Milo Yiannopoulos vs. Julie Bindel at the University of Michigan

foreign come on give them a round of applause I want them to hear you come on come on alone that's right right as the editor-in-chief of the Michigan review for the 2015 to 2016 Academic Year I say on behalf of all of us at the paper as well as those on campus and around the country that have been moved by our stories these past two years that we are but obliged to you all for your support thank you the Michigan review has been a beacon for individualism and Traditional Values in Ann Arbor since its founding in 1982 we do not pretend to fight the established newspaper on campus the Michigan Daily I worked with them for two years I have tremendous respect for them however we also do not have any Illusions about the blindly Progressive culture that has long been Ann Arbor's trademark the city is known affectionately as 26 square miles surrounded by reality we as a paper an imperative and challenging the intellectual complacency we find around us constantly urging our peers to seek a higher truth as such the paper has developed a reputation over the years as the voice of The Counter Culture in the 80s the paper was famously burned on the steps of the Michigan Union when it took a stand against the enforcement of political correctness being enacted at the time by the administration the American civil liberties Union later took the side of the review we seek to show that diversity is not as the cultural Marxist agenda on campuses tells us about the skin color or other contingent labels rather true diversity in the academy is in ideas I don't have many more months left at Michigan in my few years here I have gotten close to professors and friends who have encouraged me to question every one of my assumptions in religion politics evolutionary biology Linguistics literary Theory Colonial Colonial Theory human nature human rights we have marvelous professors here to learn things only to unlearn them I owe the way I think to these few people and yet this attitude of critical inquiry has been sabotaged self-righteously by the left on campus it is not that I am necessarily more conservative than liberal it is that the conservative movement being the minority on campus is more aware of the danger of bias the reviews are constantly dismissed outright Liberals are more celebrated and more encouraged and are more vulnerable to developing a patronizing self-righteousness their way is obviously the Progressive Way and so I have decided to Ally with The Underdogs the conservative movement on what ought to be our most vital cause on campus I'm a brown man I'm a Muslim Milo is is gay if you haven't noticed and so so it's more about our ideas and less about the movement so I have decided to Ally with The Underdogs the conservative movement on what ought to be our most vital cause on campus the reason we are here and that is the unabashed assailment of our assumptions to come to every more informed understandings we host our debate today in this endeavor we will question what no one else will dare question the wage Gap the validity of microaggressions the efficacy of black lives matter the hysteria over return of Kings and the meaning of diversity we're going to hear from two radically different perspectives and the debate will be moderated by women's studies and political science Professor Lisa dish in the course of my own often public and often Reckless journey I have shaken if I have shaken along with myself only a few people to question more rigorous rigorously I have succeeded on behalf of the Michigan review and on behalf of the University of Michigan forgotten country on yours I'd like to welcome up my executive editor Hunter Swagger so as he said I am Hunter Swagger the executive editor of the Michigan review you may know me as the guy depicted in that god-awful Michigan Daily cartoon from a few weeks ago the uh the one that referred to me is literally every worst part of the internet in real life in literally the least funny comic to ever hit the internet in life you may also know me from that light-hearted little promotional video we put out a few weeks ago titled uh would you rather your child had feminism or cancer a video so dangerous that we were banned from advertising it on Facebook by Mark Cocker Zuckerberg okay but it is exactly this style of outrageous humor that our two guests tonight have become world famous for and their Instinct for absurdity is not just confined to the public Sphere not just confined to Twitter a week ago I emailed both Milo and Julie and asked them if they had any special requests for tonight's debate Mr yiannopoulos responded 50 white doves to be released on my entry into the lecture hall a bottle of crook Rose a bowl of M Ms with all the brown ones removed and 10 Panamanian rent boys Mrs bindle replied clean pair of extra large dungarees copy of the wall of loneliness and a severed penis in a glass jar unfortunately not everyone can take a joke we've made enemies through their Journeys and the Plenty which is why I've been instructed to read the following while this is not a university-sponsored or endorsed program the university is deeply committed to broadening a safe and open Forum in which diverse opinions can be expressed and heard it is the right of members of the university community speakers artists and invited guests to express their reviews at the University we'll protect the right of individuals speak reform and the rights of the members of the university community who wish to hear and communicate with an invited guest protesters have a right to express their opposition to a speaker in appropriate ways both in this building and outside the facility however protesters must not interfere unduly with the communication between a speaker and the audience if the host of tonight's program or university Representatives believe that protesters are interfering unduly with a speaker's freedom of expression those protesters will be warned if warnings are not heated and interference continues the individuals responsible may be removed from the building on behalf of the University I thank you for your attention and appreciate cooperation and with that I'd like to invite Dion katawa hello and welcome to this evening's debate my name is John kathawa and I'm the politics editor for the Michigan review first I would like to thank Mr yiannopoulos and Miss Bendel Milo and Julie for joining us and to Professor Lisa dish for moderating I would also like to thank those who helped to make this debate possible and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute the Collegiate Network the University of Michigan chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom the University of Michigan chapter of the Young Americans for Liberty the central Student Government the LSA student government and several other private donors the University of Michigan is home to the victors the leaders in best we are once again demonstrating this long-standing commitment to Greatness by triumphing where numerous other American and uk-based institutions have failed we got Milo and Julie this tradition of Excellence allows for events like this debate which will shatter to bits the dangerous and silly idea that so-called harmful opinions in speech need to be silenced censored and repressed they are essential to the mission of this University and so it is my distinct honor to welcome as the moderator Professor Lisa dish Lisa dish is professor of political science with a courtesy appointment in women uh Chia specialist in contemporary political Theory and is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles she agreed to moderate the debate in honor of a long Tradition at the University of Michigan of open political discourse and she hopes that this evening will unfold in the spirit of Jon Stewart of Daily Show Fame and Jon Stewart Mill intellectual Powerhouse of Classical liberalism please join me again in welcoming Professor dish before I introduce the speakers I first want to outline the format of this debate the terms were agreed upon by both parties they will each give a brief two-minute opening statement Professor dish will then ask questions submitted by Anonymous students for approximately one hour and afterward we will open up for Q a from the audience for the remainder of the time finally they will each conclude with a two-minute two minutes worth of closing remarks I expect that everyone in the audience will abide by the Heckler statement given earlier by Hunter Swagger as well as be respectful leaving the debating to Milo and Julie there will be plenty of it trust me the topic of tonight's debate invites us to consider among other things whether feminism has a free speech problem it is difficult to overstate the value of free speech for the flourishing of Western civilization and we do not need to search for too long to see what countries who repress speech especially the divisive political variety look like they are not free the right to express oneself freely without the threat of government penalty is perhaps our greatest Liberty it allows us to question now fashionable ideas like the gender wage Gap and campus rape culture without fear of onerous reprisal if nothing else it promises all of us here an electric evening now to the speakers Julie bindel is a journalist writer broadcaster and researcher she has been active in the global campaign to end violence toward women and children since 1979 and has written extensively on rape domestic violence sexually motivated murder prostitution and trafficking child sexual exploitation stalking and the rise of religious fundamentalism and its harm to women and girls she writes for the guardian and appears regularly on the BBC and Sky News she was visiting journalists at Bernal University from 2013 to 2014 and is now visiting researcher at Lincoln University if you'll direct your attention to the rear of the ballroom you can join me in welcoming Julie here tonight for me oh you got to take me Milo yiannopoulos is one of the best known technology and media commentators in Europe he is associate editor of the London office of Breitbart Milo has been called a rising star of the right by The Spectator the pit bull of tech media in a profile by The Observer digital media's Citizen Kane by Forbes Magazine and was dubbed the ultimate troll by Fusion he refers to himself on his Twitter account as the most fabulous super villain on the internet once again please join me in welcoming to Ann Arbor Milo yiannopoulos for years and so ladies and gentlemen without further delay and with the first opening statement coming from Julie Bendel please join me and welcome again Julie Bendel and Milo yiannopoulos foreign hi everyone uh thank you to the organizers for inviting me in for choosing a photograph of me that makes me look like a bulldog chewing a wasp very much appreciate that as you can see I'm actually quite pretty clearly not just pretty as Milo but his is it's all makeup as the second wave feminists I don't wear any makeup um so we're here to ask the question is feminism a threat to free speech well no not my feminism there are hundreds and thousands of ways to be feminists and most of them are wrong but but my one is right radical feminism second wave feminism and the feminism that actually Roots male Supremacy patriarchy men's violence against women and girls as institutionalized um serious problems pandemics in fact and it's not the feminism my feminism does not subscribe to the fun feminism those who capitulate to men because they know that it might help them rise quicker up the ranks to get to the glass ceiling which quite frankly I give no about at all caring more about the women at the bottom the kind of fun feminism where they blame feminists like me for naming men's violence is the problem and the kind of so-called feminism that defends islamath fascists over socialist feminist activists like Miriam namazi who is an Iranian political Exile who went