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| A conservative photo of Milo. |
Milo. If you don't know who Milo is, you can skip this post because learning about Milo will not be edifying. Milo is a British chap of 32 or so who is a star of the so-called "alt-right", which means conservatives who use very bad language and get advice about women from the manosphere.
Presumably Milo does not get advice about women from the manosphere, however, as he has deep-seated same-sex attractions, which he says he doesn't like and would get rid of if he could although he also claims to act on them. He is a Roman Catholic and apparently defends the doctrines although considering the kinds of things he says at his rallies, he might want to review Mulieris Dignitatem.
If there is an influential priest in Milo's life, it would be nice if he climbed onto the stage during one of Milo's rallies, smacked him around the head a few times and dragged him away to a monastery to have a think. I am all for Milo's freedom of speech, but I am worried about him and the young men who look up to him and think his riffs on his own promiscuity and his evisceration of feminists absolutely hilarious.
I don't know about you, but the whole outworn "make me a sammidge" put-down makes me feel sad for the men who use it. Among other things, it suggests a man who doesn't actually know how to make a sandwich or has so little control over his life that the only thing that makes him feel good is to exert power over some nervous woman (or imagine that he could). It's also an obscene abuse of the fact that many (if not most) women actually do enjoy caring for other people and do so in a million, often overlooked, ways. This is not something you demand or take for granted. It's something to value, just as there are many things women should value in men.
One of the very nicest things about men is how so many of them care for women and children. This is natural and normal to well-raised adult men although obviously there are enough men who don't like women for the well-raised adult men to feel very protective of women. (Sorry about that convoluted sentence.) Anyway, all the men in my family--including my brother's in-laws--care for women and children and feel protective of their own (at very least) without getting overly dramatic about it. And although the official family rule was that the boys were never supposed to tell the girls about things the guys said in the army or in the locker room, one of my brothers confessed to me that he was really sickened by all the garbage the guys said about women at school. I think he was 18.
So there was my brother, age 18, sickened by all the locker room talk in his all-male Catholic school, and here is Milo, age 32, delighting college men by "calling women by degrading names" to quote LifeSiteNews. Why was my 18 year old brother more mature than a 32 year old journalist? For feeling protective of women and children, my friends, is a sign of maturity in men.
Sneaking through crowds of yelling adolescents who hate you to be greeted by yelling adolescents who love you must be thrilling. Milo must also be a very brave guy to troll excitable college students in a country awash with assault rifles. However, I dislike celebrity culture, and if the LifeSiteNews article is accurate Milo seems to have traded in his intellectual gifts (his Ghostbusters review, though rude, was clever) for celebrity showmanship.
Speaking as a conservative (as I probably am by most western standards), I don't want young conservative men to become Personalities like Milo. I want them to become leaders and fathers, as God intended. That reminds me: Milo calls Donald Trump "Daddy". Milo, you're 32 years old. I see what you're doing there, but have some dignity.
Milo's self-presentation would make so much more sense if Milo weren't a Roman Catholic who says he wishes he weren't gay. But naturally it is the bizarre combination of camp posturing with "conservative" objections to illiberal "liberals" that has made Milo so famous. Milo says he couldn't get away with saying the things he said if he weren't openly gay.. This is actually nonsense. Ordinary married men with children object to illiberal liberals all the time only without resorting to rude words and jokes about their sex life.
This is probably a good place to stop so that any conservative readers can ponder what "conservative" actually means. "Conservative" has never, ever meant allowing your passions to run roughshod over your will and intellect. "Conservative" implies conserving something, and in the post-1960 West, this has usually meant conserving respect for such old-fashioned values as modesty, chastity and courtesy. Without modesty, chastity and courtesy, it's not my counter-revolution.
The USA has no real conservative tradition; their conservatism, such as it is, began with a rebellion against existing authority.* Thus Americans have always had some difficulty adhering to a consistent definition of conservatism. People like Milo play on this confusion: he is a libertarian by nature calling himself a conservative because in the US, it is possible to be both. (I don't know much about the man but that is usually how it works with these fellows. Andrew Sullivan used the same tactics until he embraced gay marriage.)
ReplyDeleteThe value of the 'manosphere' is that it exposes what men - and to some degree women - are really like when all the attributes of civilisation are stripped away. Sentimental progressivism would have it that we are all genuinely 'good' and only corrupted by society, but men like Mystery (was that his name) and women like Kim Kardashian show that what l'homme moyen sensual will gravitate to, when stripped of religion, culture and shame, is physical strength, beauty, money and fame. It is a horrible spectre but it does not hurt to remember it from time to time.
