those who bring “heat” and those who bring “light"

March 17, 2023 10:34 AM

Cancel culture has its merits, but the left is ready for a better approach [LA Times]. It used to be almost exclusively the political right that complained about the amorphous bogeyman known as “cancel culture.” Recently, at our research center dedicated to diversity and inclusion, we’ve noticed an intriguing shift in the zeitgeist: Complaints have started surfacing on the left.

[non-paywalled archive.org link]

posted by Ahmad Khani (51 comments total)

Complaints have started surfacing on the left.

If they're saying that only just recently there's been pushback, how long ago were folks like Lindsay Ellis and Natalie Wynn driven (mostly or entirely) off of social media? It was ineffective but there was plenty of pushback at the time.
posted by tclark at 10:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

The idea of cancel culture originated in conversations internal to left-affiliated communities. What it means has mutated a couple times since then, but even so leftists were criticizing something called 'cancel culture' before the right wing ever heard the phrase.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:06 AM on March 17, 2023 [26 favorites]

Well after reading the article, I'm more than ready for the ensuing demonstration of "Heat Vs Light" that will be following.
posted by Jarcat at 11:08 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's the same arc as "social justice warrior", for the record. The phrase shows up in intra-community dialogues, and eventually the right wing gets ahold of it, changes the meaning to suit their own biases, and wields it as a weapon against the left.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:08 AM on March 17, 2023 [35 favorites]

Ah, it's time again to remind everyone of the 2013 piece Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable by Ngọc Loan Trần - which is not itself the original work on this topic either, of course. The linked piece is decent too. Though, yeah, a little more nod to the historical background would have been helpful.
posted by eviemath at 11:09 AM on March 17, 2023 [22 favorites]

See also: Creative Interventions Toolkit
posted by eviemath at 11:11 AM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

To me, "cancel culture" is organic...it's not like any one person is in charge of "cancelling" someone. So it's hardly a culture? Don't know, still think this fixation is weird.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:12 AM on March 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

As above, "Calling IN" and Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire's Castle" are both highly valuable pieces from 2013 on this phenomenon
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 11:18 AM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that I've seen other discussions of the problems with Cancel Culture here.
posted by Spike Glee at 11:36 AM on March 17, 2023

To me, "cancel culture" is organic...it's not like any one person is in charge of "cancelling" someone. So it's hardly a culture? Don't know, still think this fixation is weird.

I’ve maintained for a while now that “cancel culture” is actually more a description of online/social media dynamics than any sort of cultural trend that can be separated from that.
posted by atoxyl at 11:41 AM on March 17, 2023 [14 favorites]

I really wish any discussion of canceling cancel culture would include a list of people who were “canceled”, what actual harm they suffered from the “canceling”, what they did to prompt being “canceled”. Then we can talk about whether they are being treated unfairly.
posted by bgribble at 11:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [37 favorites]

Those dynamics interact with certain approaches to left politics and dynamics within left political circles, which are not especially new and with which I have my own frustrations. But they are broader than that.
posted by atoxyl at 11:48 AM on March 17, 2023

From the article:

"Condemning people for mistakes would be relatively safe if the wrongdoers were a discrete group of bad actors. Yet all of us make errors that can be offensive. We ourselves have — regrettably — used the wrong gender pronouns, or confused students of the same ethnicity with each other. A punitive approach doesn’t encourage humility or growth in situations like these. It instead creates situations where any rational person would fear cancellation because we all know that we will err."

The only people who equate an occasional mis-gendering or confusion around ethnicity with "cancel culture" are the ones who are trying to push that ideological boogey man to begin with.

There are business-people and celebrities who I used to support that I will now (based on their actions) never support and actively encourage others to shun. I do this because my relationship with those business-people and celebrities is not a personal one. I don't have the ability to sit them down for a deep-canvasing discussion about why they are using their positions of prominence to advocate-for and/or joke-about issues that endanger my life (and countless others). If the best I can do is to make their livelihoods a bit less profitable, I'll take that.

