Bret Easton Ellis claims that he receives much more social media abuse than black women

Controversial author Bret Easton Ellis has sparked fury after he suggested that he receives more abuse on the internet than black women.

The writer, best known for his novels American Psycho and Less Than Zero, appeared on Channel 4 News on Tuesday evening as part of a promotional tour of his new book White.

The collection of essays takes aim at millennials, social media and 'PC culture' which he extended upon in his interview with Cathy Newman.

The 55-year-old writer claimed that misogyny and homophobia are not the "worst things out there" and dismissed the belief that he could be defined by his 'whiteness and maleness'.

Is misogyny and homophobia really the worst things out there? I mean I really wonder sometimes.

We make such a huge deal out of this. Everything's misogynist, everything's racist...

I've been called homophobic and I'm gay. So it's like crazy out there now. So PC. So sensitive.

Newman then asked him:

Would you say that if you weren't both white and male?

Easton Ellis replied:

No. I think that's too easy. I'm still a person. 

I'm not defined by my whiteness or my maleness. I'm a human being. And that's just a fact.

Whatever I can't help - this happened to me, I was born this way.

Newman then asked if he felt that he would be worn down by the string of abuse that a black woman often receives online to which he disagreed.

Look, we all bear our burdens. I get so much crap on Twitter, so much crap on Twitter. 

Probably much more than that black woman probably gets. Well they'd [trolls] be kicked off. Those people would be kicked off.

You can't really be that horrible. You can't be that racist on Twitter without people calling them out and having their things cancelled and having your account blocked.

I don't think that is happening, that's not happening anymore. I get tons of crap thrown at me and none of these people ever get blocked.

But to suggest that because I'm white and male that I have some kind of free pass on social media is not the case - it's actually the opposite. I don't get a free pass.

Easton Ellis's comments come just months after a report found that trolls who send abusive messages to politicians should be given digital asbos, with Diane Abbott found to have received half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs during the 2017 general election.

The white author soon found his comments being torn to shreds on Twitter.

HT Huffington Post

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