It’s not cancel culture, it’s consequences

A recent Harper’s letter in which prominent writers and thinkers of our time, like Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, and J.K. Rowling, expressed concerns that “cancel culture” is stifling free speech and muzzling dissent, has sparked much debate. The letter was quickly shared by those who seem to feel that we’re living in an era where accountability for your words and actions is a cruel injustice no one should ever have to suffer through.

In the letter, “cancel culture” is described as “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

There are fragments of the letter that I agree with. With the notable exceptions of hate speech or incitement to violence, my right to express myself includes my right to offend you. We need to make sure we make room for mistakes, questions, and trial and error in public conversations, so that people aren’t afraid to voice their thoughts — and inevitably even change them. Most importantly, we need to be able to discern between things that are uncomfortable and things that are hateful, so we can encourage the former and eliminate the latter.

This letter, however, isn’t an argument in defence of free speech; it’s a plea for less accountability. The accusation of censorship is deeply insulting to activists around the world currently imprisoned, persecuted, and risking their lives for speaking out against regimes. It’s also inaccurate. Questioning and calling out public figures who influence and shape our world and social mores isn’t being “intolerant of opposing views,” it’s merely challenging them. When you’re not used to it happening, it feels like an attack.

Challenging unfair social structures

Another letter in response to the one published in Harper’s, arguing that “marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing,” is the one that gets it right. It accurately points out that the signatories are all privileged, with massive platforms, and their fears are not centred on real repercussions of censorship, but merely a reactionary backlash to changing expectations. Like The Beaverton wrote in jest, “Allow me to use my nationally syndicated column to tell you how my voice is being suppressed.”

I don’t believe that an offensive tweet from 2014 is grounds for someone’s dismissal or ostracization. People evolve and grow. But being afraid of losing your job, your byline, or a book contract because you’re exposed as a racist, or a rapist, or incompetent at what you do, isn’t “cancel culture,” it’s just boring old consequences. Are people unable to see that because the people in prominent positions are believed to be above the fray and above reproach? Do we continue to mistake talent for character?

It’s true that we’re living in an increasingly divisive and polarizing online world. These are unsettling times and those with the most privilege to lose will be made the most uncomfortable. In the midst of a global pandemic and an expansive Black Lives Matter movement making us cast a much-needed critical glance at every aspect of our lives, it’s become undeniably clear the devastation and death of COVID-19 has affected the most marginalized in our society.

This has justifiably led to attempts to eradicate systemic racism and discrimination and revamp our institutions. Demands to defund police and reallocate funds differently — a notion that would have been until recently unheard of to a majority that hasn’t been at the receiving end of racial profiling and excessive police brutality– is now being discussed and taken seriously in much wider circles.

In simple terms,more people are beginning to challenge the status quo and the mainstream voices telling them their dismay and outrage are not legitimate reactions to an unjust system, but the reactionary and illogical outbursts of a mob out for blood.

Slowly, but surely

Precisely two years ago, when the Montreal Jazz Festival — amidst major protests and international criticism — decided to pull the plug on SLAV, many Quebec pundits called it “an attack on freedom of speech” and “censorship.” The hyperbolic among them went so far as to characterize legitimate criticism as “intellectual terrorism” and “cultural Apartheid” refusing to understand that the festival was facing consequences, not censorship.

Never mind that SLAV was a predominantly white show produced by a white producer with a white entertainer front and centre singing Black spirituals inspired by slavery. Never mind that mainstream pundits conveniently forgot that protests and criticism are legitimate and legal “freedom of speech,” too. The outrage it generated was deemed unjustified and hysterical by some. “Cancel culture” was thrown around as protesters were ridiculed and dismissed as “angry radicals.”

Two years later, and while much remains to be improved on, I doubt that a tone-deaf production like SLAV would ever be attempted today. “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” wrote author L. P. Hartley.

Progress is messy and non-linear and almost doesn’t feel like progress at all at times, but it happens. People make decisions (intentionally or not) that are limited and framed by their privilege, their ignorance or experience of trauma and inequality. They get called out. They resist, they rationalize; they resent it. It’s uncomfortable to be challenged. To be told that what you’re doing, saying, or supporting is hurtful and insensitive. Most people don’t want to be jerks. But, also, most people live in their echo chambers, hearing the voices and opinions of the people most like them. It’s comfy there, but it can also be a dangerously misleading space to exist in. Criticism can seem like an attack from that vantage point. A demand for equal rights and representation can look like chaos when, in fact, it’s just a balancing of the pendulum, which has always swung unfairly in one direction.

