To think 'cancel culture' is going way too far?

[Okeefe]

I've gone on twitter this morning to see #CancelKimmel trending, the reason.. he sang the N word when rapping a Snoop Dogg song in 1996.

Jenna Marbles being 'cancelled' due to doing blackface in a Nicki Minaj impression is 2011.

I swear every time I go on the internet, someone else is being 'cancelled'

People are digging up ancient tweets belonging to celebrities and normal people alike, searching for racist/problematic key words and contacting their employers, losing them their jobs and more often that not this content that they are 'cancelling' them for is historic

Are people not allowed to grow up? I'm pretty sure when I was in my early teens if I was singing along to a rap song, I would say the word like any other lyric. Would I now? No. Because I understand that it is offensive. Because I'm an adult now. Because times have changed.

I've had to quit twitter, it depresses me so much. You can't disagree with a word this woke generation say, or you too will be 'cancelled'.

@merrymouse

I think 'cancelled' is basically slang for 'criticised', but a way of indicating how thoroughly you are rejecting someone.

It isn't though. To cancel somebody is not just to criticise somebody but to place them beyond the pale, and make association with them damaging.

It’s modern day McCarthyism and it’s being enacted over smaller and smaller transgressions - Douglas Murray describes it as ‘St George in Retirement Syndrome’ - a term he originally credits to Kenneth Minogue.

www.goodreads.com/quotes/838011-the-story-of-liberalism-as-liberals-tell-it-is-rather

Cancel Culture is glorified cyber bullying, there is a lot of Motte and Baily fallacy on this thread where there is a pretense that it is only calling out serial rapists or racists.

If that is what Cancel Culture really was there wouldn't be an issue with it generally. It is another string of the slactavism bow.

He went to prison because there was enough evidence against him for a conviction, not because of what random people said on twitter.

That is extremely naive.

The only reason police started a criminal investigation in the first place was because of the pressure put on them by the public outcry.

The only reasons victims felt empowered to finally come forward years or even decades after being raped is because the public outcry made them feel supported and that they would be believed.

It’s the exact same thing with George Floyd. Plenty of MNers have called the Black Lives Matter protestors “baying mobs” too, but the only reason the police who murdered him were charged is because of the public pressure those protests put on the prosecutors.

@Cornettoninja

I think this thread is working on you as you’ve gone from saying

I have a real problem with the n word in popular culture. I fully comprehend the argument of reclaiming it but you can’t ring fence a word for use by only one group of people.

To

you really can’t, not if your objective is for it not to be used as a slur.

Your argument is redundant as black /Pakistani don’t refer to each other as ‘n’ or ‘p’ to be racist. It’s popular culture. For example in Pakistan, ‘p’ just means pure/clean, whereas in the UK it’s blatantly racist when not used by Pakistani people.

I find the c word offensive but that seems to be creeping into mainstream tv more and more.

Bet you nothing will be done there tho.

@CathyComesHome

And bullying someone to the point of suicide for a transgressive or perceived transgressive comment is Orwellian.

Please stop trying to conflate anti-racism and anti-sexual assault with GC feminism.

How many black people have been murdered for being black? How many rape victims have taken their own lives?

Has anyone actually said that women shouldn’t speak about rape? Don’t be ridiculous. Stop making things up.

Please stop lying and gaslighting. Someone on this thread decried the use of Twitter to “cancel”/expose rapists by saying they should use the criminal justice system instead when we all know the criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.

If a man with a low income behaved as Lauer did, would they not be able to work anymore?
I very much doubt that a man without Lauer’s money and influence would be able to behave like he did. That’s the entire point. Of course there are plenty of low-income/unemployed men who rape. But Lauer wasn’t lurking in a bush outside a bar. He had an entire system set up to facilitate sexual abuse, and that system was created and financed by a major TV network. How power didn’t just protect him, it actively facilitated abuse.

We cannot separate power from abuse of that power.

Please stop lying and gaslighting. Someone on this thread decried the use of Twitter to “cancel”/expose rapists by saying they should use the criminal justice system instead when we all know the criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.

Do please show me where someone said that as I can’t find it.

Please stop trying to conflate anti-racism and anti-sexual assault with GC feminism.

I didn’t. If you had bothered to read the link I posted you would see it was about a female porn performer who was hounded over a tweet about refusing to have sex with male porn performers who have sex with males. A decision about her own health risk mitigation was denounced as homophobia and she was bullied by the mob, who didn’t stop until she committed suicide.

Cancel culture is not universally good for women or BAME people.

It barely touches powerful men at all.

In actual words, too, not just in a re working by you to fit your narrative.

The only reason police started a criminal investigation in the first place was because of the pressure put on them by the public outcry.

The trial would not have taken place without evidence. Fundamentally he went to prison because some brave women were prepared to testify against him - and they still lost their careers.

Most rape victims will not benefit from a public outcry against their attacker, and there is little evidence that the Harvey Weinstein case benefitted most women.

Ninkanink I can see why you would object to all that. For me, that is not the same thing as 'cancelling' famous people for being racist or sexist. I agree with Cathy that we shouldn't conflate them.

For me, 'no platforming' is a very extensive way of limiting whose views are shared in certain spaces

'Cancelling' is saying that certain things that are really indefensible (not just different political views, but racist speech or sexual abuse) are not acceptable.