In the meantime, I'm working a ground game to change the attitudes of those I have immediate access to.
posted by neuracnu at 11:50 AM on March 17, 2023 [17 favorites]

More side-eye at the "it's new" narrative – adrienne maree brown's essay We Will Not Cancel Us from 2018, and a book of the same name from 2020.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:07 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Someone like Kenji Yoshino (former Yale and current NYU professor of con law) is almost always going to be somewhat removed from the nitty-gritty of non-institutional leftist discourse (and, by virtue of his position, going to be particularly sensitive to attacks on the authority of institutions). It's not quite his beat. So I'm not surprised he reads this as "new."
posted by praemunire at 12:16 PM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I really wish any discussion of canceling cancel culture would include a list of people who were “canceled”, what actual harm they suffered from the “canceling”, what they did to prompt being “canceled”. Then we can talk about whether they are being treated unfairly.

Isabel Fall, for one.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 12:16 PM on March 17, 2023 [19 favorites]

To me, "cancel culture" is organic...it's not like any one person is in charge of "cancelling" someone. So it's hardly a culture? Don't know, still think this fixation is weird.

Pretty orthogonal to the point, but I don't understand this at all. It's considered a "culture" precisely because it's organic and no individual is in charge of it. That said, the fixation is weird, and calls to "end" it act as if there's a simple way to whine loud enough that people will stop caring about celebrities turning out to be problematic.

But the "Left" having issues with "Cancel Culture" is certainly nothing new. See Al Franken's senatorial career. I felt at the time (and still do, I think) that 1. what he was being called out for was incredibly small potatoes compared to others at the time, 2. that his call-out was pretty transparently whipped up by agents on the Right who wanted to either oust him or have a way to paint any future charges against folks on the right as hypocritical, and 3. that in that case, ousting him was unfortunately the correct move. Of course, since then we've seen proven again and again that the Right cares not one tiniest whit about actual hypocrisy and so maybe he was ousted for no gain, but I still prefer for "my" side to put their money where their mouths are.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:20 PM on March 17, 2023 [11 favorites]

I’ve maintained for a while now that “cancel culture” is actually more a description of online/social media dynamics than any sort of cultural trend that can be separated from that.

Yes, which is why left discussion goes in waves online - new forms of social media communication happen. In 2013, it was tumblr-driven and the core was questions of culture/cultural appropriation. Right now, it's driven by twitter discourse about gender and sexuality, mostly driven by TERFism - "puriteen" discourses, no kink at pride discourses, etc getting weaponized by TERFs so that they can't get sorted out on their own terms and become flashpoints. In each situation, the core questions end up creating emotions and habits that fuel dynamics all over social media.

There's a whole separate other shitshow that results from signal loops, but the right hasn't gotten hold of that yet.

But in any case, people who are not themselves activists (or college students!), even if their politics are formally left, get fooled into believing that your average left project is almost always being derailed by trying to expel people because they wrote "trans*" or wore a scarf not from their culture or politely asked their partner for a new sexual act.

"Cancel culture" is an online phenomenon. Inasmuch as it's left, it happens when new online dynamics meet new cultural pressures.

"Cancelling" people IRL is extremely fraught and difficult, and yet you're constantly up against it because, eg, it will turn out that someone who volunteers somewhere is very obviously and provably a domestic abuser, or it will turn out that someone has a documented and well-known habit of making violent threats to people who don't share their politics. But of course, that person has friends who don't see them that way, and those friends have friends, and pretty soon you have big splits because some people find telling women and gender minority people (and only those people) that they should be shot to death over political disagreements is bad enough that they should be expelled from a project, and some people feel that really the threatener is just struggling with (really existing, awful) trauma.

Add in situations like "majority [privileged] group has legitimate problem with [discriminated against] member and [discriminated against] member has suffered acutely in wider society and thus has trauma, bad family role models and probably debt and precarity, and maybe this wouldn't be happening except for subtle dynamics due to the group being majority [privileged]" and it gets even worse.

And then people talk about "accountability". There is very, very little accountability. Minoritized people get driven out and start over in another social circle/project; privileged people go to an "accountability circle" and do none of the work they are asked to do and the whole thing gets kicked down the road until it's forgotten.

A lot of this stuff is about social media because it's audience driven. Some professor who has never been "cancelled" in her life sees someone make a nasty remark when someone has misgendered them, thinks "but what if someone made a nasty remark to me? I certainly don't deserve that!!!" and writes a big screed about "the left" because she immediately identifies with powerful people who misgender, etc.
posted by Frowner at 12:21 PM on March 17, 2023 [21 favorites]

Isabel Fall, for one.

