Breitbart News reports that bestselling psychotherapist Dr. Jordan Peterson has quit Twitter after facing backlash for declaring that plus-size Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Yumi Nu is “not beautiful.”
“Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that,” Peterson tweeted Monday in response to a New York Post tweet about Nu, who is featured this year on a SI swimsuit edition cover.
Peterson was subsequently attacked for his comment, and he elaborated: “It’s a conscious progressive attempt to manipulate & retool the notion of beauty, reliant on the idiot philosophy that such preferences are learned & properly changed by those who know better.”
“The endless flood of vicious insult[s] is really not something that can be experienced anywhere else,” Peterson tweeted on Monday night. “I like to follow the people I know but I think the incentive structure of the platform makes it intrinsically and dangerously insane.”
Minutes later, he announced he would be quitting Twitter.
This year’s SI swimsuit issue also includes several WNBA players, a model with a visible C-section scar, and a septuagenarian model — making Peterson’s point that the choices are part of “a conscious progressive attempt to manipulate and retool the notion of beauty.”