College Republicans host controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial British technology and media journalist and associate editor for the London office of Breitbart.com, spoke about the counterintuitive nature of safe spaces at universities and the false narrative surrounding sexual assault and rape culture on college campuses, among other topics, Wednesday night in Kaprielian Hall.

The event was hosted by the USC College Republicans.

Jacob Ellenhorn, president of USC GOP, spoke about the significance of bringing Yiannopoulos to campus.

“He’s kind of been someone that I’ve always been watching on the media, [and I’m a] personal fan of his,” Ellenhorn said. “I think it was important for him to come to campus because I feel free speech is constantly under attack, and it’s important to bring a diverse set of voices.”

The meeting, run in a Q&A format with Ellenhorn, began with the question of whether or not students should be made to feel comfortable on their own college campuses, specifically with safe spaces.

Yiannopoulos answered that what universities are really encouraging when they create “safe spaces” is the creation of places where opinions are harmful — places where words shape reality, a “preposterous” concept invented by the left.

“Words can’t change reality, but there’s a horrible trend on campuses that words can do harm to people,” Yiannopoulos said. “It’s a ridiculous, leftist assumption.”

Yiannopoulos argued that this “toxifying of certain opinions” assaults the First Amendment. He described the attempt to build “places for those terrified by words” as anti-intellectual and completely against the purpose of university because it insulates people from opinions due to potential trauma.

An example brought up was trigger warnings, which Yiannopoulos said is another “political weapon invented by the left.” Trigger warnings — stickers or disclaimers on textbooks, articles and other academic texts — would allow students to opt out from reading them if they contain content that might cause unfavorable, emotional responses.

Yiannopoulos argued that university is for the expansion of horizons, which would be impossible if students were able to put themselves on “privileged pedestals” where they could choose not to come into contact with what upsets them.

“My basic response to this is anyone who wants a trigger warning should be immediately expelled,” Yiannopoulos said. “They’ve demonstrated that they are incapable of completing requirements of their course. They’ve chosen to use slippery and unnecessary tactics based on dodgy cognitive science to suggest that people can’t be exposed to certain ideas because they’re so hurtful or traumatic. All of this is nonsense.”

The next conversation was about the “real” internet war — not between conservatives and liberals, but between authoritarians and libertarians. Yiannopoulos argued that the general impression is that if a person is a conservative online, a liberal will find a way to illegitimately write him or her off because the left wants to control what people consume and communicate publicly.

Yiannopoulos’ incendiary language has recently drawn media attention. Last Saturday, Yiannopoulos and Rebel Media broadcaster Lauren Southern were both thrown out of the downtown Los Angeles Amber Rose SlutWalk, a movement calling for an end to rape culture, after holding up signs such as, “Regret is Not Rape” and “Rape Culture and Harry Potter: Both Fantasy.”

Yiannopoulos claimed the premise of the SlutWalk was lunacy and that the organizers of the event called the police because that is “what authoritarians do when they find they can’t win in the marketplace of ideas.”

Yiannopoulos noted a conversation with a few of the women attending the LA SlutWalk.

“[I asked], how has sexual assault personally affected you,” Yiannopoulos said. “[And she responded], ‘I can’t walk down the street without being harassed.’ It’s like, really? You’re 300 pounds. Who are you trying to kid? [Another women said], ‘My clothes should not make me a sexual object of men’s attention.’ You’re in nipple tassels. Obviously, you want to have sex with somebody.”

He went on to argue against the existence of the gender wage gap and the “rubbish” sexual assault statistics on college campuses. For the latter, Yiannopoulos said that these “1-in-5-women-type rape statistics” have wrongly become accepted truths and that rape culture at universities does not exist.

Yiannopoulos responded to a question about the lack of women in science and technology by saying that the difference was due to a statistical difference in the IQs of men and women. Women, Yiannopoulos said, tend to have IQs that cluster around the mean, while men’s tend toward the extremes of the distribution.

“More men have higher IQs, when you run the numbers, the higher someone’s IQ, the more likely it is that they’re a man,” he said.

While he acknowledged that there was disagreement among scientists over the efficacy of IQ as a measure of intelligence, he argued that success in STEM fields correlates strongly with high IQ.

“Most of the differences in STEM aren’t because men are sexist, they aren’t the result of sinister patriarchal forces, they’re not the result of stereotypes,” he said.

Regarding his provocative nature, Yiannopoulos defined his journalistic role as being a voice for those without a platform, specifically those with conservative ideology. It was a role he recognized as pitting himself against much of mainstream media and belief.

“I like big challenges,” he said. “I’m not scared of feminists, I’m not scared of progressives. I’m not scared of these people. I see them doing a huge amount of damage, and if I can help where other people can’t or won’t, then I’d love to.”