to speak at one of the London universities recently who was screamed at threatened and shouted down by the Islamic society the chair of which was a man who has come out with the most horrific views on women on gay people Etc I'm sure you you know the kind of thing the LGBT society and the feminist Society at that University after Mariam namazi had been screamed at heckled they tried to no platform her of course then wrote a statement which was disgraceful both of them did two statements saying we support the Islamic society over Mariam namazi they are obviously major villains do you know what a bell end is here okay bell end is the end of a penis and we use it as a slow in my country and I'm aware that it's obviously islamophobic and anti-Semitic to speak of a penis that may or may not be circumcised without first um putting that caveat in yeah um okay so to briefly talk about my own no platforming history um I um I was the very first non-fascist to be no platformed by the utter belenderi of the national Union of students which really all of their uh Administration are so stupid that if they had any fewer brain cells in their head you'd have to water them twice a day and what these new identifarians decided these third waivers these keyboard Warriors the ones who subscribe to Identity politics but without the politics what they decided was that an article I wrote in 2004 which offended some trans people and I say some that's very very important small group of trans people they decided I should never ever be redeemed that I should never be forgiven that it should never ever be washed away in a sea of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other articles I have written of the scores of conferences I have spoken at all for no fee on violence against women and girls all my 35 years of unpaid activism disappeared because I was suddenly a vicious transphobe now forget the fact that the activism that I do and many of my feminist colleagues and others on the left who are real social progressives actually prevents real violence to real people like can save lives they decided that if they just I don't know get out of beds having had a quick wank not a wash go along and no platform me because they're stopping a vicious transphobe who causes violence towards trans women on campus their job is done you see all these privileged little have to do is sit there click click click click issue she's violent she causes the death of trans women and then they realize that actually I do have quite a reputation I get invited to universities all over where I don't get no blood formed I have loads of work I've got a public profile so they decided they had to throw islamophobic into the mix because I along with many of my muslim-born feminist sisters and colleagues say that the veil is the symbol of women's oppression that's all I'm islamophobic it's taking away the agency blah blah blah and then really scratching around they decide I'm biphobic because I wrote a tongue-in-cheek article saying what on Earth is the point of bisexuality and what oppression do they ever face I am also polyamoryophobic because I said and this is true actually radical feminist really like sex in the 80s and 70s and 80s we were all non-monogamous you now call it polyamorous which means that one man shags loads of women and they all put up with it you know we had lots of non-monogamous relationships um we we were the ones that said listen you know if you've never had an orgasm in your life because sex with your husband is really boring just be a lesbian the sex is much better we know what clitoris is so so I'm biphobic transphobic islamophobic polyamorophobic oh and I'm homophobic as well and I have to say I'm saying but I'm very proud of this you know the whole trigger warning stick so when articles get sent round about me it's trigger warning transphobia biphobia islamophobia even though I've written about the rape conviction rate in the UK and how we should make sure that more rapists should are convicted they now just actually send it out just saying trigger warning Julie bindle I am my own trigger warning and I consider it an absolute honor and there are now more of me that are no platformed but to come back to the question that this debate is going to look at is feminism a threat to free speech absolutely not we the real feminists the feminists that consider women is a sex class and men as part of the patriarchy either a benign part or an active part we actually consider debate to be crucial we do not turn on our sisters and support Islamic fascists who wish to Stone adulterous women to death and throw gay people off the tops of buildings we consider ourselves part of a proud social movement so feminism is a friend to free speech feminism is a friend to every man in this room because we know that you're born a baby not a rapist we're anti biological determinism we do not consider men to be bad and women to be inherently good we consider this a problem to be solved together thank you you can see why I like her can't you she is in fact one of the very few feminists who I don't mind I wouldn't mind sitting next to at dinner sort of Christina Hof Summers and you that's about it um I have to ask for a correction to my introduction because I was introduced as associate editor of Breitbart but I've had a promotion since then thank you uh um I was invited today to debate uh a feminist I admire um somebody who has fought for years for women and children's rights somebody I think is um is an intellectual Powerhouse and so I was excited to to speak with she wasn't available so um thank you to the old jokes are always there I know I know I know I'm just kidding you know I love you um so no in all seriousness Julie is is one of the good feminists and the fun thing about this is that we're having a debate at all um the existence of this debate um sort of is the answer to the question some of you will know that uh Julie and I were both banned she was banned first the um I get very upset about this I'm so much more offensive than you I mean it's literally my job to annoy people I just you know I'm sitting on Twitter all day being as offensive as possible and you get banned first for a 10 year old article 12 12 year old hospital well this is because this is because the modern social justice movement like all cults hates apostates and of course um Julie as a feminist who's gone off reservation well what actually happened is she stayed the same and feminism changed which is um what I'm going to move on to in a moment to explain to you why um of course feminism does pose a risk to free speech um feminism moved on and sort of left left Judy behind she's now become one of the bad guys and she has the um uh the much more fun job of showing up for debates where normal feminists won't now it's perfectly reasonable for Julie to reject the brand of feminism that we're going to be talking a lot about today and she's right when she calls them Bell ends they are um she's right and we're going to call them all sorts of other names in the next two hours um but unfortunately Julie feminism has moved on from you there are plenty more like me trust me well and not just my name there are younger women who are identifying as radical feminist and calling the third wave fun feminist identifarians total Bell ends well I think the problem has been that um feminine the particular modern brand of feminism the feminism that has a problem with free speech that doesn't like debates that banned both of us you know the title of the debate was does feminism have a problem with free speech and they ban both sides of the debate they don't even want the discussion to be had it's not even like ban the bad guy which was her somehow um it was banned both of you uh and then of course you know the great organizers here um Dion and Hunter and others stepped in and said you know if they want if they won't have it we'll have you um look there's a particular brand of feminism which uh holds almost total Sway in the media and in gender studies and women's studies departments there are honorable exceptions um but by and I don't expect you to comment on any of your colleagues but a lot of your colleagues are off the wall mental um and in men we're in a situation now where students can go to university they come out dumber than when they went in they are infantilized by safe space and Trigger warning culture the idea that interrogating a new idea coming into contact with a school of thought or a person that doesn't conform to your prejudices is somehow problematic that it gives rise to trauma this evening there is a safe space at Michigan University to protect the safety and emotional well-being of students from this dangerous and a lesbian with the wrong opinions that is insane and the worst bit of this is that universities have started to go along with it they have started to respect students uh points of view when the students claim that they have been emotionally traumatized by different opinions and the trigger warning in safe space culture has started to take root even in the best institutions in the country my view on this is that anybody who asks for a safe space or trigger warning should be immediately expelled they have demonstrated they have demonstrated that they are incapable of meeting the requirements of their course why are you here why are you here if not to discover new ways of looking at the world to discover thinkers and ideas history stuff you never imagined that was possible to broaden your intellectual Horizons if you're not prepared to do that go home leave don't be here now it's all very well for Julie to say that um you know her brand of feminism and she is right that her brand of feminism is in the majority among ordinary women is not a threat to free speech unfortunately her brand of feminism is out of fashion and as a gay man I can tell you all about fashion and everything um but I will tell you I will tell you about the fashion and feminism briefly and we'll get to the good stuff um today's feminists and they don't include Julie because they don't like Julie very much they don't include Jermaine Greer because they don't like Jermaine Greer very much they don't include Christina Hoff Summers because they don't like Christine Hof summons very much all these women are womening wrong um they don't like any of these people what they like is a weird distorted view of the world that cares more about your orientation and your gender than what is in your head they care more about what you are than what you say that is profoundly wrong and it gives rise to some statements from feminists you know whether it's masculinity so fragile kill all white men I bathe in male tears and you can occasionally hear rhetoric like that from Julia's generation of feminists but by and large they've got more of a sense of humor about it so I don't mind so much um you get the sense with the third wave is that they sort of mean this stuff and very often when you hear the rhetoric coming out of whether it's Vox or Gorka or BuzzFeed or Mike or university departments or even in some cases the entertainment industry we're really left in no doubt that feminism is as Christina half summer says a sort of female chauvinism and it's a kind of female chauvinism that knows it can get away with anything it can get away with lying about men it can get away with calling men names it can get away with telling lies about the wage Gap lies about campus rape culture you're going to hear in this debate a lot of stuff and you know we're going to disagree on a lot and Julie is not you know a free speech fundamentalist in the way that I am but one thing that we are united on I think is that this particular modern brand of feminism is is cancer in the immortal words of myelianopolis um uh and and it's it's a sort of it has metastasized on campuses because it has been left unchecked it is metastasized because uh nobody ever sat these kids down and said no what you're doing is hateful