Milo Yiannopoulos, Obscenity, and the Cult of Free Speech

In 1933, Random House argued successfully that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene, and could be imported into the United States. In the 1960s, William S. Burroughs faced an obscenity trial for his book Naked Lunch. And in 1994, cartoonist Mike Diana was jailed, convicted and sentenced to three years of probation for the content of his comic book, Boiled Angel, which was deemed obscene.

These cases are violations of the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. Milo Yiannopoulos losing a book deal because of comments he made on Joe Rogan’s podcast is not. However, these cases aren’t irrelevant. They show that when America has taken objection to speech, it is rarely because of “offensive” content, but instead because of “obscene” content. And obscenity means sex.

Before Yiannopoulos’ comments about pederasty became viral, he was already well-known as someone who publicly bullied a trans student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, referred to feminism as “cancer” and described himself as a “fellow traveler” of the neo-Nazi alt-right. This was, apparently, unobjectionable to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), who invited Yiannopoulos to speak at their gathering of gouty white dudes. What was offensive to them were conversations he had on two podcasts about pedophilia and sexual assault, including a discussion of sexual abuse that Yiannopoulos suffered as a teenager. The podcasts were released as early as 2015, but it took a group called the Reagan Battalion editing the comments into a video for them to gain attention. Within a week, Yiannopoulos had been dropped by CPAC, lost a six-figure book deal, and resigned from his position as an editor at Breitbart News.

The loss of his position as editor probably isn’t that big a deal to Yiannopoulos. He wrote little in the months before his firing, and showed a preference for being the news over writing it. Nonetheless, he does stand to lose part of his following. Yiannopoulos fans have generally divided into one of two camps. One group believes that their bottle-blonde idol has finally gone too far. The other are part of what I call the “cult of free speech,” who believe that the repercussions Yiannopoulos is facing for his comments are just another smear campaign by the mainstream media (in their parlance, the MSM).

In fact, both groups are wrong. Here’s why.

In 1933, while Ulysses (now considered by many the greatest novel of the 20th century) was fighting a court battle over scenes of a woman masturbating and a man taking a shit, an abridged version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published in the US without incident. It was published again, this time unabridged, in 1939.

American prudishness (I’ve discussed it before) is nothing new. While hate speech is published freely, anything involving sex is subject to intense scrutiny. Don’t believe for a second that the Left are the real enemies of free speech; the allegations that finally brought Yiannopoulos down were from the Right, not the Left.

Moreover, the moralizers that control American speech often misrepresent it. In the Fox News article breaking the Yiannopoulos story, his remarks are referred to as “sex comments,” totally missing the point about what makes the remarks objectionable. The comments aren’t presented as problematic because of issues of consent and trauma, but instead because they are obscene.

This response is similar to the response to our president’s now-infamous “Grab ’em by the pussy” comments. A number of people took offense to the fact that our president said the word “pussy,” ignoring the fact that he was explicitly endorsing committing sexual assault.

In short, obscene speech is much more threatened than speech that is sexist, racist, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory.

The other group of Milo supporters believes that the backlash against Yiannopoulos is part of a vast PC conspiracy against free speech. This is a fundamental (and frankly embarrassing) lack of comprehension regarding what free speech actually is. The First Amendment guarantees American citizens the right to not face legal punishment for what they say (it also guarantees freedom of the press and promises that the federal government won’t place one religion over any others, but you won’t see the basement-dwelling, Pepe-meme-tweeting cult of free speech complaining about the Executive Branch trampling on those rights). Political correctness is, in fact, an exercise of the First Amendment. Criticizing views that are harmful to others is allowed under the First Amendment just as much as spouting bigoted nonsense is. People that hide behind the banner of defense of free speech have to be willing to deal with the free speech leveled against them.

It’s a two-way street. As much as I deeply dislike Milo Yiannopoulos, he has to be able to voice his opinions. My right to criticize him is inextricably tied to his right to say asinine things about Donald Trump.

I also have feelings about the comments he made. He argued that the comments that he made are a way of dealing with past trauma, which I can sympathize with. Humor is a great way of owning and coming to terms with things that are damaging in one’s past. While his remarks were viewed as (and are) flippant, they are also an individual’s way of taking ownership over an experience that was extremely painful.

However, some of his comments show a disturbing lack of knowledge regarding consent and power dynamics. This is the part I find most disturbing:

You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means, pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody who is 13 years old — who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty.

The physical development of an individual is only one part of sexual maturity, and a small one at that. It’s hard to argue that a 13-year-old is mature in any way: emotionally, psychologically, or mentally. This makes them targets for sexual abuse. Any adult who has sex with someone who is so undeveloped would be taking advantage of them.

This just shows that Yiannopoulos doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He claims to be, alternately, a journalist, an editor, a comedian, a political figure, and an activist, but he’s mostly just a troll. All he truly does is provoke. He’s allowed to say what he wants, but who cares? His worst crime isn’t saying things that are offensive, but, in fact, having nothing worthwhile to say at all. His comments on pedophilia are about as substantive as his comments on anything else; protected by the First Amendment, but not worth fighting over.

Free speech is the most important thing America has to offer. If, and when, it is truly threatened, we deserve someone better to defend it.