She (I hope that is the correct pronoun to use?) is a great example of what many have noticed--that the privileged (and the people on the right) who get "cancelled" almost always rebound, whereas the folks on the left who genuinely suffer long-term are frequently those of marginalized identities to begin with. That suggests a real problem of process.
posted by praemunire at 12:21 PM on March 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

RIP Beth Rickey
See Liz Cheney
See: night of the long knives

The right wing shuns people for fighting white Supremacy, and always will

Shunning is a natural tactic of conservatives, whose politics completely revolve around creating in groups and out groups. Fascists are either in the 'lying to trick normies' mode, or 'consolidation' mode, once moderate people are listening and identifying with the fascist personality.

Incite! Women of color against violence had a ten point guide to restorative justice, specifically in siuations of sexual assalt, centering the victim, etc since forever ago, like 2007.

You could see the MeToo movement straying from leftist principles in the firing of James Gunn, for example. That was empty moralism, no discussion of how to center the victim in the action. It was, in fact, a right wing co opt.

It s almost as if liberal papers have to continually forget about what the left has done. While people are constantly forgetting, the right wing is free to co opt actions.
posted by eustatic at 12:33 PM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

people who are not themselves activists (or college students!), even if their politics are formally left, get fooled into believing that your average left project is almost always being derailed by trying to expel people because they wrote "trans*" or wore a scarf not from their culture or politely asked their partner for a new sexual act.

Yeah the thing about the online version is that it is very low-cost to make a big deal out of low-stakes stuff and thus whatever gets expressed amplifies very quickly, whereas in real life there are kind of similar things that happen but it’s tied into small-group social dynamics.
posted by atoxyl at 12:41 PM on March 17, 2023

Frowner: Along these lines, a very cogent extended explanation of what the "cancel culture" is, in two parts.
posted by hat_eater at 12:42 PM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Add in situations like "majority [privileged] group has legitimate problem with [discriminated against] member and [discriminated against] member has suffered acutely in wider society and thus has trauma, bad family role models and probably debt and precarity, and maybe this wouldn't be happening except for subtle dynamics due to the group being majority [privileged]" and it gets even worse.

I do have some general cynicism about “progressive stack” sort of stuff that attempts to locally invert hierarchies. It can work in a small group where people really trust each other, but once you get to a certain scale it’s basically either relying on being able to appeal to an authority to sort out conflicts or else rewarding whoever is best at gaming the situation. Though, of course, most things reward people who are good at that. But I think this is a separate issue from “cancel culture” - it just interacts in places.
posted by atoxyl at 12:47 PM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Isabel Fall, for one.

What happened to Isabel Fall was a tragedy caused by people projecting a fantasy when they didn't know the reality. Harassment in all its flavors is always wrong. "Canceling" is supposed to be about justice, but when justice is applied by whoever feels the strongest about it you can end up with "mob justice" which is no kind of justice.

For me, "cancel culture" means: I am free to say that some motherfuckers are dead to me. I am freed from ever watching another Woody Allen movie, since thanks to "cancel culture" people understand that going "no contact" with a public figure is a thing.
posted by bgribble at 3:18 PM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I first became aware of the phrase "Cancel Culture" just about a decade ago - used in far-leftist queer circles to describe how other queer folks would kneecap your entire support structure, get you exiled from your community, etc, if you didn't know exactly the precise language to use, or weren't totally in lockstep with the accepted reality. Or if somebody (with reason or with no reason except wanting to see the back of you) told everybody you knew that you were causing some kind of "harm," which again, could be anything from somebody not liking you to being a predator.

Routinely deployed by people who were otherwise committed to prison abolition and harm reduction and talking a fabulous game about how nobody is disposable. Except the person at the food bank who used "lame" as a pejorative. Or the guy who was mostly a good ally, but liked the wrong things. Or the AMAB enby who brought too much "male energy" to the "women and trans" space.

I'm still a little miffed that it's been twisted to mean "experiencing consequences of any sort for literally any thing."

But I guess that's the way language goes. And why nobody can have nice things.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 3:47 PM on March 17, 2023 [13 favorites]

This sounds like what happened to "woke", She Vaped An Entire Sock
posted by Selena777 at 3:57 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

An artist makes content. People complain that the content is insensitive. Artist says, “Whoa! I definitely didn’t mean to be insensitive - I’m sorry. Thanks for helping me understand. Here is a new version of the art, and a public message that can leverage my popularity to help other people understand how not to be insensitive.”

