cancel culture isn’t real but the normalization of online harassment as a cost of public participation is real, it exists to varying extents across every political tendency I can think of, and it’s not good for anyone

what is so embarassing + intellectually bereft of the proponents of “cancel culture” is how they base their analysis on their assessment of the accuser’s and accused’s relative social and moral value in order to avoid a serious analysis of the behaviors involved

this has enabled them to create an idea of “cancel culture” that is pathetically lacking in any descriptive value for actual political dynamics, such that the phrase lacks any more useful resonance than signaling “I don’t like people who don’t like my friends/people I value”

Racism and bigotry are abhorrent. Going after people’s jobs in a capitalist society with no social safety net is morally and politically fraught. Ignoring the contradictions is lazy, and those exercising power, even from the outside, cannot allow themselves to be lazy.

all that being said jk rowling is 10000% cancelled in my heart

(I can say this with complete equanimity bc she is a billionaire and neither she nor any of her dependents will be harmed in any material way by my utter disgust with her transphobic bigotry.)