Submission: Bruin Republicans’ talk on feminism shortsighted, destructive

Bruin Republicans has stated in its mission statement that it is dedicated to promoting “calm debate on campus and constructive dialogue.”

So, they hosted Milo Yiannopoulos for a talk entitled “Feminism is Cancer.” Yiannopoulos, a reporter for Breitbart, is notorious for comments he has made, including his claim that women want men to commit more rapes because women want “more to complain about.”

We, at Bruin Democrats, were understandably confused as to how “calm debate” and “constructive dialogue” would result from such an event. Nonetheless, we respected Bruin Republicans’ discretion regarding what types of events it holds as well as Yiannopoulos’ First Amendment right. We chose to not organize protests or boycotts surrounding this event and, instead, attended and listened, hoping to see Bruin Republicans stay true to its self-ascribed duty.

We saw nothing of that sort.

Instead, we were left bewildered as to what constructive contribution was made when Yiannopoulos used the phrase “left-wing c—-” to refer to women who are feminists and a “cuck” to refer to their male counterparts and when an audience member screamed that a female protester “needs to get laid.”

We were left confused as to how an event that was meant to promote “thoughtful debate” laid host to comments such as “no one is trans; it’s a brain disease,” “[a female protester] needs some dick in [her] life,” the Black Lives Matter movement is “basically a sort of militaristic, lesbian cult,” “gay culture is at its best when it’s oppressed,” liberals are “so f—— self-involved and stupid and lazy,” “being black is [black people’s] only marketable skill,” “[transexual people] are all crazy” and need “to go to a treatment facility,” and plenty more.

Although it was difficult to wade through these myriad absurdities, we managed to discern several arguments made by Mr. Yiannopoulos on Tuesday night, all of which we believe to be harmfully out of touch with reality. He argued since women have been extended the basic rights of citizenship, “feminism [has] won” and is now, therefore, irrelevant. However, when women working more than 60 hours per week earn 78.3 percent of what men working similar hours earn, when misdiagnoses of women pervade emergency rooms because female pain tends to be “perceived as constructed or exaggerated,” when a female student at UCLA faced “a barrage of cruel and sexist taunts” simply for arguing that women should be given tampons for free, it is difficult to see how the extension of basic civil rights to women has brought the end of sexism.

What is not difficult to see is that Yiannopoulos is himself a counterexample to his claim that sexism is dead, especially when he explains the relegated status of women in the workplace by stating that “the number of really smart girls is miniscule.”

He argued that rape and sexual assault is not endemic to college campuses. However, when “17.7 million American women and 2.78 million American men will be the victim of rape or attempted rape at least once in their lifetime,” when a study conducted by the American Association of Universities found that 23 percent of undergraduate women “experienced unwanted sexual contact since enrolling at the school, either through physical force or because they were incapacitated,” when “only 13 percent of those who were incapacitated by drugs or alcohol” at the time of their sexual assault reported it and when “more than one-third of rape victims [on college campuses] didn’t report the attacks” because “they were ashamed,” it is difficult to see how this claim would be any different from the rest of his claims in that it amounts to anything substantive.

Yiannopoulos argued at the University of Oregon that the notion of a rape culture makes women more likely to get raped and is, therefore, dangerous. We, quite frankly, disagree. We believe that Yiannopoulos’ beliefs – that sexual assault is not prevalent on college campuses and that rape victims are to blame for what their clothes were at the time of their attack – are the dangerous notions here in that they foster a vitriolic environment for our fellow students who have been victims.

In sum, Tuesday night’s talk, “Feminism is Cancer,” laid host to a cesspool of unsubstantiated and dangerous claims delivered by someone who amounts to little more than a self-promoting provocateur. The fashion in which these claims were delivered gives us heavy doubt that any reasonable person would conclude that “calm debate” or “constructive dialogue” resulted from this event.

While, as we have stated, we believe that Bruin Republicans has the right to hold this event and have these opinions, we also agree with Bruin Republicans’ mission statement that the club has a duty to “the pursuit of a healthy and open marketplace of ideas on campus.”

On Tuesday night, the concerns of many women, progressives, minorities and sexual assault victims were met not with substantial disagreements but with denigration and insults, calling into question how Bruin Republicans defines “healthy” and “open.”

Nima Ostowari is a first-year mathematics and economics student and the Bruin Democrats policy director.