Young man tenderly contemplates a butterfly lightly resting on his outstretched hand: “Is this cancel culture?”

(Using Lizzo as an example, Kenji and David? What on earth.)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 4:57 PM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I think the linked article was pretty unobjectionable and basically made sense. It really only works for people that mean well. "Cancel culture" is a huge, broad term that encompasses a lot.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 9:28 PM on March 17, 2023

An artist makes content. People complain that the content is insensitive. Artist says, “Whoa! I definitely didn’t mean to be insensitive - I’m sorry. Thanks for helping me understand. Here is a new version of the art, and a public message that can leverage my popularity to help other people understand how not to be insensitive.”

Well...there's the Lizzo version of this (unknowing use of slur with no intent to convey that meaning, cut to avoid saying something offensive unintentionally), and then there's people getting mad at a famous artist who, while slim and conventionally beautiful, is known to have battled an eating disorder, for depicting a character being anxious about being fat, and cutting it to end the kerfuffle.
posted by praemunire at 11:31 PM on March 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

It really only works for people that mean well.

Which has always been the case - the first step of restorative justice must be contrition, because it's the foundation upon which everything else rests. As the saying goes, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Of course, this then highlights the issue, then - what do you do when there is no contrition? And this is the shoal so many falter on with this issue, because you can't educate the malefactor (because they don't see their conduct as wrong) and their victims are still harmed. Part of the problem is that trying to fudge on contrition doesn't work (because having the malefactor improve is reliant on contrition) but becomes tempting because it's easy. That's the problem with the piece in the OP - the authors seem unwilling to grasp with the fact that generally, well meaning people who show contrition don't get cancelled.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:34 AM on March 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I would be hesitant to focus too much on online communities and celebrities. One area in which there has been something viewed as 'cancel culture' as well as resistance to it (from the beginning) from the 'left' is academia.
posted by melamakarona at 2:03 AM on March 18, 2023

I am freed from ever watching another Woody Allen movie, since thanks to "cancel culture" people understand that going "no contact" with a public figure is a thing.

I've been freed from Woody Allen for a long time because I'm not interested in his movies. I don't think of it as a "no contact" relationship because he doesn't know I exist. Same with Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, the guy who played Kramer, Rachel Zegler, Johnny Depp/Amber Heard, Zachary Levi, Chris Pratt, Brie Larson, JK Rowling, and every other person who is hated for one reason or another on social media. Some of these people are jerks and I wouldn't buy their stuff! Still, that doesn't mean that they know that I exist.

Social media means that we know way too much about celebrities AND we now think that consuming or forgoing content with certain celebrities is the equivalent of political action. But it's not, no matter how many times you post in favor or against somebody famous you're not going to get healthcare or a raise or clean water or protections under law or whatever.
posted by kingdead at 7:51 AM on March 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wait, what happened to Natalie Wynn?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:52 AM on March 18, 2023

Wait, what happened to Natalie Wynn?

She used Buck Angel as one of the voice actors in her videos and Buck Angel has gotten into a lot of hot water in the trans community by being a transmedicalist*. So by transitive property Wynn picked up a massive amount of hate for basically not shunning a transman who hates a lot of trans people.

*Transmedicalist or "truscum" as they're known as in the community are a subbranch of trans people who believe that being trans can only be a result of gender dysphoria. This also has the side effect of reinforcing a binary notion of gender which has since proven to be utterly false. So in their eyes people like Buck Angel are the "good" trans people who have a disorder that was treated by medical intervention and the rest of the trans population who might be gender nonconforming are the "bad" trans who are "grooming" kids.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:50 AM on March 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was under the impression that people talked that one out with her.
posted by Selena777 at 10:20 AM on March 18, 2023

If you have a very large platform and intentionally market your music as widely-palatable pop with a massive PR campaign to push it into people's faces whether they want to hear about it or not, people will care what you say in that music rather than considering it your deeply personal artistic expression?

