Roxane Gay just wrote literally the only thing that needs to be said about Milo

By Isha Aran  |  February 21, 2017 | 2:08pm
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As you probably already know, over the weekend, Milo Yiannopoulous, a boil, was at the center of yet another controversy, this time involving some bad comments he made about pedophilia. The alt-right poster boy has made a career off insanely racist, xenophobic, transphobic, whatever-gets-him-attention-phobic comments, but he finally went too far. After footage surfaced of him defending adult attraction to, and sexual relations with, 13-year-old boys, the Conservative Political Action Conference dropped him as a speaker this week, Breitbart is allegedly debating whether or not to sever ties with him, and he finally lost that damn book deal with Simon & Schuster.

Let’s be real—Simon & Schuster did not take any kind of real stand here. When Yiannopoulos first announced he had signed a $250,000 book deal with the publishing company, the internet was immediately up in arms. Critics and bookstores threatened to boycott (though many pointed out that that would also pull support from authors of color and other marginalized groups), but Simon & Schuster stood by him.

Author Roxane Gay pulled out of her contract with the company in light of Yiannopoulos’ deal, and yesterday she posted a response to the publishing house dropping Yiannopolis, confirming that she still will not be releasing a book with them, among other things. It is literally the only thing you need to read about this situation.

In a post titled, “All I really need to say,” she wrote, in part:

In canceling Milo’s book contract, Simon & Schuster made a business decision the same way they made a business decision when they decided to publish that man in the first place. When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them.
They did not finally “do the right thing” and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. They were fine with his racist and xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and transgender people online.

Welp, there it is. Now let’s move on. Read the whole thing here.

 
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