and bigoted and fundamentally sexist and the worst defense of all is that you bully and deride and ridicule anyone who dares to ask you for evidence that's the fundamental um that is that is probably the most characteristic uh feature of modern feminism it is why feminism is a colossal threat to free speech everywhere it exists on campuses uh and in the media and it's why the answer to this debate question is yes thank you well since you raised it we'll start with a question about the wage Gap so Kurt Kurt a woman makes on average 79 cents for every dollar that a man makes now that's the average that's the answer not even the effort you see uh the interesting thing is that pay is close to equal right after you graduate from college among college-educated men and women that Gap widens when men and women hit their mid-30s which is when people start having kids so how should we think about this wage Gap should we put it down to personal choices or does sex discrimination play a role let's give it to you Julie I mean I have to say I find I find the um whole discussion about the pay Gap so boring not because I don't care as I say I care about women at the bottom I do not care about the glass ceiling but when you hear Milo argue this point he'll talk about women working different hours and he'll talk about the Glorious Joy of motherhood and how it's the most important thing a woman can do you've looked Me Up YouTube did I wait did I wait in the same program and I was in the green room and I just couldn't believe what I was hearing now of course I'm not going to use any statistics tonight because everybody can come back and make up their own research which Milo does on a regular basis but you say Milo that there is no credible no credible economist who has ever taken seriously the issue issue of a pay Gap and you also say don't you that because women are in different jobs it's not comparing like with like that women work different hours because they choose different Lifestyles they want to be home with their family um that whole shite now the Harvard um labor Economist Claudia golden who is very credible she's not a lunatic and she's not particularly enamored with feminism we found that the pay Gap is wider in the same highest playing field okay so for example female Finance Specialists judges and lawyers make between respectively 66 and 82 percent of their male counterparts in those roles okay and this is all controlling age race hours and education women are also treated extremely harshly if they ask for a pay rise so again all this shtick that it's just not really you know in women's kind of makeup because we're all soft bunnies that just want to cuddle Bubbies all the time I don't think anybody thinks about you and not go I know I'm someone who kick-starts their own vibrator trust me if I was so unfeminist as to own one which of course I am not of course women asking for a pay rise and some of you in here will have been in work situations where you're aware that your mail boss is a little bit favoring of your male colleagues who might be a bit lecturist he might just be a bit of an um and women are punished and are treated very harshly for asking directly assertively for a pay rise so all of these issues have to come into it and like I say it's really not my topic Milo will now probably tell you a load of utter lies if he cites any study at all write it down look it up foreign doesn't surprise me to hear a lesbian skeptical about family values since since after their relationships start you know Lesbian Bed Death sets in you know there's bad I mean it's it's look you have to what you have to understand about the wage Gap is that it doesn't um first of all doesn't exist um it's based on a misunderstanding between wages and earnings these are two different words in the dictionary if you want to look something up look that up if you take all of the money that women earn and all of the money that men earn and you do a simple division yes you will find that the numbers are different and that's because women make different life choices if however you start to drill down to pay you discover that if there is a wage Gap at all it is in favor not of men but of women under the age of 30 at least in America you also discover um that when you control for women's different life choices for instance women tend not to graduate in engineering and nobody is holding them back from applying for computer science or engineering or physics or any of those subjects if you believe that there is a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women out of those subjects who have to explain why there isn't one in veterinary science and biology where women dominate you discover that when we make different life choices and sometimes there are uncomfortable and unpopular truths that you have to factor in as an economist to the staff women don't work as hard now that's an unpopular thing to say but they don't want the same hours as men they take longer holidays whether or not they've had babies and of course they have children and I you know as a compassionate person don't mind building in some things into the tax system and into the way the government works to accommodate that and to reward women for doing you know for performing The Essential function of our species but that doesn't mean that private sector employers should um pay them when they're not working now to address the point very specifically you cannot pay a woman and a man differently for doing the same job that's against the law and it doesn't happen there are some cases in which women don't put in the hours it takes to make partner and when you get to those higher professions which Julie says she doesn't care about but she will invoke to to win an argument um when you get to those higher levels of employment Sometimes women just don't want to do the 80-hour weeks that men do now part of that is probably biologically rooted Julie doesn't like biological arguments but there is very clear evidence that uh and very clear I mean from the evidence of our bodies but also brain science that men and women are different in quite significant cognitive ways but there's also evidence that even in the most enlightened and equal societies women stubbornly refuse to make the choices that feminists would like them to for instance if you look into emerging economies you discover that the split between um men and women in subjects that are that lead to very high paying jobs whether it's physics or computer science or maths it's pretty equal in many cases because those women don't have much of a choice but to just do it get on with it and make a living when you look at societies that are famed for their feminist credentials that are the most equal places in the world Sweden Norway the West generally frankly you discover that a gap opens up and women stop choosing to do certain subjects when they have the full range of options available to them and what you discover is something counter-intuitive and it's that when women are more free to make decisions when women have more options available to them more money and better access to the institutions to education to the workplace and they have great access to the workplace they have better access to the workplace than many men 2015 Cornell study yet you can look it up shows that women have a two to one advantage over men going for jobs academic jobs in the stem field please do look it up um you discover that women just won't make the choices feminists would like them to and they don't make those choices because yeah unlike radical lesbian feminists some women want a family and children you'd like to move on to a question about affirmative action but that does not prevent any of you from bringing our guests back to talking about anything that you've heard so this one's going to be for you Milo um to begin with so since the passage of proposition 2 in 2006 which was advocated by Jennifer Gratz and former Michigan senator Leon dralett I don't actually know how to say that who is present in the audience I would say drole but we're not in France um sounds Spanish she liked that one Michigan has prohibited uh preferred admission based on race now the enrollment however of black students has dropped by a third since then to 4.6 percent of the first year class in 2012 which is down from nearly seven percent in 2008. yet black people make up 14 of the state's population which is a little over their share of the population in the nation as a whole can I ask what this has got through the feminism and Free Speech affirmative action is a related question so uh our question is aren't African Americans in the U.S at a disadvantage in getting a college education just like the lower income white males that you've targeted for affirmative action with your scholarship and we wondered if it's okay to create scholarships for particular groups what's wrong with using race-based admissions to making progress towards Justice and equality okay um I mean it's a good question uh I don't see what it has to do with the debate but I'm perfectly happy to answer it um there's no reason why you shouldn't allocate uh Financial funds and I started a fund uh a scholarship fund for particular disadvantaged groups but it's something quite different to gerrymander SAT scores to give people free intelligence points pretending that they are smarter than they are because it doesn't help those people when they get to College they get to University they discover that without those free sat points they begin to struggle and that is why which wasn't mentioned in your statistics black attrition rates are so bad too because what you'll what you'll find actually in those schools where they do away with um race-based favoritism that the attrition rates of the minorities who do go when they do away with it get much much better now you're not doing anybody any favors by putting them into a course that they're not equipped to complete or not equipped to succeed in now the race question in America is tragic it's it's toxic to talk about it's very complex and actually I think that although white middle class feminists are probably the most privileged group in the history of our civilization um certainly certainly black people in America are not and some of you will know that I have a vested interest in in black men being as successful as possible um otherwise I don't get to meet them at the parties I go to um but arguments again affirmative action are compelling and they are that it serves those students very poorly to pretend that they can complete a course they can't if there is a problem as there is in America a very serious problem with early stage education of ethnic minorities terrible quality schools in Black areas that's where you fix things you improve the quality of teaching you don't pretend people can deal with a Harvard course they can't do you wanna we'll be talking about a university course aren't we um Milo not many people get to Harvard um I am from a very working class background and left school early and went to a really school and pretty much had no education and when I was in my 20s I had an opportunity to go on something called an access course which is for disadvantaged people who are who need to sidestep the formal ways of getting into University which in my country is something called you have to do a group of a levels uh you have to get particular marks you have to sit exams I didn't do any of that I left school with nothing now I'm really bright and I would have been left on the scrap Peep had I not had this opportunity to go and do this particular degree now I see this is exactly the same as African-American people who are dropped out of the system my family were just seen as not worthy of going to University my brothers weren't I wasn't because of our background so we were left to one side and the privileged kids were nurtured through those a-level exams into universities where they felt terribly comfortable now there's no