Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Cancel Culture Has to Go

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

A few years ago, a friend in recovery sent me a zine in the mail called "Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other" by Clementine Morrigan. It addressed something that I have been afraid to honestly approach: Cancel Culture. I shared with my recovery friend about how I was feeling discouraged and maxed out by activist culture, and felt incredibly scared of making mistakes. I'm sure they could see that was I struggling with emotional reactiveness, defensiveness, and fight-flight body responses in conversation. They sent me this zine with a note of encouragement. I took it as social permission to take a closer look at cancel culture and to practice being easy on myself.

Growing up in a house with addiction and domestic abuse, I have lived with fight-flight response doing everyday things, such as simply eating breakfast. One of my earliest memories is my parents screaming at each other in the kitchen. This was my second earliest memory. The first is getting my tonsils taken out at age 2. 

I am so used to having to defend and fight, think, react, defend and fight. This has become my nature. I am constantly looking for others' ulterior motives, analyzing what others are saying, preparing my side of an argument once I hear anything remotely different than what I personally think or believe, and I am ready to defend my perspective to be "right" at any time.

Feeling like I am constantly under threat from society as a trans, queer and neurodivergent person and battling a traumatic history of domestic abuse, I have had to defend myself. I have experienced harm and violence in real time, and the consequences hurt my body and heart every day. And I am quite literally exhausted from being in a constant state of fight-flight. 

So I understand where Cancel Culture comes from: the need to protect and create solid boundaries to prevent harm from happening in our communities. The logic goes, if you share with everyone around you how an individual caused harm, then they share with others, and on and on until everyone is in agreement about how that person was harmful and we collectively exclude that person from participating in community so they know they did something wrong and they feel the consequences of their actions by losing money, status, connection, etc. Maybe a better name for this is mob punishment? 

As someone who has called for people or organizations to be canceled after being harmed, I know why I did this and I knew how powerful the effect would be. The reason why I wanted to punish those that harmed me is because I felt powerless. Vulnerable. Hurt. Small. Misunderstood. Violated. And I wanted them to pay for their actions towards me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to feel in control again. However, after participating in and seeing how powerful and pervasive this culture has become, I have experienced more severe Perfectionism OCD symptoms. I have seen my deep-rooted fears of making a mistake and being viewed as unworthy of love come to life through cancel culture. If I make a mistake, and someone has enough power to cancel me, I may lose my connection to the people and causes I care about most. My fear-driven need for perfectionism dug deeper in the recesses of my mind as I watched others get cancelled in real time. After realizing I was sinking under the weight of OCD, I had to seek recovery. It is paradoxical that the original intent of cancel culture is to protect myself and my communities from harm, and yet, I am having to recover from its effects.

I am tired from even writing this post, Today, I have spend over four hours trying to write these few paragraphs on this topic. Even broaching the subject has led to obsessing and being fearful. I have had to take several breaks. I have written and re-written my sentences, trying to make sure I communicate what I really mean so it won't be misinterpreted, fearing that what I share may cause me to lose community connections. But I really want to free myself from my fear. 

To transition from our traumatized selves, I think we need to ask many questions. How do I address harm and violence that is happening to me and all around me? How can I help reduce or prevent harm from happening without reactively resorting to trying to control the opinions of others about a person who has caused harm?

I have come to the decision that I can speak to the harms and the injustices that are happening without having to drag people doing harm to the ground. I can share my story with honor and grace for my experience and trust that sharing from my side of the fence-my pain, my anger, my sadness, what it felt like-is a more impactful illustration that violence is unfair and unwanted than sharing how horrible I think another person is who has caused violence.

I think Cancel Culture is a collective trauma response to the authoritative society that we have all grown up in, an understandable mechanism to implement after living in a white supremacist, patriarchal culture built on the beliefs that white, cisgender men with money and power have rights and authority over all of us crabs-in-a-bucket trying to climb on top of each other to get any semblance of light or air or rest. We are all fighting to be listened to and taken seriously, treated with dignity and respect, have opportunities, get paid for what we are worth, and live freely, unharmed.

In their zine, Morrigan writes: "I don't believe we can create freedom by treating each other as disposable. I don't believe we can create freedom by hypervigilantly monitoring our own and each other's language and choices, our social media presences a carefully curated performance of 'good politics.' I don't believe we can create freedom by promoting fear and shame or by insisting that everyone must respond to devastating violence in particular, specific ways."

We can talk about boycotts, strikes, and protest from the stance that we have Constitutional rights to organize and speak loudly about injustice. And we can also learn to differentiate between boycotting a large organization that is benefiting from the structural violence of Capitalism and Settler-Colonialism and canceling someone in your community, your neighborhood for causing harm on an interpersonal level. 

What I've learned so far in peer-led recovery groups is that no matter what you've done, you deserve the kindness, compassion and support to get better. In addiction, a lot of folks have done harm to themselves and others. And with resources and support, have learned to be more loving to themselves and consequently to others. I've caused a lot of harm throughout my life. And others have caused me harm. Viewing mistakes, missteps, and harm as a dichotomous issue of good/bad rather than the result of the complexity of systemic indoctrination into oppressive mindsets blended with our humanness has become a huge disservice to our causes for change. We have the right to be hurt, angry, scared, sad, disappointed, devastated, traumatized from harm that has been done to us. And we are also responsible for our own bodies responses-our emotions, actions, belief systems-that we develop after trauma. 

I believe we can learn to balance setting boundaries, speaking up for our needs, and addressing interpersonal conflict with tact, directness and compassion. We don't even have to sugarcoat what we want to say. I think we can be honest and direct without having to take it a step further and cancel people who are still making mistakes or not understanding what they're doing wrong. Would it be a wiser use of our time and energy if we were able to trust the boundaries we set with those who cause harm and have a network of folks who help us through conflicts so that we could spend more time doing the work that needs to be done to dismantle the systems that are harming us all?

I am tired of being so hard on myself, of being hypervigilant of everything I'm saying and doing in social situations. I'm tired of feeling like I have to know everything because if I don't, someone may jump down my throat. I want to help create a culture where mistakes are not only tolerated, but welcomed, and that someone will be there to help us understand where we went wrong. It doesn't have to be someone who is personally hurt. Ideally, it would be someone else, in a community full of people, who is ready to hop in and guide the person causing harm.

I regret the times I have misspoke, caused pain and suffering, been ignorant, hardheaded or unwise about other marginalized folks experiences I don't know about. And I regret being suckered into cancel culture. I also believe I have the right to change and grow, and still have a community of people who unconditionally help me work through mistakes and failures. It may be a radical belief, but I believe we all do.