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Alrighty, breakfast consumed, coffee imbibed, let's go.
So, I started writing PROBLEMATIC in June of 2016. I'd finished my dissertation at Oxford and had six weeks with access to Oxford resources and no assignments to complete. So I took advantage and wrote my book proposal.
So, I started writing PROBLEMATIC in June of 2016. I'd finished my dissertation at Oxford and had six weeks with access to Oxford resources and no assignments to complete. So I took advantage and wrote my book proposal.
At that time, "cancel culture" was about terming people as "problematic" (thus the title) and I was particularly moved to tackle the subject by a couple things. One was seeing Jon Ronson at the Union talking about his book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed:
At the time, Ronson had come under fire for publishing the story of Adria Richards and failing to account for the roles race and gender played within that controversy (you can see an article about that incident and Ronson's coverage here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jacquishine/its-a-shame).
Oxford Union talks always have a Q&A session, and, as a Women's Studies student writing about the intersections of race and gender in the Jim Crow era, I felt it incumbent upon me to ask about Richards. So, I asked him about it (you can see at 43 minutes in the video).
Ronson was ... not happy. My question made him visibly uncomfortable. He addresses the gender question, but not necessarily the racial ones. I left knowing I had rattled him a bit, and you could tell he was worried about becoming the subject of the very public shaming he studied.
This experience was coupled with a later panel on the rhetoric of how we talk about abortion that featured then doctoral student and famous feminist author, Naomi Wolf. Those of you who followed me back then might recall that I livetweeted the session, which was truly bizarre.
The panel was designed to discuss how we talk about abortion and particularly whether or not the feminist insistence on the correct scientific term of "fetus" was creating rhetorical distance that prevented us from moving ahead on abortion rights. But it quickly derailed...
...because Wolf was what can only be summed up as paranoid. She was making several points that seemed to echo pro-life talking points, and other panelists would attempt to summarize her rambling charitably, only to be interrupted with "NO, I didn't say that!" and defensiveness.
It was genuinely bizarre. Wolf had come under extensive critique a couple years before for her book, Vagina, which placed a significant importance of a woman's power in her literal biology and had weird yonic focused spirituality throughout it, which was cis-centric and weird.
I looked at Wolf in that moment and thought, "This is what happens when a woman gets massively critiqued and doesn't know how to handle it." She was deeply paranoid about being quoted correctly, to the point that it completely derailed any discourse. She was terrified of shame.
So with these two incidences in mind - a woman made paranoid by decades of being under fire, and a man bristling at the suggestion he perhaps misunderstood the power structures of race and gender, I set about to write a book threading the needle of cancel culture.
I wanted to invoke the idea that redemption is possible, that no one is disposable, but that power structures are at play and we need to take care to call in rather than call out. I used pop culture as a guide and worked through various feminist theories as bases for cancelling.
I looked at Taylor Swift, the Kardashians, Lena Dunham, and the critiques of cancel culture (particularly one by Michelle Goldberg) that essentially went after Black Twitter for having the temerity to demand that people not be racist.
The conclusion I eventually drew was mutli-pronged:
1. Calling people out needs to leave open the door for redemption.
2. Call outs must take into account power balances and oppressions at play.
3. True equal discourse means not treating a person's life as an issue for debate.
1. Calling people out needs to leave open the door for redemption.
2. Call outs must take into account power balances and oppressions at play.
3. True equal discourse means not treating a person's life as an issue for debate.
The thing about the current debates about The Discourse - which include this Harper's letter - is that failure to follow principle number 3. I cannot have a seat at the table if the discussion is about whether or not I am a human worthy of rights.
This means necessarily drawing boundaries around discussion that treat people as issues to be debated and refusing to allow some topics to be covered by people who dehumanize the Other into an issue to be discussed.
I'm dancing around it and the Harper's letter is dancing around it, but we all - the signatories of the Harper's letter, whoever wrote it in the first place, the people responding - all of us know this is about transgender identity as the current third rail of The Discourse.
You can catch that undercurrent in their unlinked litany of examples, highlighted here. If you know what instances they're referring to (and I think I do), most of them are about anti-trans articles, posts, and studies.