difference for me with African-American people being actually given scholarships because they are want their Keen to go to university they're Keen to have higher education I don't know if Milo actually said that these African-American people who are helped in the way that I was in my 20s are stupid but it sounded a little bit like that to me no I don't think that African-American people who were given a helping hand to get to University are stupid or have a low IQ disadvantaged now the the other thing about quotas every single proper feminist I know hates them we hate affirmative action we hate that whole positive discrimination stuff and I'll tell you why we hate it because we've had to do it and why have we had to subscribe to it reluctantly with a bad taste in our mouths because hundreds of years of women for example in the workplace forget education of women being passed over for promotion or even for hiring by male bosses who want to hire somebody in their own image all of that discrimination the sexual harassment the punishment when you take any time out to have a child and then go immediately back and work even harder we needed to do something to break this patriarchal tyranny of the workplace of the education system Etc and I want to see the back of it but will only do that when people in education and women in employment have mentors in their image where they are not discriminated against because the man wants to hire his friend so that's what I want to say about that I don't like it but we have to do it I've got um I've got two points to make on that uh one is um thank you for letting me come in uh one of them is a question to Julie um given that now more women go to university than men more women graduate than men women get higher grades at every level of Education than men and we're now starting to see studies that show they have an advantage when they graduate going into the workplace would you agree that the time for affirmative action if there was one has in any case now passed no I mean I don't accept your statements there might I have to say they sound somewhat sweeping um but there's absolutely no there's a government statistics there's absolutely no question there are more women at University than men that's simply not in debate then I think that what we want to do is see an end to sexism within education to sexism within the workplace to this institutionalized misogyny that women have to face and be quiet about and pretend it's not happening and then we can say goodbye to affirmative action I don't think anybody how would you think it's acceptable that women have to be given a helping hand just to actually be on a Level Playing Field with men often who are more stupid than they are there are plenty of stupid men out there my question is is specific one um my second question is this I thought you were going to say no so I I've got a second question and it's what would be good enough more women go to university now more women graduate women get higher grades if you if you think that still reflects a culture of misogyny what's going to be good enough for you perhaps what data is going to be good enough for you perhaps the reason why women get higher grades is because they work hardly because they know that there's a lot more riding on it because the workplace is going to be less friendly for them so you say what's going to be good enough for me I want an end to patriarchy I want an end to sexism you'd be pretty screwed I want to jump in with patriarchy of course if it exists paying way more into the system than women do women take way more out of the system because they get sick more they like they live longer they have babies I'm perfectly happy to subsidize your well not your pregnancy but um perfectly happy to subsidize other people's pregnancy but that is the gift of the patriarchy the internet on which feminists were you know operate an invention of men men got us to the Moon is you know all of these things all the things in which women women now benefit all products of the patriarchy I think you're right it was after all Al Gore who invented the internet right exactly exactly the biggest patriarch going and let me let me just find you know I mean you talk about the patriarchy what what what very often is not spoken about when this sort of gets waved through by feministers so it's a sort of um so it's a given it's not a given there are respects in which men have pushed forward civilization in ways that women haven't but there is also um just just as there is and I agree with you that there is an ugly underclass of women who suffer there is an under an ugly underclass of men who suffer they are the men who build the roads the men who are steeple Jacks The Men Who Drive Oil Trucks The Men Who uh collect refuse from outside your house women don't want to do those jobs they have nothing to say about the gender imbalance in those jobs and if there is a patriarchy it isn't doing a very good job of protecting men from the worst jobs in the world that is why why and that is one of the reasons that is one of the reasons that 97 of workplace fatalities are male and is one of the reasons why I find it very difficult to swallow this patriarchy nonsense when all of the worst jobs in the world are done by men that's actually I did want to ask what do we mean by the patriarchy today well it's clearly a word that I'm very fond of um like balance it's a system it's a system in which women is a sex class um are oppressed by men as a sex class and the reason why I use sex class is to make it absolutely clear that this is not talking about the individual individual relationships because that's what feminism has become all about the so-called rights and choices of the individual so pole dance your way to Liberation hey you're criticizing industry you're horror phobic the sex industry is great we choose it it's agency this is what feminism gave me no it isn't it Collective movement to liberate women from the male sex class and the disproportionate power it has when male babies are born they are born privileged everywhere in the world and then there are different ways that it's played out so when a male baby is born it's instantly more privileged okay when you think that what is it one in seven American boys is whacked on Adderall or Ritalin because it's held up to female Behavior standards in schools when you consider um you know the structural imbalance I mean I'm not a men's rights activist I don't want to start getting on the kind of be approaching all of their well because they're right cards because they're right about it the reason you know I don't particularly like some of the rhetoric that comes out of the men's Rights Movement but they do have a point when they say women women have been telling us for 30 years to treat them just like they treat men well taunting is how men Bond and if some of the rhetoric from the men's Rights Movement is unpleasant it's because they're just saying all right if you want us to treat us to treat you like we treat our mates we will um and the talking points that come out of the men's Rights Movement I'm sorry to say are largely correct and you know more important than that rather than the sort of weird abstract Social Science World of patriarchy and male oppression they're rooted in data they are rooted in fact they are rooted in the facts that you know boys are thrown on these drugs that exams have been changed all over the West to shoot how women learn better and the facts and and the um University Admissions and graduation criteria I mentioned earlier if you are going to try to claim that there is still in the west now if you were talking about the Middle East we would have no disagreement whatsoever if you want to try to claim that in the West in America today that women are some kind of oppressed class you're living on another planet shall we talk you're describing a world 30 years out of date should we talk about some of the men's rights activist data that they put out okay so something that's been really persuasive in the UK and elsewhere and this has been a total men's rights project has been to say that men suffer domestic violence as much if not more at the hands of women than women do at the hands of men all right let's unpick that shall we it sounds that sounds ridiculous to me well it's been very I don't know the numbers that sounds ridiculous I'm not going to defend them let's have a look you don't you don't need to but I want to let you know about Milo's chummy bodies okay is this what the left ones we see they're trying to associate with the worst people so imagine but I'm sitting here with you so I mean my career is over I think at this point we're both pariahs this year I mean she's the only person that will debate me I'm the only person that will debate her no one else will have us no one else domestic violence is perpetrated by women on men as much if not more than women face it right there have been nine to date refuges for battered men that have opened in various parts of the UK never has a bed been slept in they all closed down now when you ask these men's rights activists if domestic violence from women to men in the relationship is so bad why don't they escape to the refuges do you know what they say because it's much harder for men the stigma the stigma the stigma try being a woman with children that you're responsible for having to flee the house in the middle of the night it's not nice for anyone to go to a refuge okay so we knocked that one down then they say but look the British crime survey says men have ticked yes I'm I've suffered domestic violence when you look at the categories do you know what they said special snowflakes they said that they were being magged it was verbal abuse it's very much like the sexual assault on campus surveys isn't it so yeah but when you actually when you look at this when you look at the lies that are peddled as fact and Truth you also have to look at the morgues the mortuaries because of course men don't die as a result of domestic violence maybe one year where she has perpetrated domestic violence on him and she has throughout their relationship if that maybe one year if that two women every week in England and Wales die as a result of domestic violence from Men and half of them die after they've left their husband or they threaten to leave their male partner okay so where are the dead bodies of the men in the morgues if this is such a problem for them so this is the type of rubbish that you will hear all the time and I'm absolutely in no doubt that it'll be the same goth about how rape never happens on campus we'd like to actually pose a question about that I would can I just come back very briefly I want to because it's actually getting late and we want to ask you a question that we'll let you talk about this so um but you Milo have compared rape culture to Harry Potter both fantasy yes now as Julie notes you do have evidence to back up your claims there doesn't like it she claims that it's fake did you look it up it's not safe it's not fake I've looked it up it's a 2014 study by the Department of Justice um but that's a study you know it that study based its statistics on acts of sexual assault that were reported to the police now a 2015 campus climate study by the University of Michigan found that although 11.4 of the students who were surveyed and that included men and women said that they had been kissed groped or penetrated without their permission only 3.9 of those report those experiences to an authority so that's an interesting and significant disparity it seems like we have a situation where unwanted contact happens where people know that it goes on and people know that few people would be likely to report it as a crime what's wrong with calling this a culture of sexual assault isn't that what a culture is a set of norms and expectations that you don't have to speak about sure well a couple things to say on that um the first is that rape rates have been