𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝔂𝓷𝓷  💎

Last year, @PennyRed—one of the best feminist writers of our time—wrote an incredible, revealing piece about Milo Yiannopoulos. In order to do research for the piece she had to go on tour with Milo—a Nazi!!

She hung out with him on his tour bus, she sat next to him while they drove around in a limo, she went to his parties where she chit chatted with people like Geert Wilders and Roosh V.

This is called journalism. If you're going to cover a topic, you have to get well acquainted with that topic. This involves getting your hands dirty. And the result in Laurie Penny's case was the most sparkling, devastating piece on Milo ever produced.

But many people on feminist/leftist Twitter were ready disown her in an instant over this. They were ready to excommunicate one of their best writers simply because she ventured too far into enemy territory.

Much of what I saw was specifically critical of her framing them as "lost boys," which is a common, infantilization that reduces their culpability.

the "lost boys" title was a reference to his teenage entourage, who were literally boys taken in by him. I don't think the title included or excused Milo.

I think excusing the entourage is still problematic, even if the outrage she received was excessive.

Specifically, what I saw was a lot of people of color saying "the frame you are using is a common frame used by white people to infatilize racists," and a lot of people felt their trust was broken when she used it anyway.