Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos Doubles Down On Harassing Transgender University Of Wisconsin Student
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos continued to attack a transgender student from the University of Wisconsin during his December 15 talk at Minnesota State University.
On December 13, Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UMW), where he used the opportunity to openly mock and harass a transgender student that was recently enrolled at the school. As detailed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Yiannopoulos “named and showed a picture of the student to his audience.” Yiannopoulos proceeded to attack the student’s physical appearance, using an anti-transgender slur and adding, “The way you know he's failed is I can still bang him."
The student, who was in the audience but reportedly unrecognized, later described the experience of being “frozen in total terror” that Yiannopoulos would cause someone in the audience to “incite the mob of the room against me.” The Breitbart livestream of Yiannopoulos’ talk included a “trigger cam” that targeted individual audience members with the crosshairs of a telescopic gun sight. The personal attacks on the student prompted UMW chancellor to send a campuswide email in which he strongly condemned “the belittling of others and their appearance, and the encouragement of hate and harassment.”
In a December 15 appearance at Minnesota State University, Yiannopoulos reiterated his attacks on the trans student, claiming to be a “second wave feminist icon”:
I’ve become a feminist icon. Do you want to know why? So at my previous date at UW Wisconsin, I happen to put on the screen, the image, a picture of a nice young man who think he’s a lady and used the law -- because of course progressives always when they don’t get what they want or want to get in somewhere that they don’t belong, invoke the great patriarchal force known as the government -- to try to get into the women’s locker rooms. This young man was desperate for a bit of tit and minge.
So he tried, via the government, to get himself into the women’s locker rooms at UW Milwaukee. Now he created a terrible fuss, an awful fuss, when I put his name up there and so did the president of that university. But it turns out, he’s going to quit the university. So I have become a sort of second wave feminist icon, protecting women from men in their locker rooms. Well, you’re welcome, feminism.
Now, this young person -- sometimes they think, sometimes they say I’m mean, sometimes they say it’s too much. Sometimes they say you’re too vindictive, it’s too cruel. But the point of doing this, is that, you know, they invoke the government, they use the government to get a variety of things through that ordinary, normal people would not permit. And then this person, Justine or Adelaide, or whatever he calls himself this week --
[audience laughter]
It’s Christmas, I don’t care anymore!
Adelaide, good lord, went to the press and said I had used violent words as though violent words were a thing. What the fuck is a violent word? If you can’t take a joke, how are you going to deal with having your dick cut off?
While on tour, he has encouraged University of Delaware students to mock transgender people and at West Virginia University called women “cunts.” In July, Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for what the organization described as “participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals.” The ban was widely understood as a reaction to the harassment campaign Yiannopoulos led against African-American actress Leslie Jones. Yiannopoulos is known for openly mocking and harassing people. He is a champion of the "alt-right," a coalition of white supremacists and misogynists who have consistently used online platforms to organize harassment.
Yiannopoulos’ brand of outright harassment against individual students has no place in the marketplace of ideas. Join Media Matters in asking colleges to stop letting Yiannopoulos harass their students.