Milo Yiannopoulos is coming to speak at Dartmouth this fall
He’s the guy who says ‘feminism is cancer’
Have you heard? Milo Yiannopoulos is coming to speak at Dartmouth on November 1st.
For those unfamiliar, Milo’s online media presence for the last few years has been comprised of what could easily be considered some of the saddest and most fascinating displays of cognitive dissonance in the internet era.
He is a homosexual Roman Catholic who thinks being gay is an incontrovertible sin in the “eyes of God,” that homosexuality is a consequence of one’s upbringing, and insists everyone should simply elect not to be gay. But he simultaneously maintains that he is a homosexual himself, and admits that he engages in myriad of “unholy” activities that are much more explicitly condemned in Biblical texts than most, if not all the political and social issues he bemoans (such as engaging in pre-marital intercourse with a number of different partners).
Milo’s views on other salient political and social matters like feminism, Islam, and political correctness are similarly convoluted and reminiscent of the fundamentalist religious right.
It’s incredibly fascinating that a person whose sexual orientation has forever been at the forefront of his public identity (he recently completed his “Dangerous Faggot Tour”) doesn’t buy the argument that women, for instance, are systematically treated differently than men on account of their gender.
Rather than look at the best available literature on any given political, social, or otherwise ideological issue and then siding with the theory supported by the soundest research and evidence, Milo first presupposes the most radical and conservative Tea Party conspiracy theories as truth. Then he scraps together whatever outlandish pieces of “evidence” he can find on the internet supporting these views.
Let’s take a look at a quote from one of Milo’s articles on Breitbart, Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy:
“BIRTH CONTROL MAKES YOU FAT
“Let’s start with the grossest form: injectable birth control. IT MAKES YOU FAT. A 2009 study from the University of Texas found that women using DMPA gain an average of 11 pounds over three years, a 3-4 percent increase.”
First off, the only evidence he cites from the article is a sentence from the abstract. What’s more, Milo fails to accurately report the findings from the research he hyperlinked in his own text – the article states women using DMPA experienced a 3.4 percent increase in body fat, not weight as he states in his article.
More importantly though, Milo supports his claim that “Birth Control Makes You Fat” using research on a single specific contraceptive that is only used by 4.5 percent of all contraceptive users, while ignoring the methods used by the remaining 95.5 percent of contraceptive users, and the overwhelming evidence and scientific consensus that these methods do not induce weight gain. His other political views and points made in this piece are based off of similarly skewed interpretations of research, data, etc – the type of analytical research skills that can only be expected from a two-time college dropout.
Given how students at the college welcomed Dartmouth’s most recent similarly conservative campus speaker, Rick Perry, Milo’s talk should be entertaining at the very least.