On ‘cancel culture’.
I was speaking with someone about the increasingly loud pushback against ’cancel culture’. I consider that kind of complaining to be the product of yet another Orwellian play by the ruling corporation class to silence actual, valid dissent. Kinda like so many people being so proudly ‘politically incorrect’ in the 90s & 00s. He disagreed, we kept talking, and this arrived.
Here it is:
Rape culture and White Supremacy are real. You (and I) have not been subject to the effects of either of those deadly forces. In fact, we benefit (superficially) from them. Historically marginalized & oppressed people are sick of all the damage, and they are speaking up. They are rightfully scared, angry & desperate. Sometimes it’s not polite or perfect. The whole ‘civility’ thing is a ruse, too. It’s a rhetorical tool used to silence dissent (ah the irony).
We need to shake and wake this country up. A proudly pussy-grabbing racist is our President. Neo-nazi, misogynist corporatists are among the most powerful people in our culture, and they are in bed with similar monsters around the world. Wealth disparity is off the charts. California is on fire. The water in Flint is STILL poisoned. Homeless encampments are expanding exponentially in many major cities. Worker’s rights are being phased out. Our health care & education systems are broken. Blatantly dishonest and manipulative propaganda has social media in a tailspin. Our infrastructure is crumbling & inefficient. Cops harass and kill Black people with impunity. Our private prisons are packed for profit. Thousands & thousands of people are in horrific, hidden detention centers that we don’t even understand the workings of. Many of them are kids. There have been so many mass shootings using military assault weapons that we pretty literally can’t keep track. Women are raped regularly, countless young girls are sold into sex slavery globally. I could go on. These are all easily verifiable, irrefutable facts.
Part of the reason it’s this way is our (mostly middle-class / White / male) complicity. We trade our complicity and silence for comfort.
If there are fewer shitty sexist jokes, and men are more aware of how scared women feel around our raping, murdering, harassing gender (it’s not biology, it’s cultural conditioning), then good. If White people feel more ashamed of all the awful we’ve been doing forever, from appropriation to gentirifcation to colonization to infinitely worse, good. If people across the infinitely diverse gender / sexual spectrum get treated with the same basic respect as ‘straight’ CIS people, and we get to learn how they’d like to be addressed and treated, good. Same goes for people of varying abilities in various contexts. What is bad about any of that?
I think you’re a kind person. Use that voice and power and privilege gifted to you to support people whose voices have been truly, violently silenced. Don’t waste time and energy defending the entitlement of assholes. Speak up. Make speech actually free, for everyone. Make diversity in the classroom and the workplace and the everywhere a real reality. It’s actually really fun. We can do it at the ballot box, in our living rooms, at our jobs, on the streets. Together. Rather than worrying about finding ‘common ground’ with the 63% of White men and 54% of White women who voted for Dumpster, we can be building real allyship between Black & Brown people, immigrants, the LGBTQIA+ community, and the many millions of people not wanting to keep going with the same old oppressions.
Do you disagree with any of this? If so, what and why?
(I’m asking you, too.)
(And if you DO agree with this, then please share it, pass it on, say it in yr own words, over & over & loud until we don’t need to say it anymore).
