Why is it not okay to make jokes in passing about marginalized and victimized groups? Why is it imperative that cancel culture becomes a collaborative effort to hold people accountable and make people responsible for the words that come out of their mouths and their harmful thoughts?
Cancel culture is a modern form of ostracism where someone is thrust out of social and professional circles either online or physically. The community at large stops giving support to that person for example in the case of a writer; we stop buying one’s book or reading their work. We eject this person from influence and essentially we blacklist them.
One may ask
Why do we need to cancel them?
Why can they not be taught?
Are people no longer allowed to make mistakes?
I will invite you to ponder on this using an age old example. Although the Holocaust happened more than fifty years ago, there is no joke about anti-Semitism that a Jew will find remotely funny. The reason for this is that the Holocaust and the Jewish genocide was an experience that was a direct attack on the existence and dignity of Jewish people. At some point in history being born a Jew meant that one was automatically a target for hate speech and their lives were there to be toyed with. The Holocaust can never be justified because it was a case of unequal power dynamics. It was a case of dangerous free speech. Where one is given a platform to be problematic and everyone else is expected to gently handhold them out of their discriminatory behavior, we become enablers.
When we are too soft on someone, when we burden ourselves with the responsibility of ‘educating ‘them. We are doing victims a great disservice. We are prioritizing the oppressor above them. We put them back in the same corner of alienation and discomfort that they experienced in the past. We burden them with the responsibility that was never theirs in the first place.
This week, an occasion to cancel a menace presented itself once again. Mac G a South African podcast presenter had some casual transphobic comments on his show. Sol a guest on his show said “You are going to have a sex change done just to be with a woman, why can’t you just be a man so you can be with a woman?” A transman is a woman with a d*ck”. This casual discrimination which was broadcasted for the world to see was an insult to a community that literally lives in fear on a daily basis. It was irresponsible for Mac g to provide a platform that enabled a conversation that aired transphobic jokes.
MacG was literally fired from YFM ten years ago for homophobic jokes. He was given ten years to learn and he still is very comfortable with his old behavior. One could even say that he is proudly ignorant. To give the LGBTQI the duty of educating them out of his intentional ignorance is like him stabbing them and then asking them to educate him on the dangers of a knife and why he should not be using it to stab people.
Cancel culture is a form of us setting firm boundaries on our values in society especially in the treatment of those who have never had the privilege of humane treatment. If a straight person is treating a queer person’s boundaries as an attack that reveals the straight privilege that we have where we evade accountability at the expense of the same people that we are supposed to protect. Showing up as a gentler queer person who will explain the issue in a softer tone is not as helpful as you think.
Queer people are normally gaslight as angry and sensitive when they set firm boundaries. If you are a person who plays the role of being thanked by problematic people for your kind explanations of how respecting someone’s dignity works. You are also not as helpful as you think you are. If you are the one who people turn to coddle their anti-human dignity behavior you are an enabler. Problematic people should not be finding a friend in you. If you want to be helpful, support the boundaries of Queer people. This is done by making it clear that homophobic sentiments are unacceptable and that is the hill you are willing to die on. Stop reinforcing the expectation that homophobic people should be gently hand held out of their problematic behavior.