The latest from Mythicist Milwaukee: they will bring Amos Yee up on stage as a “special guest” (which is just weird…to give credibility to their con, they’re flying people in who won’t be speaking, they’ll just be there. Why has no one ever flown me to a con to just stand and look pretty? They reek of desperation.) Yee has some notoriety for being jailed in the autocratic state of Singapore for his criticisms of the state and religion. So yeah, sounds good.
Except…he has lately been banned from Twitter for something else, his endorsement of child pornography. His heated, angry, vocal support of child porn. Why, if you don’t agree with him on child porn, you’re a fascist.
Lately, it’s clear that Yee is aiming for nothing more than shock value. Last week, in a series of tweets, Yee defended the practise of child pornography. Sex with children, so Yee claims, is acceptable if a key condition is met: The child demonstrated consent. He also said that to deny the child sexual pleasure that he or she sought for amounts to fascism.
…As anybody with even an IQ of minus-200 will know, a child’s consent to anything (let alone sex) is not the be-all and end-all for deciding if s/he should have the thing.
Ask any responsible parent. Children can “consent” to anything from eating two tons of ice cream to setting off firebombs in the kitchen to using their siblings as trampolines. Doesn’t at all mean we should let them.
Yee knows this, of course, but his love for attention won’t stop him from declaring that if I stop my child from hurling toys from the apartment balcony down to the road, I’m really no different from Saddam Hussein. I must be a bad fascist father.
Mythcon is this weekend. It’s hard to believe, but some people are actually going to attend the shitshow.
Wait, so social justice is not supposed to be part of the atheist agenda — which is only a denial of the existence of gods — but advocacy of child pornography is?
After first defending him, they have now disinvited Amos Yee.
https://twitter.com/MythicistMKE/status/913855132382715905/
Pure amateur hour.
They are also saying they did not deplatform him, because he was only invited as an attendee. I’m going to say again…what kind of conference is it that needs to invite specific people to attend, and then plugs their presence in their advertising? It’s fucking weird, man.
Apparently condemnation of child pornography now falls into “Social Justice Warrior” territory.
They’re not doing a great job of making the SJW label unatractive.
Hahaha.
These guys have to be fundy Christians trying to destroy the atheist movement, right? They’re the Russian Election Ratfuckers of the Skeptic community.
“Hey, entertainers need to push the envelope. Sometimes they have to say the F-word, sometimes they have to passionately advocate for child pornography. I have friends in the entertainment world.”
And let me just add that when I was practicing law, I was assigned to a couple of cases with people caught using and sharing child porn (thankfully, never creating it). I advocated on behalf of my clients, but that entire world is sick beyond your imagination. Anything you read or learn about that disgusting underground black market is a feint shadow of the actual perversion, degradation, and abuse.
I handled a couple of murder cases. The jury response to crime scene/autopsy photos vs. the evidence in a child porn case…the reaction of disgust to being confronted with the documentation of abuse of a child is raw and visceral. I am still haunted by that shit.
It boggles my mind that anyone would offer even a word in its favor, much less an inspired defense.
Have they invited anyone from the Kitten Burning Alliance yet?
Back in my libertarian days, I’ve run into people who actually believe this. It seemed to me that they were typically pedophiles arguing from self-interest, although I suppose it’s possible that some of them were trying to shock, or really believed what they were saying.
It’s always been obvious (to me at least) that this idea is reprehensible and opens children to victimization. I had a young child at the time and freely said, “I’m a hypocritical libertarian,” because I went ahead and exercised authority over my kids for their own good.
In terms of libertarianism as a philosophy, this is one of its major achilles heels: libertarianism deals with some version of Homo economicus, assuming that humans are autonomous rational actors. It doesn’t deal well with children, the mentally challenged, the physically dependent, etc. Anyone who is unable to give [informed] consent, or unable to withhold consent for reasons of dependency, simply doesn’t fit the libertarian assumptions.
He’s ripping off Milo Snuffleupagus.
So that’s why we say “consenting *adults*”?
(Sarcasm Mode:ON)
Shame on you PZ! You dare call yourself a “freethinker” who believes in intellectual inquiry. I mean, how do we reallyknow that child pornography, racism, chauvinism and eugenics are “bad” unless we we are allowed to debate, discuss, research and experimentation!
It’s entirely possible that black people really are inferior animals prone to violence. How are we to find out unless we can ask questions and present their evidence? And just because they don’t have evidence now doesn’t mean they couldn’t find it in the future. The people who dismiss Charles Murray out of hand are no better than those who wanted to silence Galileo and Darwin!
Skepticism demands that we questions everything. That must include your unproven and untested liberal notions of “equality” and “compassion!” Let the data go through peer review first before you start emancipating slaves or giving women-folk the vote!
Where do folks learn about the concept of consent?
I am guessing for too many folks, it is nowhere.
Some of us (well, me, anyway) were taught that consent does not matter.
The kind of conference Matt Dillahunty loves to moderate a panel and endorse, that’s what kind. I’ll never forget his “tolerance” of racism and harassment of rape victims. Glad I never have to listen to another word Matt says. I’m years beyond being shocked at another “brilliant atheist speaker” acting like a scumbag.
http://www.laughinggif.com/view/eu100psssp/1.html
whywhywhy @10
The usual: porno mags, frat houses, their drunken fathers.
I would say it’s actually harder to justify inviting someone like Yee merely as an “advertised attendee” than as a speaker. You can at least try to rationalize inviting a controversial speaker on the grounds that “we’re going to let him present his views, and then have a great Q&A/panel session challenging him” — though that is of course subject to the well-known counterpoint that not everything needs to be up for debate at every conference.
But as an attendee? What message are you sending when you tell people, “hey, the child porn guy will be here hanging around — doesn’t he sound like a great guy to socialize with?”
Kellym #12
citations and evidence or wothdraw those remarks.