Perspective is a strange thing. It allows for the majority to,far too often, think their opinion, their ‘take’ on something is the well-reasoned, rational, “normal,” objective opinion, when it’s merely the opinion that represents the experience and concerns of the majority. It doesn’t necessarily make it the “wrong” opinion, but it’s a mistake to automatically assume that it’s the “right” opinion just because more people support it. Democracy might be a de facto popularity contest, but I can’t think of a single important social movement (abolitionism, civil rights, women’s rights, etc.) that ever won one of those in their early stages.

Calling out sexism and rape culture

Closer to home, a wave of anonymous online allegations of sexual misconduct — ranging from dipping one’s penis in unsuspecting women’s drinks to predatory rape and violence — have rocked Quebec’s arts scene, forcing well-known entertainers to issue public mea culpas and bands to kick out founding members. Similar allegations about Ubisoft’s toxic work culture has led to the resignation of key members of the company’s upper management. Ubisoft’s Montreal office has not been exempted, as many employees came forward to call out their bosses who made their working conditions a living hell. You can go ahead and call that “cancel culture” if you want, but I’m just going to go ahead and call it the consequences of shitty behaviour.

Seriously… let’s talk “cancel culture” for a minute. Who’s the last person who was unjustly “cancelled” and had their ability to speak compromised or their career and life ruined? And I emphasize “unjustly” because having your career derailed, facing legal persecution or public ostracization because of legitimate accusations of sexual misconduct or racism isn’t cancellation; it’s just the result of your own actions.

It took upwards of 40 women to come forward for Bill Cosby to see the inside of a jail. And yet we keep worrying about these hypothetical men who’ve had their hypothetical lives and careers ruined. Where are they? Cancel culture has cancelled no one. Inconvenienced, maybe. Scared, for sure. Shamed, no doubt. But cancelled? I don’t think so.

I may not be a fan of anonymous lists circulating, but this isn’t “cancel culture.” This is consequences. This is comeuppance. This is the chickens coming home to roost.

Given official statistics that point to the absurdly low number of false accusations of sexual harassment and assault, and an overwhelming majority of women (a whopping 80 per cent) who don’t even report their assaults to police because they don’t trust the system, shouldn’t people’s first impulse be to show empathy for victims? Why, instead, are they painting them as hysterical, untrustworthy, vengeful shrews engaged in a “free-for-all” takedown?

The numbers don’t lie and neither do most victims

There are a lot of names on that ever-growing list, but if you think that number is high you would be shocked by the number of victims whose names will never make it on there, who remain silent and always will. False allegations do happen, and they should be treated and punished with severity, but most women don’t make up stories; they make up excuses about why they will never tell. Yet, instead of worrying about the alarmingly high rates of femicide, abuse, rape, violence, and crass ‘boys will be boys’ daily disrespectful and demeaning behaviour against women, some of you seem disproportionately concerned by the extremely low possibility of false accusations against men. Why?

Sure, there’s a difference between a predatory rapist and an ill-advised d*ck pic, and I would even argue that many being called out are not irredeemable villains, but average,run-of-the-mill people who’ve been given permission by a sexist society or celebrity idolatry to mistreat others and get away with it. But I’m also confident that none of these names have found themselves on lists out of the blue. Their past conduct (bad decision-making, crossing lines, abusing the trust and love of people around them) has, in some shape or form, placed them there. Their behaviour has been a source of trauma and now their past has caught up with them.

And once they have become part of someone’s story, they don’t get to decide how that person shares it. “You own everything that happened to you,” says the brilliant Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. “Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” She’s talking about writing, but I can assure you she’s also talking about life.

No more tolerance for the intolerable

We live in a world where rape and assault barely get a slap on the wrist from our justice system, where judges tell women to “keep their knees together” to keep from getting raped, where women are constantly blamed and shamed for their own assaults, so forgive me for not being particularly worried about any lasting effects for those being called out.

Most, if not all, will never face legal or any long-term social consequences. Most, if not all, will announce they’re heading “into therapy” and resurface unscathed months later. Society is extremely forgiving of these “lapses of judgment” and if they are accompanied by sincere remorse and changed behaviour, they’ll be easily redeemed.People can and do change, and if this wave of public denouncements forces that, we’re all better for it. Those with legitimate legal cases against them might face a court of law, and what’s wrong with that? Should they not face justice just because the person who likes to solicit underage kids for sex or dunk his d*ck in your Cosmo when you’re not looking also happens to be someone’s favourite singer?

Most victims who came forward don’t even want to pursue legal action. They simply want to be heard. They want to remove this heavy weight of shame they’ve been carrying around and put it back where it belongs – on the abuser’s shoulders. They want them to also have a sleepless night or two. They want to live in a world where behaviour like this is no longer enabled, tolerated, seen as chuckle-worthy or normal. If that’s “cancel culture” I’m all in. ■

Read more editorials by Toula Drimonis here.