For example, when I saw "journalists are barred from writing on certain topics," I scrolled down to check if Jesse Singal was a signatory. He is. Singal is a cisgender journalist singularly obsessed with writing about trans people but in such a way that it is dehumanizing.
A few years ago, for example, he wrote a cover story for the Atlantic about people who detransition, ostensibly under the umbrella of concern about children transitioning (sound familiar?). The piece was unbalanced and factually erroneous in several areas. He came under fire.
That's just one example, but his slipshod work on trans issues has continued, which has led many to say "stop hiring Jesse Singal to write on trans issues."
The Harper's letter frames this as "censorious" action dissolving "complex policy issues into a blinding moral certainty."
The Harper's letter frames this as "censorious" action dissolving "complex policy issues into a blinding moral certainty."
Singal has not, to my knowledge, faced any major professional setbacks because of his writing, except insofar as transgender people will not accept interviews from him. It likewise has not destroyed the careers of Bari Weiss, Jonathan Haidt, Caitlin Flanagan or Michelle Goldberg.
These are people who still have regular gigs. Some have found new positions precisely because of coming under a firestorm (after all, all publicity is good publicity for a lot of writers).
So why the fear? Why the letter?
As @nberlat points out, a lot of it is class solidarity.
So why the fear? Why the letter?
As @nberlat points out, a lot of it is class solidarity.
The signatories of this letter are professors, professional writers, people whose bylines have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other high status places. At least one of them is a billionaire.
So they are not worried for themselves, not necessarily. The pattern of people called out eventually failing upward is pretty damn clear at this point. But that history is obfuscated in the name of casting transgender activism as a danger to Free Speech.
This is the fundamental conflict: trans activists are begging to be seen as human, to have access to rights, and the centrist elite is screaming at them for saying, "Hey, saying incorrect and inflammatory things about my identity actively puts me in danger."
The thing I've come to recognize more and more is that free speech really only works if empathy is a primary principle. And empathy here is misplaced. We are supposed to be empathetic to the billionaire author told to fuck off, but not the trans woman murdered out of trans panic.
What this REALLY is, honestly, is a principle of Free Speech for Me but Not For Thee. The "gender critical" have a right to control the Discourse, and demand empathy. But the people they dehumanize aren't even allowed in the room.
This letter and others like it amount to the elite classes of thinkers whining that their objects of discourse refuse to remain silent receptacles of their thought experiments. Free speech and truly open discourse is impossible if one portion is asked to be silent about harm.
Advocating for our own humanity will always be a threat to the ruling class which depends upon a quiet and obedient under class. What's truly happening here is that the objects of the discussion are responding, and that cannot happen if the elite wish to maintain their position.
But, for me, there's also, always this lingering question of redemption. How a person responds when the object of their discussion humanizes themselves and speaks up is important, too.
For example, Halle Berry was being considered for the role of a trans man over the weekend. After outrage about that possibility, Berry tweeted that it was important to listen to the trans community, to allow opportunities for trans actors to tell their own stories, etc.
The signatories of the Harper's letter would surely call this bowing to mob justice. But what if we approached it rather as a person in a position of power learning to listen to the less powerful?
What if we elevated the perspectives of the oppressed?
What if we elevated the perspectives of the oppressed?
This is why I believe that redemption is a vital component of "cancel culture." If you're able to shift your empathy, understand the real, genuine harm, and listen to what the critique actually is, you can and will find a path to redemption.
But because the elite know that the very act of empathy - genuine solidarity - with the oppressed means they will need to hand over power, they're extremely resistant to any challenge.
This letter and other such critiques are attempts to reclaim power by arguing that it's the oppressed that are really the powerful ones.
And I don't buy it.
And I don't buy it.
So until they're willing to listen, genuinely listen, I'm gonna keep highlighting their harm, and you should too.
If that's cancel culture, so be it. I'd rather be an active participant in defending my humanity than a passive object for the elite to discuss.
If that's cancel culture, so be it. I'd rather be an active participant in defending my humanity than a passive object for the elite to discuss.
Anyway, you can get the book here at Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612349619
My favorite chapter is the one about the male gaze, FTR.
My favorite chapter is the one about the male gaze, FTR.