I don't agree with your viewpoint, but I think you have a right to be heard. Whereas racist speech does not enjoy the same rights and I think it's okay for people to say they don't want to hear it.

It’s on page 2.

“Cancel culture is always wrong, and always too far.”

“Even when it's a serial rapist? Even when it results in a serial rapist losing their job?”

“Yes. We have the law to address these things, we don't need "cancel culture".”

@tinypigeon well she did. I assume some transactivists are interested in charity shop bargains and it does not take much to build a crescendo of hate against someone.

However, you are entitled to your opinion. I know I've told you the truth as I was told it by a very longstanding and close friend who had no reason to make it up. However you can choose to believe me or not.

Luckily those who get offended and upset by things too easily tend to be rather weak people so they are not likely to prevail in life

Also best to keep off twitter. I keep off it.

We are lucky to have the UK criminal justice system which is one of the best ones on the planet.

Instead of looking up impact on rich celebrities why don’t you do something constructive OP like take the Harvard Implicit bias test?

I don't even need to look at the 'bias' test, it wants to 'prove' something and hence it will achieve that, that's what statistics are there for, another 'test' would doubtless 'prove' the reverse. I ceased long ago to be amazed at people naive stupidity.

"Do " trans activists" often trawl charity shopping Facebook groups for people mentioning Harry potter?"

No, they use algorithms to search them out.

I've been following the Ickabog threads on Twitter: JK Rowling set up a competition for the kids to send their art and she wrote back to them.
All well and good - until the trans activists took massive offence at her recent tweets and decided they were transphobic.

Ever since then, they've been all over that competition, posting abuse and harassment - some of it actually aimed at the child in question.
It's the Cancel culture at its worst: "We don't agree with what you said so we're going to trash anything we find about you until you leave."

There are petitions to have people banned, multiple reports and targeting - you're naive if you think it doesn't happen on every social media platform.

there is little evidence that the Harvey Weinstein case benefitted most women.

BULLSHIT.

I’m sorry, but this is absolute, absolute bullshit.

My closest and dearest friend in the world was abused by Weinstein for 3 years.

The ONLY reason Weinstein isn’t still raping is because he was exposed on Twitter/media, and because the subsequent pressure that put on the police to investigate him.

If you’re claiming that removing an extremely powerful serial rapist from power “didn’t benefit most women” you’re really going to have to back that argument up.

CathyComesHome, those cases still required a standard of evidence to be met. Nobody here is saying public protest should be banned (as far as I can see). That falls safely in to the category of “criticism”.

What I (and I think others) object to is when people lose livelihoods despite there being no such standard of evidence of criminality, or where the behaviour isn’t criminal in the first place. That’s what “cancel culture” is to me. And I’m not okay with that.

I very much doubt that a man without Lauer’s money and influence would be able to behave like he did.

You just need to find women with no power at all, which unfortunately isn’t difficult.

We are lucky to have the UK criminal justice system which is one of the best ones on the planet.

The UK criminal justice system is not fit for purpose when it comes to sexual or domestic violence and fails victims or sexual or domestic violence every day. If ours is one of the best that says very bad things about the rest of the world.

@Cadent

Instead of looking up impact on rich celebrities why don’t you do something constructive OP like take the Harvard Implicit bias test?

implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

You will be shocked at the results.

Had a quick look but didn’t get past offensively biased the second page full of gender nonsense and the use of a word that suggests women are oppressed because they choose to be,

YANBU. I think it’s awful, and twitter is beyond hypocritical. There’s this onslaught of demand for change and for people to educate themselves, yet they find out one thing from about 6 years ago, and that’s it - you’re cancelled, even if you’ve grown dramatically as a person and educated yourself since.

There’s a certain young celebrity who is actively pushing for this stuff to happen, and is getting people to send her screenshots of people to ‘cancel’. The other week, someone got the accused’s account name wrong, and an awful, angry twitter mob verbally attacked and hounded this poor teenage boy (can’t have been any older than 13) until they found out it was the wrong person. Disgusting. The next thing that’ll happen, is that someone will be ‘cancelled’ verbally abused on twitter, and could potentially take their own life because of it. I really can see it leading to someone’s dramatic decline in mental health unfortunately.

@CathyComesHome

It’s on page 2.

“Cancel culture is always wrong, and always too far.”

“Even when it's a serial rapist? Even when it results in a serial rapist losing their job?”

“Yes. We have the law to address these things, we don't need "cancel culture".”

Sorry, not good enough.

But thanks for confirming it to me.

Do not call me a liar and do not use that term ‘gaslighting’ when your own behaviour is much closer to the definition of that term.

Trial by Twitter is a repugnant notion.

If you’re claiming that removing an extremely powerful serial rapist from power “didn’t benefit most women” you’re really going to have to back that argument up.

I understand that this is personal for you, but why do you think it would make a difference? It’s just one case.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-48095118

@CathyComesHome is the voice of reason on this thread. Thank you for your awesome comments.

To suggest that the 'law' is adequate to support victims of racism or sexual violence is laughable.

What we are seeing is civil society rising up to enforce standards of morality and common decency where the law fails us.

It's confronting, and messy, and a bit scary, but I think it's completely understandable and inevitable.