going down for 30 years in the west everywhere and the second the second is that um see the left has a problem with uh all kinds of bigotry and sexual violence racial violence they have a supply and demand problem there are a lot of feminists and there aren't enough rapes to go around there are a lot of races and there isn't enough racism to go around there are a lot of gay rights activists there isn't enough homophobia to go around so what they have to do is um we have a couple of strategies either you look harder so in the case of homophobia you've got scores of journalists calling every Pizzeria in the midwest desperate to find somebody who says no I'd rather not do a lesbian wedding um yeah there guys we've got one we've got one we've got bigots at last um you know and then the whole left will all write about this one case the other way to do it no you're not the other way to do it is to widen the definition of the thing you're looking for now you said a moment ago that unwanted sexual contact conduct which included kissing um only uh what was it 3.9 you said people will be uh not really willing to report that not willing to report an unwanted kiss well thank God the police would never have anything else to do when you widen the definition of sexual assault and you use that widened definition which encompasses ordinary human sexuality the confusion and fumbling and exploration that is part of of growing into your sexual identity at University and you call all of that sexual assault which most of the conduct conduct guides and um Behavior standards guides at universities these days do that they do they criminalize ordinary human sexual behavior in in and then they uh you know by broadening the definition when you do that and then you use it to suggest that it is indicative of some kind of pervasive rape culture you're making two mistakes one is you are including things like unwanted kisses well I'm sorry but I mean You better lock me up now um two you are suggesting that rape exists on a spectrum you are suggesting that a culture of uh sexual song who knows unwanted kissing her awful um you know you are suggesting that that somehow exists on a spectrum the ultimate end point of which is rape that's insane that's not how rape Works no crime happens like that uh it's just not how it works rape is a very specific and and you know Julie knows a lot about this very you know it's a it's a horrific and specific crime but it doesn't start with touching the uh the elbow and so when you ask the question does is there a rape culture on campus my only my only response can be these campuses where women have been told for 30 40 years provided with every possible support network more and more opening up all the time encouraged to report the slightest infraction and to call it a microaggression they have every service available to them now and yet the rates of these the rates of real rapes are still going down according to the Department of Justice statistics the only thing that's really going up is this broadened definition which is ultimately meaningless which has criminalized to use the word Loosely ordinary human sexual interaction that's wrong it does not reflect the way that human sexuality evolves and it does a huge disservice to women because it tells all women that they are victims of sexual violence just because somebody tried to kiss them or touch their boobs who cares earlier Generations earlier generations of women would have said get your hands off me today's women file a sexual assault claim where there is where there are instances Julie gets to come to know kiss does anyone in this room know of a man who's been convicted of a sexual assault for an unwanted kiss nobody is suggesting this stuff goes to trial what I'm saying no I'm just I'm just wondering no what I'm saying I'm just wondering it doesn't get a criminal trial partly because universities have been encouraged to sort this stuff out themselves okay let me tell you some let me give you some facts here that I think you know stiff not all of the women in the room and some of the men will know the one thing that unites women everywhere in the world there's only one thing because we're of course different class backgrounds different levels of Education uh different cultures Etc but the one thing that unites us is the fear and reality of sexual violence now we don't walk around needing smelling salts we don't walk around the majority of us traumatized at the idea that if we go home drunk in a cab that will be raped but we do think about it and we are brought up telling being told that it's our responsibility and if we are raped we are told it's our fault alcohol is the new short skirt if we've had anything to drink at all we think that we don't report it we think that if we do that we'll be laughter derided called a slag a incidentally before I came into this uh debate I asked our colleagues um about the slurs because we use bell end and wanker and things um and what they told me was that the terms of insult that quite common correct me if I'm wrong is Grinch now what do all of those have in common they're all totally misogynistic slurs you call somebody a that means you're female it's a disgusting body part you call somebody a what does that mean I wear a cocksuckle with pride I don't know about you you call somebody well I do know about you misogyny but anyway let's get back to the rape thing so I have sat in lots of rate trials lots of rape trials okay I've heard I've seen the prosecutors fall asleep I've heard the defense Barrister's joke about the underwear that the complainant was wearing I've heard judges say that a three-year-old in one case was sexually promiscuous okay I've heard judges blame children and women for being sexually alluring when they were asleep when some men raped them right so I don't think that it's that common in fact I know it is not that women will decide for a laugh I'm going to actually report somebody for rape let me tell you about one rare conviction in the UK because actually one statistic I will give you because it's watertight is that 94 of all rapes that are reported in the UK right 94 do not end in a conviction so are all of those 94 of women lying you decide okay so one conviction is of quite a famous footballer called Chad Evans and he was actually convicted of raping a girl that girl has had to change her identity five times because his supporters blamed her for ruining his career so even when they are convicted on the rare occasions still not rape rape it's still not really rape okay one of the first campaigns I got involved in was to criminalize rape within marriage it is still legal to rape your wife in several countries around the world we only passed that law in 1992. and this is in the UK okay so whatever's going on on campus I think is at least part a reaction to the fact that women have been disbelieved have been blamed have been denied Justice that there are men walking around who have raped several women there are cases that have been studied by eminent academics where men have been acquitted six seven eight nine times before they were finally convicted and the jury couldn't know about their previous convictions when they were deliberating on the 10th rape okay so make your mind up I think some Julie's been doing this for a long time and has some very harrowing stories and it's certainly a horrible crime um and one that should be punished very harshly my suggestion to her though is that on campuses at least the pendulum has swung a little too far in the other direction that the definition of sexual assault has been widened and also and this is um very orwellian and very worrying and it should worry everybody in this Hall really that the judicial system which is uh has in many cases failed women is becoming replaced by University kangaroo courts it's becoming replaced by courts made up of University administrators who determine on sexual assault charges with the lowest possible bar of evidence called preponderance of the evidence right 51 likely he probably did it right and that's enough to ruin a man's reputation now there are false rape claims that one of the problems is the left-wing media one of the problems is that they are so desperate in as I said earlier to find these juicy examples and then spread them far and wide however implausible they may sound however unfair they are that of course many of the high profile ones end up turning out to be nonsense and indeed all of the most prominent campus rapes from the last 10 years have turned out to be nonsense all of them whether it's jugular Cross or Emma sulkowitz at Colombia or the UVA case now this does a disservice to women because it means that women aren't believed and women think well if I go and report that something has happened to me something serious not unwanted kiss but something serious I might not be believed because these lying have tried to besmerge the reputation of men and been believed by the Press turned into celebrities and then it turns out they're fantasists I want to protect women from that and I don't want a liberal media that just believes that listens and believes which is a great feminist mantra today listen and believe but if a woman tells you something just listen but just take it just take it as gospel no I don't well sure now one last thing you know you Julie mentions you know that we don't walk around like special snowflakes terrified when we go home on the bus well many young girls are being taught to do precisely that now on the one hand perhaps they should because the reality of male sexuality is that it is or at least it can be at sometimes dangerous now that's part of what makes it exciting certainly what I like about it but it also means that there is a dark side to male sexuality and the problem with enlarging the definitions of sexual assault with telling women that you know you can wear anything you can wear anything you want you go girl you do a walk in in you know in your knickers no man has the right to look at you well the problem is that the people that you meet at 3am when you're drunk walking home from the club did not go to a consent class at brown or Brandeis or the University of Michigan these are not the people who are going to rape you these nice white middle-class boys who are so petrified of even approaching girls these days they don't know what the hell to do they're told they're putting these consent classes where they tell you're all potential rapists this is rape culture really I had no idea I had no idea I was a rapist thanks for telling me what happens what happens to two women who are not adequately prepared for the real world because they have been told that somebody touching their boob is a hideous crime for which they must be punished it's the worst thing could possibly happen to you oh god sister sister what happens when these women get into the real world is they they are a danger they are in danger of having something really bad happen to them and that's why I object to the lie that is campus rape culture Julie well that's a very depressing indictment of male sexuality from Milo no I don't find it that at all I think no maybe maybe you find it exciting but I think that rape and sexual assault for women and girls isn't like uh you know a gay man wanting a little bit of uh free sun in the public toilet smilo so well as we've as we've discussed before it's not fun unless there's the risk of an authority figure wandering in anyway whether it's whether it's new parents when you're a teenager or the police later I mean I can't get it up these days unless at least the chance I'll get caught okay so all very interesting but I I just want to uh tell you a tiny little story about a sex buyer that I was interviewing for a research project looking at menu by sex who they buy and what they know and it was looking at the culture of the sex trade and about men's sense of entitlement now I said to you earlier I am your friend men in this because I do