No, it's her personal artistic expression. That actually is not at all inconsistent with other people's caring about what she says, or criticizing it, but that criticism is, in its own turn, subject to response. I cannot tell you what a bad idea it is to edge towards arguing that we are all being subject nonconsensually to Taylor Swift's music such that she has a special ethical obligation to us (which here appears to be implicitly coupled with the equally bad idea that if looking at a piece of art makes me feel bad, that piece of art must be "harmful" and should be done away with). And, no, I do not think it was a win for anyone that some members of the fat-liberation community, which is normally far more thoughtful, basically dumped unprocessed trauma over being bullied in middle school by Swift-types in public to demand that someone not create a video for their own song in which the thin white woman protagonist nonetheless expresses a fear of being fat. As you note, Swift's basically "cancel"-proof, but this is exactly the dynamic that can go badly wrong when someone more marginalized or with fewer resources gets caught up in it. Like Isabel Fall ("I read your story and found what I took [in good faith] to be the implications upsetting, thus you have harmed me, TERF Nazi").

This is not a dynamic threatening to take over society and the right's complaints about cancellation are generally complaints about being subject to criticism at all, but we on the left do aspire to do better, don't we? "You can only talk about eating disorders and weight stigma in art in a way that stirs up no bad feelings in me" is not one of my aims, either politically as someone who supports fat liberation or a consumer of art. Maybe it's hopeless in today's social media to try to come up with ways to, e.g., let an artist know with some force that her casual use of ableist language is a bad idea without threatening to hound people touching on sensitive topics in a way one doesn't find personally completely uplifting and politically desirable, but I wish we would continue to try.
posted by praemunire at 11:01 AM on March 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

praemunire, I was only talking about Lizzo, hence the parentheses about Lizzo - I don’t know this other example you mentioned (Taylor Swift music video?). I certainly don’t mean to suggest that every celebrity that’s made an apology and amends gets a cookie and forgiveness, but that a situation where an apology and amends seem to have made repair is a poor example for an article about cancel culture.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 4:51 PM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

eustatic: the Incite! thing you mention was expanded into the Creative Interventions Toolkit that I linked upthread.
posted by eviemath at 6:24 PM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

That's the problem with the piece in the OP - the authors seem unwilling to grasp with the fact that generally, well meaning people who show contrition don't get cancelled.

It's not that black and white.
As somebody outside of the USA, UK, Europe, etc, this is something I constantly battle with.
If you live in South Africa, for example, like I do, there are words and ideas and images that have a completely different meaning to me, than they do to, say, a person living in the USA, or the UK.
As a writer, I have to consider my own experience, and the audience I'm writing for, as well as the random northern hemisphere person who's going to not only misunderstand my meaning, but be so dug in and polarised about it that they are utterly unable to comprehend that *some people live in a different world where things are different*.
"Just don't say offensive things" and "It's offensive by definition of people being offended" doesn't really help me much because it's not accurate to my experience.
And I'm fairly protected from this, being a privileged person, white, educated, and with good English and a lot of experience of being online and knowing what northern hemisphere people find offensive. It's that irony where you have to first check what a person from another country thinks is authentic in your own culture, before you can express it.
posted by Zumbador at 11:41 PM on March 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

>truscum

we can probably avoid linking to Fox News to inflame internecine conflict?

there's actually a lot more nuance and discussion to be had on the topic, but it's impossible to have that conversation without being canceled as transphobic and probably a right-wing nazi.

I was canceled a few years ago and have experienced ongoing life-disrupting trauma as a result. I was the only trans woman staffing a qtpoc org's crisis hotline. it was incredibly easy for the leader of the "anarchist" clique to remove me from my home and my entire social support system with simple, vague identity-based accusations . at the end of the day, having gender dysphoria makes you much easier to victimize. this is an important reason that transexual experiences and identities should be respected and considered separately from more ideological and "gender" centered identities.
posted by polyhedron at 8:54 AM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

the authors seem unwilling to grasp with the fact that generally, well meaning people who show contrition don't get cancelled.

that "generally" is doing some heavy lifting. I'm immediately aware of two situations where this was not the case.

The individuals admitted they'd committed (relatively minor) transgressions, apologized etc ... but they got slammed hard anyway. Both of them lost their jobs as a result. For one of them, it amounted the trashing of an entire career.

