either makes you a murderer all the same.
@wwth
I’ve never been harassed by adults–only my peers, and even then that was very rare. Then again, it might have to do with me never going outside very often to be exposed to that sort of person (or many people outside of my family or my school at all). Mom kept a tight leash on me.
And now for some drabble.
I really don’t know what you’re gaining from trying to put everyone down
At least those of us who are all in accord that a Cheeto shouldn’t wear a crown
With the shade of hate and chaos and fascism and certain death loomin’
Tell me why, when we try to make the point that we need equal rights, you paint us as something that’s anything but human?
(Conceived as the delivery being rap. Take that as you will.)
@Alan
WTF? I don’t care how brief it was, how is your annoyance a reason to consider ending someone’s life?
@ kupo
Oh he was never in any real danger. It was just that momentary thing about the irony of the lecture. Had a similar thing once when we were left unattended in a room with 10 kilos of cocaine. For a fleeting second we all just knew what each other was thinking, but we wouldn’t have gone through with it.
I’ve been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster the last week. Upshot is that Catbeast is home on palliative care after three consecutive days of vet visits.
Reading yesterday of Axe and Dali’s relationship did so much for my dour mood! I must have missed the original announcement somehow, congratulations! This place is the absolute best!!
re: Milo being recruited at the White House, I don’t think that the likelihood of this happening is terribly high since he’s both British and moderately high-profile. Not that it would be impossible, but most likely more trouble than it’s worth. He’s not even that useful as a ‘consultant’ since his main-stream media presence is being diminished. (This administration seems to favor high-profile advisors who can get on news shows or have their own shows.)
Finally, I hope you feel better soon, David, and that maybe someone can make you some of the yummy soup recipes posted here. I’d come over and do it but you live too far away.
I think I might make some of the Korean chicken soup and freeze (at least some of) it for future illness.
I’ll note briefly that the distinction between attraction to a pre-pubescent child vs tweener and teenager only makes sense when it is viewed from the perspective of the perpetrator. What is the motive of the person who wants to fuck a child? That’s the question that is asked in order to draw this line.
From the perspective of a child, there is no real difference. Both types of abuse are equivalently abusive. That different words exist tells us that we are looking at this from the perpetrator’s viewpoint, not the victim’s, and that’s fucked up.
Typical, but no less fucked up for that.
So Milo’s explanation that his own abuse was X instead of Y still is coming from a place of the perp’s viewpoint. That’s why I don’t buy it, and I think why a lot of people aren’t buying it.
Oh, goodness! I forgot the reappearance of Chio! Your good news really helped to cheer me, too.
Welcome back, Chio! I’ve been wondering about you lately.
@ hambeast
So sorry to hear about your kittybeast. Words always seem like platitudes at times like this; but for what it’s worth, thinking of you and your furry family member.
I’m so sorry, Hambeast. My oldest cat is in a similar situation. As our vet says, “You get so dadgummed attached to them.”
Regarding rhinos, I’ve always thought it’s a shame they couldn’t be domesticated. The idea of rhino-mounted shock cavalry has always appealed to me – KNIGHTS riding RHINOS. The world would have been ruled from a magnificent golden palace in sub-Saharan Africa somewhere!
In my experience the sexual grooming/ exploitation/ abuse of young people is perpetrated by people who will go as young as they think they can get away with. Yes, a paedophile is exclusively attracted to pre-pubescent children – what is MUCH more common is the grey area, which morally has nothing to do with legal age as far as I am concerned. What it is about is the exploitation of a young persons lack of experience, deference to older people, naivety etc. It is also about ease of access to those young people – easier than children, that is.
I used to work on an LGBT helpline (10+ years), and I know quite a bit about the way older men will exploit young gay men/ boys. It is different to hetero men and girls/ young women because of homophobia. Often the relationship is framed as some kind of mentoring, and support in a homophobic world. Milo appears to be regurgitating this BS. This mostly appears to be insincere – it is simply a tactic for trust building and ultimately sexual access (often the man will appear to be very concerned about his mentee – maybe they do sometimes ‘care’, but there is a price to pay for support). It is also often access by more than one adult man – they really do appear to network for access to these victims.
A hetero equivalent would be the kind of man who ‘helps’ a girl who is experiencing a lot of problems with her parents and wants to get away. If she wants to leave he is only too happy to give her somewhere to stay, but with strings of course. I don’t think they usually involve other men unless they are actually grooming her for prostitution.
(BTW I never had a call from a woman describing this kind of behaviour from lesbians – not denying that lesbians do occasionally sexually abuse, but it seems really rare)
Waves to everyone, scoops up soup recipe 🙂
@Jesalin
Why thank you 🙂
@Chio
Oh yes, hubby got a new dog:
(Image: A chihuahua seated human-style on a cushion)
Image: A chihuahua in a colorful plaid sweater looks at the camera.
Nah, just a creep.
Camera, I have. Blasted thing just didn’t come with a mic, and my ancient desktop hasn’t an internal one. I keep meaning to pick one up, but other things have a more urgent call on my limited cash.
The changes above explain why you shouldn’t bother looking to that lot for any help in the current difficulties.
What the actual fuck? The leftist groups I know of here are discussing things like how to avoid arrest/violent retribution after beating nazis, how to resist Immigration officials, that kinda thing.
“Its a pretty desperating situation, and I honestly no longer have the health or strength to be active in this shit show.”
Tell me about it.
@Hambeast
Oh, I’m sorry. Lots of hugs
Thanks! We made it public in the new years open thread, IIRC.
Argh, damn autocomplete. Appears should be appeasers.
Apropos of nothing really but Cressida Dick has today been appointed as commissioner of the metropolitan police. That means the three most senior police officers in the UK are all women, as is their immediate boss the home secretary, and her immediate boss the prime minister.
Despite this, the country doesn’t appear to have plunged into lawless anarchy yet; otherwise I’m sure the MGTOWS would have mentioned it.
Alan: I thought half your country was no-go zones? It must be true because I read it in the daily fox news.
On the (long-overdue) fall of Milo, I’m giving Republicans a week before they transition from “We love Milo!” to “Milo is proof that all gay men support pedophilia!” – and two weeks before they start denying that they ever held the first position to begin with.
WOW,was just browsing steam and came across a game called “Femnazi:the triggering” . I can’ teven…
Thanks for all the good wishes for the Catbeast. He’s resting comfortably, sleeping a lot (yes, even for a cat) and enjoys being waited on by yours truly. His very nice doctor called this morning to check up on him and his fave vet tech clipped his claws (at no charge!) yesterday. He’s being doted on in his dotage, you might say.
Victorious Parasol – There’s a reason some people call them “fur babies” I guess. Catbeast has always been more of a fuzzy old man, though. Oh, and a purrfect gentleman, too!
P.S. I’m still sqeeeeeeing about two (two!) romances right here on my favorite blog community!! Hee1!