not believe you are born bad and I do not believe you are programmed to rape and I do not believe there's anything inherently bad or dark about male sexuality it's about power and a sense of entitlement that's what you have learned those of you that choose to sexually dominate women where there's a lack of consent now this sex buyer said to me when I asked him why'd you pay for sex all of the men I interviewed could easily get a real date okay I mean heterosexual women have very low standards I'm sorry but you do a lot of you I'm sorry has probably lost me at least three friends there's nothing wrong with low standards anyway so he said to me this sex buyer he said I have to go and pay for sex because I want loads of sex and if I didn't if I couldn't get my rocks off if I couldn't get sex when I wanted it and how I wanted it I'd have to go out and rape a real woman so first of all he was actually very clearly implying that women in prostitution who he was using were not real women they were just vessels for him to masturbate into that was clear but what he was telling me was something that I and my feminist contemporaries have been accused of for decades which is that we say all men are potential rapists he was clearly saying all men are potential rapists because he was saying he couldn't control his own sexuality now why have you bought this view of yourselves those of you that think that those of you that think it's fine for a man to grab a woman squeeze her nipple and shove his filthy tongue down her throat and for her to feel fine about it because she's not a special snowflake in what way is that all right you're addressing people in the hall like anyone thinks that you said you know what what who which among you have you know taken on this point of view of uh you know of we're all potential rapists I don't think anybody here has you obviously spoke to a disturbed individual that's not reflective of all men no it's not and this is exactly and the fact that the fact that and the fact and the fact that he's not representative of all men is why some of us prefer data to anecdote this is and it's a nice story but it is meaningless here then then you've misrepresented me this is exactly the story that I was telling for the reason I told it was that if men believe the lies peddled about them which is that we have to have sex or you're going to be out of control and well of course it's fine to buy women who don't really want your body on top of them but you're giving them money I don't in other words these things but but if women wear a pair of knickers when they go out in a bar they can expect that men will not be able to control themselves that it's somehow our responsibility of course men can choose not to assault women if they're standing naked at a bar it's where a woman's responsibility to you know not get raped but there is obviously obviously a set of consequences that go associated with going out or dressed in a provocative manner drunk unable to uh to be aware of the dangers around you in certain bits of town at certain times of day I'm not saying and I have never said and nobody I think would reasonable person would believe that a woman is responsible for not getting raped but women should be educated about which situations are dangerous for them and I know you don't like biological determinism which is why you think this sort of bad male Behavior has been socialized in but it isn't just socialization I don't think it's a bad thing that there is a dark side to male sexuality um there is yes there is a dark side but there's also a light side and it's the side or it's the competitive Instinct in men that has meant that we invent everything and that we you know build the pyramids and have been to space and built the internet and that men did pretty much all the cool stuff that's around you it's the reason is the reason in part why that competitive Instinct that testosterone fueled uh male instincts in part why men work harder and some of them get paid more I'm gonna ask one more question because I want you all to have a chance and I'm going to ask you to Julie so Julie I wondered if this would be a good moment to ask you to clarify what you had in mind when you said that men should be put in camps well this is a classic example of and they say feminists don't have a sense of humor so there I was um speaking on the phone to a conference organizer who said to me look we need to put some kind of interview up um on the website to advertise the fact that you're speaking and she asked me a few things about you know what do I think the problem is with men and violence and the like and I said look you know if men don't start behaving themselves stop beating women up stop raping and sexually assaulting if we can't see an end to those men that insist on sending their daughters to be married age 15 if we can't see an end to the terrible harms that come because of patriarchy then I think what we should do is set up a camp for them and I had in my mind some kind of benign Holiday Camp but with a fence around so enclosed and I said very clearly because I'm a kind feminist that they could have things like quad bikes and white Vans archery or Wednesday afternoons yeah and then lefties could have you know um and because they'd all be in there I mean you couldn't just pick the badmin out because men lie about that they're nice and things anyway there's always a crime you've committed even if it's a thought crime isn't that so put them all in and give them lots of things to do that can play contact Sports they can't have porn obviously they can't have the internet for reason but they can have television although it will all be feminist television and I said the thing is that lots of women love men I mean there are men I love some women actually like having sex with men and I have this in mind because I'm a kind feminist that these women could go in and take their sons out for the day or the women could take their boyfriends out for a good shagging and sisters could go and talk to their brothers and you know but they could then take them back like a library book so they'd have to be returned by a particular time and until they managed to sort themselves out oh and feminists would be in their cooking vegan food I was with you until then it sounded like a gay Paradise until the vegan food no booze no booze obviously so you know I can see now it was fun you know I can see that it wasn't going to be great but until they sorted themselves out anyway within minutes of this going up all the men's rights groups one of my enemies anyone with access to YouTube anyone with his firmy little hands you know deciding to do his own little you know selfie video that's misandry for anyone paying attention had had YouTube films up about how Julie bindle wants to put all men in a Nazi concentration camp now you know my partner's family some of them are Holocaust Survivors I've heard their stories I know quite a lot about anti-Semitism and the like and I figured that I didn't realize in Auschwitz and Dakota that they had quad bikes and that they could be taken out for the day and because healthy vegetarian and vegan food so I figured that they'd exaggerated very slightly and then of course I remembered that I'm always compared to Hitler it's never some mid-range dictator you know it's never one of those that get forgotten I mean Pol Pot never gets a word in you know my garbage it's always Hitler and so there was a great kind of women's symbol within a swath sticker and Julie bindle wants to put men in nuts you identified you've identified a class you want to put in camps it's a wonder people compare you to Hitler you know the point the point is that as I say you know I I agree that the veganism is a human rights violation aside from that so we would like to invite questions from can I respond oh okay um just to defend Julie yes I'd like to defend her first of all like I said get rid of the vegan get rid of the vegan and I am in um yeah no well um I think if there's I think if there's a sex that deserves to be put in camps I think women would be happier on their own um but uh I want to defend you and for the and you said the word humorless um if I'd said something like that people would have laughed it off um the fact that Julie said it and got a lot of nonsense I think shows how um the modern feminist movement and some in some cases a modern men's Rights Movement when they are at their worst um the best ones are great but some of them you know just like feminists you know can be can be awful do uh do indulge in this incredible deliberate disingenuous humorlessness now when Julie told that story I think pretty much everybody in here laughed because there was something in there to find that was human but she was also sort of trying to tell her truth or a truth through humor so just so she's not the only person who has been horrendously uh bigoted via comedy I'll tell you my idea um and my idea well it's not really my idea because Ann Coulter said this my idea is that we should remove the vote from women now I'll tell you why women vote terribly they vote really badly they don't even vote in their own best interests the parties in Europe that are welcoming in the Islam islamo fascists you hate so much the parties who are welcoming in genuine patriarchies cultures that do create Mass rapes of the kind that have not been seen in Europe since the 1400s these are left-wing parties overwhelmingly voted into government by women those Levering parties when they're in power when they leave they always seem to report that things are worse for women than when they started well maybe it's time for conservatives to have a go my little problem with your idea if I may sure my men won't have the vote going to be an autocracy dictatorship women always vote for big government except they don't want to pay for it because it's men who pay more in taxation they always vote for more services but they never want to pay you men didn't earn more than women how are they paying well they pay more in tax they always want to uh indulge themselves on the public teach women overwhelmingly work in the public sector whereas men don't men overwhelmingly work for themselves women are much more likely statistically to work for somebody else they don't want to put in but they like to take out so they vote for terrible policies and they vote for governments that promise in the world they vote for Progressive governments who just want to do cash giveaways they vote terribly and they don't even vote in their own interests they vote for parties that believe in bringing in 1.2 million Syrian refugees who immediately start rape sprees so for the sake of women I would like to reverse suffrage to to protect women from their own bad choices I would like to remove them there we go now we've both done it are there questions and the camp was all right are there questions only one kind of Camp that's okay we do have a question is there a microphone there great nope thank you I think I think that was it just nope take this one take this one here there we are we will do 10 minutes of question and answer oh come on now we can do more than that how many do you want well until we get tired she'll get tired before I do well yeah just we'll get you the wine to the table you'll be fine they're such alcoholics Michael my question is more of like a cultural phenomenon I've noticed on the internet um and that's between the atheist movements and the atheist plus movements and I want to know both your opinions on that uh okay um well uh Atheism in any case is um is sad um I feel I feel sorry for them um I mean atheists are sort of like feminists they're the most thin-skinned people on the internet I did a debate with Dave I did an interview with Dave Rubin and I said you know I love winding up atheists saying how wrong they are because the comment sections are amazing and the first comment under the video was how dare you say we're thin-skinned um uh and you know I