Clio
I'm not sure I understand this post really. I like Milo and found that Lifesite article scattered and a bit fuddyduddy. Perhaps it's the Irish in me but his bad language doesn't bother me, I suspect that's a cultural difference. I know he's gay and far from chaste but he speaks quite profoundly about it when asked, I suspect God is working on him. God is good, Milo isn't done yet. I agree that he could be a lot more focused on the arguments and needs to learn how to keep on point.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that ordinary men can object without his rudeness and vulgarity. But he's not speaking to you, or me I suspect. He's going after the university students, the young, where bleached blonde flaming qu*ers are always fighting against the fuddy duddy Americans. He catches their attention, no bloke in a shirt and tie would fill those halls like him. As for his crudeness sure that's instrumental in pushing people off their high horse. Rather than going on the defensive when accused of x,y,z which many conservatives do (and lose their footing) he goes on the offensive in a spectacularly gay fashion. For people studying and growing up in that environment his tone must be a breath of fresh air. Moralists can be so anal and can't bear being mocked, to argue is to take them seriously. I think it does us good to laugh at their ridiculousness, if he's wearing a crown and swearing while doing it what harm?
Sinéad.
In a way Sinead expresses the same idea I intended to, or at any rate a related idea: the sentimentality of the progressive view of human sexuality, which (as I ought to have said but did not) has greatly influenced the religious view of sexuality over the last 50 years or so, has blinded us. We are much less able to see how selfish and exploitative sexuality tends to be than our ancestors were. The young today are on the one hand fed platitudes about how wonderful it all is between 'consenting' 'adults' (both terms having rather flexible definitions), while on the other hand they are exposed from earliest youth to p*rn in which the sex acts are nearly always degrading and often (in my very limited experience) filmed to resemble rape. Who else but a Milo could get through to such a generation?
ReplyDeleteClio
Well, I was at a college campus when Milo made an appearance (in February of last year) and I'm not sure how exactly he was "getting through" to liberal students. Feminists, Muslim students, and others protested *outside* the location of his speech, or created a disturbance inside and were kicked out; the actual audience of his speech was overwhelmingly white conservative men. And I don't think that audience needed to be encouraged to describe women the way that Milo does -- or that they changed their view on sexual morality to be more in line with Church teaching after listening to his talk.
ReplyDeleteI do not think the present generation is so lost to decency that they need a Milo to "get through to them." My generation was well-steeped in the Sexual Revolution, and yet Saint John Paul II attracted hundreds of thousands of us to World Youth Days. Fighting on the other side, Naomi Wolff had a lot of class---and indeed came to admire more classical attitudes towards sexuality--at least as private and special.
ReplyDeleteI would argue that Milo's self-advertisement is part of the problem. Do we want leaders of young conservatives acting in a "spectacular gay fashion"? But before I say anything more, I shall have to watch Milo's public performances. Hitherto I have only read some of his writing.
Although it may seem funny in the UK and Ireland (and annoying to an author who tries to replicate speech as people actually speak it), crudity in public life (and speech) really goes against the American grain. It's a cultural thing, and insofar as it comes from a desire to protect/show respect for women and children/oneself, I have to applaud it. It's interesting that it is for crudity--which was not really that public--that Donald Trump actually apologized for.
In Australia, everyone swears about everything all the time. I've heard many of Milo's speeches and, to my shame, I never flinched once at his language, although I myself don't use those words. Sad, hey? I'm so used to it.
DeleteJulia
Tinder and its ilk as well as nuts busy STD clinics would say different regarding decency levels. But that wasn't the point I was trying to make. People who have conservative values or tend towards them can't open their mouths these days without being mocked and derided. You have to be really brash and bolshy to stand your ground. Not all young people have that confidence in their ideas and can be shouted down very easily by bully pulpits laughing at them or calling them ...phobes of whatever. Those accusations silence people. I have been called a homophobe at work. Milo's "how ... dare you" response to being called a white supremacist cracked me up and rang a big bell for me. My own on the offense CheckyerfactsSir reaction that rendered my colleague speechless meant I never had to deal with HR about it. I think had I apologised it would have gone further. Disagreements are reportable. It's pathetic.
ReplyDeleteIt can be surprising to see someone with Milo's appearance and background stand up for those values, be hardline on abortion, wish he could pray the gay away but love life anyway. I don't agree with all he says nor do I endorse what he does with men. That's beside the point. For people used to being shouted down by cocky knowitalls it is a breath of fresh air to see a non-apologetic bloke go on the offensive as if he KNOWS he's right. Too often conservatives appear slightly apologetic and ashamed in standing up for themselves. I'm glad those young white men heard what he had to say, I hope his confidence and optimism in his own values and laughter at the madness of modern life rubbed off on them and they take it with them as they go out into the world.
