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Friday, September 6th, 2019 11:31 am
like a dumbass who doesn't have a PERFECTLY GOOD DREAMWIDTH where I can post AS MANY WORDS AS I WANT and EDIT THEM and NOT HAVE TO RELY ON WEIRD THREADING.

The twitter thread.

What I said:
Dear straight white cis men, please stop saying Cancel Culture is an unalloyed good. Cancel culture of the sort witnessed by, directed at, and criticised by straight white cis men *is* generally good. But cancel culture as it manifests within marginalised communities, directed at and criticised by the marginalised, can be bad. It's the same term for two different things.

Lots has been written about this problem, here's a recent example: https://dailyxtra.com/why-are-queer-people-so-mean-to-each-other-160978 But this doesn't include the problem of how quickly outsiders latch onto criticism of a visible queer person as an excuse to be awful under a veneer of wokeness. It's often not conscious, though there is absolutely a contingent of homophobic trolls who gleefully fan the flames of intercommunity strife. And it's not just queer communities this happens to.

So if you want to laugh at bad "cancel culture" takes by privileged dudes worried they might be taken to task for being creepy homophobes, go ahead. But bear in mind that the rest of us are dealing with a more messy situation, and blanket statements that equate our concerns with being a creepy homophobic privileged dude don't help.

Of course it also doesn't help that even within marginalised communities, plenty of people who get Cancelled really are That Bad, and they'll wallow in self serving "This is all the fault of cancel culture" wailing as much as anyone else. It's *messy*. Just bear that messiness in mind.

(and then I thought some of it had gone in the wrong thread and repeated it and I don't even know. Ugh, twitter)
Friday, September 6th, 2019 08:33 am (UTC)
Yeah, and I think anyone in fandom should remember how Winterfox used cancel culture against other authors (especially but not only women of colour) to clear out the field for herself.