Let me get this straight about the latest reaction from conservatives to Milo Yiannopoulos: Nasty racism, sexism, viciously attacking Leslie Jones, and dismissing transexuality as a mental disease are all just fine, but talking honestly about teen-adult sexual relationships is so vile that it will get you disinvited from The Conservative Political Action Conference, and cost you a lucrative book contract as well. Three cheers for selective American moral righteousness!
Yiannopoulos is being loudly accused by everyone from the right to the left of defending or promoting pedophilia. Yet in the video below he pointedly distinguishes between pedophilia (which he defines as involving children and coercion, which he disclaims as horrible) and consenting relationships between teens and adults. He also takes note of frequently positive sexual relationships that teenage boys have with older men, relationships that can be supportive and help the teens as they come to grips with their homosexual feelings.
Here’s the unedited video. See what you think.
Just to be clear: I’m no Yiannopoulos apologist. He has done a whole range of hateful and hurtful things. But this particular incident is disturbingly reminiscent of when, in 2002, my good friend, the brilliant feminist thinker Judith Levine, was similarly accused of promoting pedophilia with her wonderful book Harmful to Minors, simply because she chose to speak honestly about the complex interface between minors, adults, and sexuality.
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