I don't mind at all that a leader of young conservatives is flamboyant (putting it mildly there), it jars with the progressive line that all gays are liberals. They can't follow the lazy line of conservative-homophobe-old-out of touch with him, so they have to argue on other points and are often left speechless. In terms of the swearing I don't care. Crude descriptions do bother me but I see no worse on telly so I can't really complain. It's a non-issue on Sky News appearances, he speaks to his audience. Crude descriptions at uni are nothing an lgbt drenched pc campus hasn't seen before and celebrated. You wrote there that your generation was steeped in the sexual revolution but when I read your descriptions of school and your twenties it seems almost Blytonesque, it's hard for me to imagine for it seems like a lost time of innocence. I don't think you realise how bad things are Seraphic. Is it his crudity that bothers you most?
Sinéad.
You see no worse on telly because Irish and British telly is much, much worse than telly in Canada and the USA. I could hardly believe my ears when I moved here, and when my visiting parents settle down with us for an evening of TV I almost die of embarrassment. It's funny--we think we get pop culture from the USA, but the UK has a way higher tolerance level for all kinds of crude humour and interests, including shows whose main excuse for being is naked body parts (e.g. "Embarrassing Bodies"). I would rather get another eye infection than watch "Mrs Brown's Boys" with either of my parents.
ReplyDeleteUnless you are regularly in the USA, you'll just have to believe me that American Catholics who take their faith seriously do not like crudity and associate it with either a lack of respect for oneself or for one's audiences. It's so much of a cultural thing, we often think it's a religious thing, too.
Five Go to Sunday Mass. My mother is probably delighted that I give the impression my schooldays were out of an Enid Blyton book. Home was more-or-less out of an Enid Blyton book. Our elementary schools were quite another story. My high school was a blessed escape--and the sets I moved in were dominated, or at least influenced, by daughters of honour-conscious Italian immigrants, until I joined the pro-life movement, which was dominated by Humanae Vitae. Five Go to Operation Rescue.
What bothers me most is that Milo knows what he should do but doesn't do it. Of all the British celebrities, he is the one I would most like to sit down to supper with and have a frank chat. He's a Catholic and a conservative, so why does he advertise himself as a promiscuous homosexual? Actually, that's not really supper conversation. Maybe I should interview him for Catholic World Report the next time he is in the UK.
What bothers me even more than Milo--who doesn't really bother me, in himself--in fact, I bet any money I will like him when I meet him (if I meet him, which might not prove so difficult)--is the crude anti-woman language of the alt right in general. I read Taki Mag, for example, and insults against certain women--imaginative descriptions of their genitalia for example--I read there are gratuitous and nasty. The last one I read was about a woman the author ADMIRED. However, she was over fifty, so apparently that was enough reason to speculate on the state of her reproductive system.
One reason why this is so terrible is that men, whether they like it or not, learn from other men how to feel about women. Men can destroy a woman in the eyes of other men by repeating over and over again what a slag (etc.) she is. This is why women should NOT tell new boyfriends how rotten their last boyfriends (father, brothers, et alia) treated them. Men take their cues from other men, and that is why I object to Milo or any other alt right character telling other men over and over again what slags (etc.) women (especially the women of their country) are.
I completely agree that Irish and British tv is filthy. I hate Mrs Browns Boys, he turns my stomach. I wouldn't have a tv connected to the pipe if I had my way. I was watching Johnny Cash singing Christmas songs last night with Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis last night and thinking how bad tv is now, there wasn't a cleavage or innuendo on sight. I haven't heard Milo insult anyone but hardline feminists and pc idiots and there is a kindness to the man beneath the brashness. I haven't seen him insult English women as a rule. The Alt Right, ah sure that's such a broad spectrum of decent to awful men, like feminism, that he can hardly be pinpointed as a figurehead for that. But if women are spreading it around, which most are, then why is anyone wrong for pointing it out? But Milo and the Alt Right are two different things, which is important to note.
ReplyDeleteSinéad.
In thinking on all of this, it has become a bit convoluted. Milo's goal seems to be to highlight how bats the pc people in charge of things are and is reaching out to university students in particular. He is not trying to convert anyone to Christ. He is right to mock SJW bullies in places where they rule, students shouldn't be afraid of these little brats nor let them have so much power. His sandwich tweet was a mocking of the make your own sammich feminist catcall. He's mocking a feminist attitude, not women in general. It's important to spot that difference.
ReplyDeleteSinéad.
Goodness gracious. I have triple the number of usual hits on this piece. It makes me worry that Milo may have self-googled. If so, I would be happy to interview you for Catholic World Report, Mr Y!
DeleteI did not realize there was a "make your own sammich" feminist catcall. "Make me a sammich" has been a putdown on various manosphere and alt right sites; in fact, I think I once got hit with a "make me a sammidge" myself.
Well, all this support for Milo makes me think I should investigate further. Certainly I was a terrified little mouse at uni. I was a terrified little house who squeaked anyway---usually in the letters section of the major campus newspaper--but it would have been nice to have had some kind of charismatic in-your-face leadership, I admit.