US writer Bret Easton Ellis has suggested that “you can’t be that racist” on Twitter as he argued he gets more abuse on social media than black women.
The American Psycho author was appearing on Channel 4 News on Tuesday when he contended being white and male does not represent a “free pass” online.
Last year, Labour politician Diane Abbott urged social media giants to take more drastic steps to tackle online abuse after she said her staff spend a “considerable amount of time” blocking or removing “highly offensive and misogynist” abuse directed at her on Twitter.
The call by the shadow minister, the first black woman ever elected to the British parliament, came as an Amnesty International study into online abuse revealed that a woman is attacked on Twitter every 30 seconds.
Easton Ellis is in the UK promoting his new non-fiction book, called White, which takes aim at millennials, victimhood and social media.
Interviewed by Cathy Newman, the author suggested misogyny and homophobia were not the “worst things out there” as he railled against people being “so PC, so sensitive”.
When asked whether he believed that because he’s white and male, the writer dismissed the idea as “too easy” and that he was “not defined by my whiteness or my maleness”.
When pressed again on abuse aimed at black women on social media, he argued that “we all bear our burdens”.
He said: “I get so much crap on Twitter, so much crap on Twitter. Probably much more than a black woman gets.
“They (people making racist comments) would be kicked off. These people would be kicked off. You can’t be that racist on Twitter without people calling you out and having your things cancelled and having your account blocked. I don’t think that is happening, that’s not happening anymore.
“I think what I am getting is actually... I get tonnes of crap thrown at me and none of these people ever get blocked. To suggest that because I am white and male that I have some kind of free pass on social media is not the case. It is actually the opposite. I don’t get a free pass.”
His comments faced an online backlash.