mean I'm I'm Catholic I know God loves me because although God hates bags he hates feminists more if he is the movement really doesn't interest me that much but I did enjoy watching it torn apart by social justice Warriors well I'm not equally but there are some that get away with doing very bad things because the left capitulates um and you can you know Scream and Shout about the pope which I do and similarly with you know other um you know Orthodox Christians I mean I went undercover to um a conversion therapist turn me straight it didn't work and uh I find that repellent and I find Orthodox Judaism repellent but unfortunately many on the left will capitulate two radical Islam so that that's my feeling my view on religion and I do think that atheists actually have an awful lot of moral superiority and I don't know where they get it from they're frightfully smug and all they ever do is repeat the same three lines from that Dawkins book take the next question okay so both of you are gay so I was wondering um it's a good start sir carry on um did you want a demonstration uh no thank you no thank you sorry um so do you think um feminism has influenced the game movement or um get the game if when feminism in their excesses both good and bad or whatever yeah only negatively sorry like you go first oh somebody asked me the other day if I was a practicing lesbian and I said no I'm absolutely perfect at it now you've been doing it for quite some time it's been nearly 40 years ago I actually am so pleased you asked this question for one you must be great at the flute as well you know did you find that it improves your your woodwind abilities read my book on this very issue called straight expectations um which looks at the way that the gay movement has become pathetic apolitical materialistic schmaltzy and Ultra conservative and that the only radical Edge to it are the the the lesbian feminists and incidentally everybody in this room all women can be a lesbian yes I'm glad you're all not um I I have some sympathy with that view I'm actually just going to take my time instead to do something else which is to say um there is you know there's a safe space across 15 minutes away from here for people who would be too traumatized to listen to this conversation and I would just like to you know send a message of sympathy to the social justice warriors on campus because they're the ones missing out aren't we having a good time I mean if if anybody uh if anybody can explain to me what what compromises student safety about the conversation we're having I would love to know so give us a second when we move the line for the sake of the camera we'll give as quick answers as we can to get through as many people as possible we've got a little more than can be accommodated but we're going to be super super quick we'll try and do as many as we can all right uh this is a question from Milo and um with your mentioning earlier and responses that you know were pretty much chastising based scene on the lack of factual evidence you know for some of the other viewpoints um I was wondering how you came to follow an ideology that is based on no sense of evidence that historically has been detrimental and towards homosexuals including the Dangerous Ones like you um well I I just I fundamentally reject that Catholicism and homosexuality are um you know these sort of two different universes the church has protected gays longer than governments have if you were gay in Ireland in the 1950s and you didn't want to be killed or socially ostracized you joined the clergy and that doesn't mean that doesn't mean you'd become a pedophile priest because of course feminists love to you know rope those two things in together but um newsflash gays and pedos aren't the same thing um what it does mean is that the Catholic Church protected people who had those proclivities from society for centuries in some cases in some places um so uh you know and anyway look identity is messy and complex and very often progressives will say well how can you be gay and religious that's ridiculous and how can you be so logical and look people are messy and complicated and life is messy and complicated progressives are perfectly happy to insist on their own uh complex inscrutable bizarre way of describing themselves CIS intersex Demi queer like you know whatever but anybody they don't like um is subjected to demands for total and complete consistency short yeah all right to remind you I'm done I'm still working it out who knows hey there my question is um where does this third wave Free Speech hating uh phenomenon come from is it a this this is for both of you I'm not from her I mean she should ask the question I didn't mean she did it uh is it from the the underlying assumptions of second wave feminism is it from an outside influence is it where does it come from I think it's class-based um it's an extremely privileged group of women and their male allies and what's happened is it's that they've they've done all this oh we can't defend men and men are running the feminist societies and it gives you introducing this the the um the nus women's officer the leading candidate for nus women's officer is a straight man who cross-dresses um and uses a female bathroom but makes no um no secret of the fact that he sleeps with women and this is the leading candidate for the nus women's office that's right you're right about this class stuff by the way yeah I mean it's totally privileged people who think that they should be protected from everything that puts them outside of their comfort zone they have never ever been uncomfortable or challenged in their lives and actually what what then happens is they're male allies can stand up and scream in my face and this has happened and to my other feminist colleagues faces you transphob you awful and still be seen on the side of the social progression in many cases it's an excuse for misogyny from the left towards existing women um and Millennial I mean you're you're right about I think this analysis is absolutely correct also Millennials are the first entirely middle class generation who just have never encountered any genuine trauma or suffering they've never wanted for anything um so you know I of course these tiny things get blown up into massive proportions yeah anyway I think we should move on but thank you for the question uh hey Milo uh you know I love you and I love you you didn't have to queue you know um but I'm gonna challenge you pretty bad here because thank you uh okay you call yourself a Libertarian how do you justify being a Libertarian and also being so tough on uh border controls I mean these refugees that are coming in from Syria to Europe you're calling them rapists basically you're playing the Donald Trump card here literally uh what's wrong with you how can you justify that isn't that the same argument that people isn't that the same argument ban guns because you know I mean people kill people going shooting space with them well let them I mean the refugees I didn't say that all syrians were rapists I said what we were doing which is absolutely true is they were importing a culture which is totally antithetical to our way of life many of these people are dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization in various forms and we are importing patreon a genuinely patriarchal society has no respect for the rights of women that is absolutely what we are doing I don't know if you can call yourself a Libertarian and say that same time then I'm not one um then I'm not one can I can I just say one very brief thing yes isn't it interesting how men who deny rape all of a sudden our feminist best friends on rape culture who's denying right here naming most annoying some men as being programmed to rape Malay you said seriously a program to rape and I can't remember the exact words that you said but you but you you said that they come in here and commit some rape spree okay yeah and isn't it funny how all of these right-wing commentators not just you others have all of a sudden become great pro-feminists in the fight to end sexual violence towards women I'm not a feminist I can't stand them I just don't want women to be raped and I don't want it to be you know I don't want to be by people who shouldn't be here I don't like feminism but I don't want women to be raped either all right hello I'm not as fabulous as either of you I'm only bisexual and um it's really hard but now what's the ingredients greedy I don't know but uh I'm rather it does mean you've got a chance with both of us because we've both got very low standards I thought you're a lesbian because you love knitting and pleasure cruises Scrabble agree with Mrs bindle but I more so agree oh you really done it now you've really done it now oh dear my question is with this sort of Counter Culture um what do you think that uh these sort of sjw movements will go away in time and what do you think will happen to this counterculture after that happens thank you very much um make up your mind I mean it uh the more that the public finds out about social justice Warriors about the excesses of modern feminism about the insane things that black lives matter say and by the way the world they want isn't so far away from the world the KKK one with racial Division and black only dorms and all this kind of stuff um they they don't have the same beliefs but the world they're heading towards looks very similar um the more the public find out about these crazy left-wing Progressive movements the more the public go nuts and the more politicians I think are going to realize that it will not get them elected by pandering to these people I think we have crested on the social the way social justice wave has crested I think 2016 is the year the public starts to find out about this feminist nonsense uh and starts refusing to elect candidates who sign up to it daddy um to follow the last comment thank you both very much for coming it's been a great discussion however I'm a little disappointed that we haven't really addressed what was advertised does feminism have a free speech problem and though we can't really oh I'm not pointing fingers here um so I guess I would just ask who do you guys respectively believe is the greatest threat to free speech do you believe it's blaspheme laws you believe it's just general leftism uh what do you believe thank you well I believe in fair speech I don't believe in a in a complete blanket free speech and I think there are very few people who could justify a totally blanket-free speech with absolutely no legislation whatsoever when it's an actual incitement to actual violence rather than me going on into a campus and somebody screaming she'll kill trans women or whatever is in their imagination um I think that the threat to to free speech um is oh manifold I mean Rich right-wingers buying up most of the newspapers putting out monolithic messages um it just depends but feminism being blamed for it when you know these people are actually part of a ridiculous pampered social justice movement that has some self-identified feminists that do not practice feminism in any way that I recognize at um it's very clear to me that the progressive left uh the left that you will read on Gorka on BuzzFeed on Vox on mic on all of these New Media websites the progressive left that has a Stranglehold on campus Politics the progressive left that many faculty are going along with the progressive left that lies about and two men and has done for decades that lies about race to stoke tensions that lies about all sorts of things that exist in a state of sort of well I call it uh Quantum superstate feminism it sort of exists simultaneously as aggressor and victim um the sort of feminism that screams blue murder when it gets one percent of the hatred back that it pushes into the world the sort of feminism that will scream and shout and say that we're being silenced we're being silenced very loudly um the sort of feminism that wants men publicly