No, cancel culture is criticized left, right and center. I see that the behavior of cancel culture is unethical.
I’ve been judged my whole life.
Also, I don’t see being ethical as something one can claim to be with any permanence anyway. It’s something to strive towards and nothing more than that. I certainly don’t think I can avoid fucking up. Hell I got baited into a derail in this very thread for honestly stupid reasons and I don’t feel worse about myself for admitting that. If human ethics has improved enough that I have to grow and change then it was time for me to grow and change. In that case I’m glad for all the people who are enjoying an improved environment.
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Implicit in this argument are two assumptions-- that it makes sense to talk of ethics as a pan human universal and that it makes sense to speak of ethical improvement.
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Yeah, Adolph Reed got uninvited from a DSA event because some decided he’s too “class reductionist.” It’s definitely a thing that happens. I’ve seen this shit happen over and over again among liberals and lefties.
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Wow, yeah, being disinvited to an event is WAY worse than being murdered. Whew, glad you brought us that anecdote. /s
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I don’t view this as an either or situation, I’m just saying there are some cases where it’s counterproductive. You should check out Adolph Reed at some point, he’s great. Unless you want to pull a Biden, that’s cool too.
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Right?
Like that’s any kind of fucking “threat,” when we ALL get unfairly judged and prejudged from the very moment we are born… and everyone who isn’t White, male, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, and claiming to be “Christian” gets judged even harder on a perpetual basis.
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Stay on topic, then. The Harper’s letter is about defending elites from “cancel culture” for actions like open transphobia. There’s a whole thread about transphobia here - trans people are being murdered every week, all over the world. It is very much an either or situation. Either you’re OK with trans people being murdered or you’re not. The signatories of the Harper’s letter are, at best, “meh.” about it, and at worst, complicit.
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OK, suppose that a society entertained the abstract right to argue the indefensible. How does Rowling emerge from this “debate”? Cruel. Utterly Misinformed, and thoroughly beaten?
Alright, I do believe that I’m ethical and that human ethics improve over time, and I am ready to be judged. I hope my grandchildren bring to light the terrible things I have been a part of a right those wrongs. Wanting better for future generation is a bit of an age old tradition that I’m happy to be a part of.
Okay, so say you find my above stance on ethics bizarre and odd. Say I come across as a crank arguing disingenuously (I could forgive anyone for thinking this of me right now, my ideas are nuts and I know it). Are you going to refrain from telling me I’m wrong on these forums? Are you going to buy a copy of my self-published political manifesto? If a conference selects me as a keynote speaker and you think, “What the hell would they want an idiot like that for” would you go and listen to me anyway?
I don’t know if that comes across as facetious, because obvious if a person says, “cancel culture” they clearly mean something more than individuals acting. But It seems like it’s just the sum of the individual actions plus capitalism. When individuals decide not to deal with someone that person loses their influence in a culture where influence comes from money.
Fine? Rich as hell? Getting to do whatever Rowling wants to do? Righteously indignant? Indifferent to the transgender people who are beaten to death because the people doing it know that 30%+ of the society backs them? This is reality.
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Where does the letter specifically justify transphobia? The only link I could see to that would be maybe that JK Rawlings signed it, but a lot of people signed it including Chomsky and Salman Rushdie, and many others. I thought the Useful Idiots episode was interesting and covered a lot of topics, whereas I felt like this summary post kind of pidgin-holed the topic. If there are more details here beyond Rawlings I’d be interested in hearing them. For what it’s worth, Contrapoints also did a great video on this subject a while back. Perhaps some trollery is afoot? ; )
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Best case scenario? Slightly inconvenienced but prevented from doing ongoing harm.
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Best case scenario, she understands why she’s so wrong about trans people and their rights, and attempts to make amends for her current shitty, dangerous, and wrong opinions, but I guess that’s probably way too much to hope for at this point. The intent behind criticism of her actions and stated opinions is to mitigate the harm from them and try to explain why they’re shitty, dangerous, and wrong, not silence her outright regardless of what she says.
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First off, that’s the context for the origin of the letter. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re somehow commenting on this without that background.
ETA: transphobia was specifically called out in @thomdunn’s original post which this thread comments on…
Second, the phenomenon that’s been labeled “cancel culture” is just a backlash against the consequences powerful people have faced for their own bad behavior. Whether we’re talking outright criminal activity like Cosby or Weinstein or just bigotry and enabling like Weiss or JKR, what it represents is people with privilege fighting against accountability for the damage caused by their own bad behavior.
And you can’t forget the power imbalance in the equation. The backlash against “cancel culture” is ultimately an attempt by the powerful to maintain their speech as more important that the plebs. Boycotting, disagreement, criticism, and deplatforming are all modes of speech. Why is bigotry more important than the speech that counters it?
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It’s left as an exercise to the reader to figure out exactly what a the signers intend to do with their newfound freedom from consequences. The whole thing is clouded in a fog of intrigue that takes too long to be explain.
Whereas “JK Rowling wants to expose transgendered individuals to the threat of domestic violence” is simple and direct.
Presumably, Atwood, Chomsky, and Rushdie want to write more books. I can’t argue with that. Maybe Atwood wants the freedom to “culturally appropriate.” Maybe Rushdie wants the freedom to implicitly criticize some Indian politicians. Chomsky wants the freedom to criticize the hegemonic elite, without the prospect of having his books banned from state-run universities, or something… Arguing that those three should be “canceled” just like Rowling diminishes the vileness of her argument.
On the other hand, Rick Wiles still has a cult following, so there are serious limits to the notion that free speech exposes the evils for what they are.
Atwood mostly just wanted to stop midrises from cropping up in the Annex (a neighbourhood of Toronto).
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