Cancel Culture and Sexual Violence
What is Cancel Culture?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Cancel Culture as the practice or tendency of engaging in mass “canceling” as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.[1] Collective shaming, excluding, defaming, rejecting, withdrawing support, defacing, destroying, removing, and bringing to nothingness are all forms of canceling a person or personality.
The dynamics of Cancel Culture are not new to this generation. One of the meanest girls I ever met dominated the social scene of my small, sixth-grade, private-school class. Without models or training, she organized some of us into the Super Seven.
The Sensational Six
One day, I arrived at school only to learn that the Super Seven had suddenly morphed into the Sensational Six. I had been booted from the group. During the two excruciating days that I endured spitballs, tripping, mocking, contempt, harassment, personal injury and loss of property, the most painful part of the experience was rejection and isolation.
After two days, the mean girl informed me that I was now “in” but that another girl was “out” of the Sensational Six. A condition of my acceptance into the group was an obligation to administer the same painful sentence to the excluded girl as I had endured during the previous round. My terrified six-grade mind - considering nothing more than fear of rejection and desperation for acceptance - jumped on the offer. Now I know that compliance with this type of social pressure is a choice between right and wrong. At the time, it seemed like the only option for survival.
Participation fuels Cancel Culture. Cancel Culture plays out to inflict damage only with willing participants and lack of resistance. When the bandwagon tips, Cancel Culture is one of the first stowaways to fall to the side and lay lifeless on the ground.
Cancel Culture and Survivors of Sexual Violence
People who have experienced interpersonal violence are especially vulnerable to damage caused by Cancel Culture if they are the ones being boycotted. They may already be feeling the common effects of sexual violence such as shame, guilt, mistrust and isolation.[2] The added layer of social rejection may be too much to bear. One advocate on behalf of a canceled survivor could bring hope where no hope is found and save a life. An advocate who reverses the cancellation can bring more healing to the survivor than decades of therapy.
"For the people who are doing the cancelling, in the short run it makes them feel good. It gives them an illusion of power, of control, of virtue," says, Dr. Oren Amitay, a registered psychologist. Boycotting someone whose ideas or comments are considered offensive is "like doing a drug; like giving into an addiction.” He explains that the sad outcome of Cancel Culture is that it prevents important conversations from happening.[3]
This may explain why many survivors are eager to participate in Cancel Culture. One student gives the following call to action:
We should embrace canceling especially as a response to actions of sexual misconduct by those with power, whether that be physical, political or social power.
Cancel culture works to change a society that currently enables these injustices in various social environments by giving marginalized voices a platform to speak upon.[4]
The problem with this approach is that in seeking to enforce justice, the process, by nature, denies justice. Sentences result from popularity and manipulation instead of the weighing of evidence or healthy dialogue.
Important conversations are hard. Finding strength in numbers is easy.
Canceling Cancel Culture
An early Nazi supporter, Martin Niemöller, who later found himself in a jail cell for opposing Hitler's regime, spoke the following words:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.[5]
Social injustice is cannibalistic in nature. As the Niemöller and Sensational Six examples illustrate, being “in” today does not guarantee immunity for tomorrow.
Why don’t people stand up for oppressed? The answer is rooted in our identities. The clearer we are about the reasons we are alive and the work that G-d has called us to do in this world, the bolder we can become in standing for what is right and protecting the vulnerable. A weak perception of our intrinsic worth, confusion about our life’s purpose and blindness toward what G-d is saying to each of us personally leaves us vulnerable for finding meaning and purpose from popular themes and movements.
“Whenever two people agree, one of them is unnecessary.”[6] This quote by Henry Ford reminds us that differences of opinion socially strengthen us, not weaken us. A balanced embrace of different perspectives challenges us toward excellence. In fact, the true idea of “tolerance” is rooted in differences of opinion. Hillary Morgan Ferrer explains more in her chapter on Linguistic Theft:
According to the actual definition,[7] for tolerance to exist, there must be (1) dislike or (2) disagreement. I cannot express to you enough the importance of repeating this…Tolerance has essentially been relegated to a place of neutrality, where a person is prohibited from having strong convictions about anything. The only strong conviction a person is permitted to have is to say that everyone is equally right. Deny anyone’s right to be right, and you are intolerant.[8]
She concludes with the encouragement not to let anyone be “bullied into silence by adopting this bogus definition of tolerance.”
Can we mature from our sixth-grade brains and speak out against collective shaming, excluding, defaming, rejecting, withdrawing support, defacing, destroying, removing, and bringing someone to nothingness simply because it is the popular thing to do?
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[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cancel%20culture
[2] “The Effects of Sexual Assault, Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (WCSAP), https://www.wcsap.org/help/about-sexual-assault/effects-sexual-assault
[3] “When it comes to boycotting opinions, 'cancel culture' is preventing dialogue from occurring: psychologist,” CBC Radio, Posted: November 3, 2019 4:00 AM EST, Last Updated: November 4, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/has-cancel-culture-gone-too-far-1.5344590/when-it-comes-to-boycotting-opinions-cancel-culture-is-preventing-dialogue-from-occurring-psychologist-1.5345798
[4] Abby Loiselle, “Opinion: Embrace cancel culture, especially in the case of sexual misconduct,” The Student Life, April 15, 2021 10:25pm, https://tsl.news/cancel-culture-is-useful/
[5] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/quotation-from-martin-niemoeller
[6] “When Two Men in Business Always Agree, One of Them Is Unnecessary,” Quote Investigator® , April 4, 2015, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/04/04/agree/#google_vignette
[7] Ferrer references the Oxford Definition of tolerance which is “the ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behavior that one dislikes or disagrees with.” From Hillary Morgan Ferrer, Mama Bear Apologetics, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene Oregon, 2019, p 70
[8] Ibid, Ferrer, Mama Bear Apologetics, p. 71