I'm not interesting in litigating/re-litigating the cases. I think they just point to cancelling being a tactic that does sometimes get recklessly weaponized. And people get hurt, not always the "right" people (shotgun blasts do tend to take out innocent bystanders). And even if it is the "right" person, the cancelling too often has a vigilante velocity -- the punishment far exceeding the crime. It just doesn't feel just.
posted by philip-random at 9:48 AM on March 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

buck angel has gotten worse, actually, to the point of supporting groups like "gays against groomers"

natalie wynn is still around, and recently released a statement regretting her participation in megan phelps-roper's (formerly of westboro baptist) podcast seeking to launder jkr's legacy, as it seems as if she was asked to participate in bad faith--and it's wynn's repeated oopsies of this nature that make her a somewhat... unbeloved character in some trans groups, but not as an out-and-out quisling like buck angel
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:52 AM on March 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was canceled a few years ago and have experienced ongoing life-disrupting trauma as a result. I was the only trans woman staffing a qtpoc org's crisis hotline. it was incredibly easy for the leader of the "anarchist" clique to remove me from my home and my entire social support system with simple, vague identity-based accusations . at the end of the day, having gender dysphoria makes you much easier to victimize. this is an important reason that transexual experiences and identities should be respected and considered separately from more ideological and "gender" centered identities.

hot allostatic load
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:55 AM on March 20, 2023

the authors seem unwilling to grasp with the fact that generally, well meaning people who show contrition don't get cancelled

the only playbook that I’m aware of that truly reliably avoids “cancellation” (for a public figure) is having a fanbase that doesn’t care - because they don’t think you did anything that bad in the first place or because you are so big that there are always going to be enough fans who aren’t even paying attention to the news cycle to buy anything you put out

And of course a lot of medium-big figures end up in that latter place after people start to forget about the whole thing - I feel like that’s way more the standard life cycle of these things as they actually play out than sincere apology and sincere forgiveness.
posted by atoxyl at 9:31 AM on March 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Canceling uses intimidation as a tactic, and although activated by a teachable moment, it snowballs from naive, unrestrained communication and ends up alienating a majority who silently identify with the target. An intimidated majority then elects a surrogate mouthpiece bully as a response, also known as a dictator. The absurd irony is that these silent and timid ones might even agree with the cancelers, but secretly know it could have been them before they changed their attitudes, or it could be them tomorrow based on some lesser sin they currently indulge in.
posted by Brian B. at 1:09 PM on March 20, 2023

although activated by a teachable moment,

You do realize this is putting the abuser ahead of their victims, right? Why can't we acknowledge harm for what it is - harm?
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:21 PM on March 20, 2023

You do realize this is putting the abuser ahead of their victims, right?

We disagree then, because if the abuser was being tortured in public for their verbal crimes, an obvious overreaction, your point would still stand.
posted by Brian B. at 1:45 PM on March 20, 2023

We disagree then, because if the abuser was being tortured in public for their verbal crimes, an obvious overreaction, your point would still stand.

This is missing the point entirely.

The point is that using phrases like "a teaching moment" to describe actions that cause harm to others recenters the discussion around the person who caused harm, and away from those who were harmed. It's an argument that the important person is the malefactor, and those they harmed are incidental. That's why the phrasing is so problematic.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:22 PM on March 20, 2023

The point is that using phrases like "a teaching moment" to describe actions that cause harm to others recenters the discussion around the person who caused harm

Teachable moment refers to pointing out any harm done, the main gist of the original essay above. This is about principles, not just one offender. It can be compared to spanking, where a child learns violence and fear as a lesson on obedience, and nothing about the nature of the offense, a parenting mistake.
posted by Brian B. at 2:33 PM on March 20, 2023

This is about principles, not just one offender.

And my point is that the principle sucks, because it's centered around the person who committed the harm and not the people who were harmed - in fact, they often times are pushed aside and vilified if they demand accountability. As I've said before, restorative justice must start with contrition, and that requires centering the people who were harmed.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:49 PM on March 20, 2023

As I've said before, restorative justice must start with contrition, and that requires centering the people who were harmed.

The sticking point here is that these offenses are not usually a legal matter to easily make an example of someone, instead they are political ones where one side is dug in. Politics is a game to lose, meaning that if the instinct voter doesn't like a party, based on emotional reaction, they vote against it, which amounts to a loss, and maybe a set back in every conceivable way. We are talking about teaching mutual respect, tolerance and individuality, as progress, which can be a tricky social attitude where displaying all three is the first test of sincerity to the cause, not a weakness.
posted by Brian B. at 4:04 PM on March 20, 2023