ridiculed and shamed the sorts of race-based hatred that hates white people kill all white men and if you disagree with them you are a bigot those are silencing tactics when somebody is scared for their professional or social lives for having the wrong opinions or sharing the wrong facts that suppression that is an example of free speech at risk the progressive left particularly as exist on American campuses but also as it exists I'm sorry to say throughout the American Media it's very clearly the greatest threat to free speech in the West is that the politically correct thing now female people that's the menstruation thing isn't it what is it that the crazies say yes no good you've reformed you've reformed what is it they say they say like not all not all women menstruate all right mate hi this is a question from Miss Bendel uh you said in your intro that you are a real feminist why do you say that what if someone identifies as a feminist just because they don't go by your standards or what you believe they still count as a feminist right well like I say there are many different types of feminism most of them are wrong um feminism has to be a movement which challenges an oppression and a power imbalance and seeking a Liberation from that oppression and it has to include all women it can't just be about women at the top it has to include all women and if it's not if it's all about individual rights and choice and hey you know thanks for the the rights that you fought for me you second waivers but you're so last season we're going to pull dance our way to Liberation as I said earlier that's not feminism Margaret Thatcher was not a feminist because she was a strong woman you need more than a vagina and a loud voice to actually say you're a feminist you have to subscribe to a set of principles now I wonder why feminism is the only Liberation movement that has to constantly justify itself for having for having a set of aims and objectives like every other Liberation movement has I think it's clear I mean as anybody who has witnessed three girls fighting over one man uh can attest you know women can't agree on anything they can't agree on the methods to anything they can't even run a female Liberation movement look at the history of feminism I mean look how many different definitions of fitment you're entitled to Define it how you want but other people don't agree with you sorry you don't get the uh you don't get the Monopoly and in fact your version of feminism is this big now um you know most feminists are a batshit crazy progressives you know that's not what feminism means anymore I'm sorry I agree with you on loads of that stuff but it's just not what feminism is anymore um and the the fact that the history of feminism is so fraught uh with counter like Rouse and backstabbing and bitching and you know all these internacine quarrels and renamings and new no no this is feminism well you have to look what what does feminism have that no other movements have it's entirely women one lap may or may not respect and you did not allow me to have a platform to to do that so um I I can't I think do you have a question my question my question is if rape culture is a myth then explain why Kesha was not allowed to break the contract with her executive when he obviously raped her uh I'm not going to comment on an individual case um that I know nothing about you're obviously better education than pop culture than I am I'll have to pass I'm afraid one one more okay let's give somebody else a spot thank you for coming up sir why did you arm wrestle for it I actually could no no not me sorry I don't want do we saw another woman hey well I didn't actually come here to come ask you a question I have a s'more of a statement and I'm about to piss off a lot of social justice Warriors No No it needs to be brief I'm a question in at the end and make his statement as brief as you can I believe that free market excuse me I believe that debates such as lists are exchanges uh free market ideas I believe that these are necessary for civilized society to us to discuss hard issues that's why I believe as a transgender woman it's important to have this discussion I believe that you know you both of you have some views that may run counter to my existence but I believe that you have the right to express them and frankly I'm a little more than tired of social justice Warriors misrepresenting myself and my community I'm sorry that you have to go through some of the things you have to go through that's not what we're like at all thank you very much for that I know and I know and I really appreciate it um that thank you so I'm so sorry that your community has been maligned and represented in the way that a small group of very vicious misogynistic trans people have all trans women in fact no trans men have sought to represent you and I get emails constantly from trans people saying the same I can now quite safely say I have many more trans women friends than I do that exists in the small nasty cabal that sit behind their keyboards constantly spewing out vicious hate and I so appreciate meeting you and I really hope that we get a chance to say hello properly after this debate thank you thank you very much I do have a question my question um as an LGBT person it seems intersectionality seems to be caught in this trap between defending LGBT people and defend defending women and defending um this patriarchal uh um Refugee culture and I want to know what your opinions are like what do you think is going to be the future will we see more intersectional feminists defending this patriarchal culture or will they actually stand up for LGBT rights and for women um I'll be quick uh intersectionality is meaningless it's just a new way to describe a very old idea which um Julia we've discussed this briefly in agreement this is Julie's Point not mines but um but you know it's just a way to describe the fact that some people have lives for more than one reason um and um as far as where they're going on a patriarchy thing I see the progressive left as fully all in on the pro-islam project they are determined to make Muslims the top of the oppression league tables they are determined to make Syrian refugees whether or not as intelligent Services tell us that large proportions of them um come in with cultures that are just totally alien to ours and don't respect our women don't respect our gay or our trans people two trans people were assaulted in a German Park um I think three weeks ago when when I see the progressive left and particularly feminists defending the behavior of this culture and it is a cultural issue and victim blaming the young German girls who were assaulted it's very clear to me that this is a bizarre cult that no longer sticks up for women at all and is in fact in some cases where it thinks there are progressive plaudits to be had in the media will turn on women like it does on Julie and I stand in solidarity with my sisters who were born into Muslim cultures who are resisting the Islamic Islamic fascists and who are asking Lefty liberal white people to stop defending the male patriarchal islamophascists if there's a message right we have no right to defend it if there are any um Angry sorry that should I should applaud that um a um Angry blue-haired women with facial piercings watching the live stream or even in the audience um hi darling uh I have one thing to say to you which is shut up about microaggressions shut up about mansplaining shut up about man slamming shut up about man spreading and cast your eyes over to the Middle East and do some good foreign thank you again thanks okay you have just distinguished yourself wonderfully as an audience and our guests have distinguished themselves wonderfully as Debaters I would like to invite your closing statements if you wish to make them uh Julie do you have anything you want to say that there are many many feminists contrary to Milo's assertions that are real feminists serious feminists feminists working very hard to overthrow this horrendous culture of sexual violence and men's entitlement there are many men who were the allies of feminists who really believe that we should overthrow this hideous culture and I think the identifarians the special snowflakes those that support the oppressors rather than women struggle will go out of fashion um I don't think it will happen tomorrow but I constantly hear of young women who say I've just heard of radical feminism I didn't hear it in my feminist Society at University but I heard it elsewhere so the more that you can open your minds up and the minds of your colleagues and friends to debate so that feminists can come and speak on campus without being screened up for being some kind of fascist please do um if there's any ladies in the audience thanks for coming but um I'm gonna address this to the men um we live in a quite aside from anything even remotely resembling a patriarchy um and I've explained some of the reasons I think uh that that concept is preposterous this evening or at least is simply out of date probably 30 years out of date quite distinct from such a you know such a concept men live in a very hostile climate men live in a world where they do not have free speech where it is socially disadvantageous and professionally dangerous to discuss things like the campus rape culture myth or the wage Gap or indeed even more simple issues of how men and women are different these sorts of things can make you lose your job and can take away your platform if you are a journalist or a researcher or an academic now that is real silencing but um men should take comfort from at least from the fact that it was male Ingenuity that explored the oceans that told us about our planet it's male imaginativeness that got us to the Stars it is men who have built most of what is best about the world there are some instances in which are you all right you need it lozenge there are some instances in the further back you go in history many instances in which women have been treated very unjustly Living in America today is not one of those periods in history Living in America today men are routinely ridiculed bullied derided in the media there are structural disadvantages to being a man today it's my contention that the pendulum pendulum has swung a little bit too far the other way and that there are Corrections necessary and that one of the ways in which men don't have a great time is that their free speech is severely curtailed by a brand of feminism that seems to have a Stranglehold on the academic on Academia on the media and on politics the last thing I'll say is there's not too much to worry about because ultimately this poisonous hateful bigoted sexist system is starting to be appreciated and I mean that in the sense of come it's being exposed to the public and the public doesn't like it very much they're not going to vote for candidates who sign up to this nonsense they're not going to read books by people who spread it this tiny shrill angry broken you know full of damage to people awful some of the worst people in the world who insist on controlling how the rest of us live policing our sexuality policing our sexual relationships with others they are a tiny angry minority and they are shrinking by the day and although yes the feminist contingent of them represents the greatest threat to free speech in American society today that is coming to an end at least it is getting better so stay the course have faith and let's beat feminism together thank you

Channel: The Michigan Review

Views: 575,943

Keywords: milo, yiannopoulos, university, michigan, julie, bindel, dangerous, faggot, tour, feminism, free, speech, review, ann, arbor, feminist, meninist, men, rights, movement, rape, wage, culture, gap, patriarchy, gay, lesbian, sexual assault, social justice, warrior, sjw, transgender, transphobia, homophobia, islamophobia

Id: jLc7Iab0vtk

Length: 112min 32sec (6752 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2016