you have to be really, really brave to critique and commit to ending cancel culture.
ending cancel culture from a place of compassion doesn’t mean you “let everyone off the hook”, it means you have an opportunity to develop to confront interpersonal conflict with care, clarity, and really deep boundaries.
the boundaries prevent you from taking things personally that have nothing to do with you, reacting out of your own fear/trauma, and attempting to force people to be accountable which is a mechanism of control. deep boundaries mean you know how to discern what is and isn’t harm, because you are regulated and in your sovereignty. which then means you don’t need to control what other people do.
ending cancel culture means taking care of yourself radically through interpersonal conflict or harm (not to be conflated), because you’re not going to mobilize the internet or “community” to enact “justice” on your behalf.
ending cancel culture means that you want the people who fucked up to heal, without that meaning that it is your responsibility to see to it because you know they must choose for themselves.
ending cancel culture (and all subtle, manipulative forms of carceral and punitive logics) is about more care and clarity in your ✨actual✨ community, not less.
ending cancel culture means acting with kindness from your dignity, ethics, and seat of power. not from your rage, shame, grief, fear, or image control.
ending cancel culture is about cultivating emotional maturity, rather than defaulting to the emotionally immature tactics we learn to use in conflict or that feel easier when we’re stuck in unresolved pain. ending cancel culture is about growing up. ending cancel culture is some Saturn shit. ending cancel culture is some Solar shit. ending cancel culture is already here.
cancel culture does not have malleable definitions. it is a very specific and strategic approach to impact someone’s reputation, livelihood, and access to community.
ending cancel culture is grief work. ending cancel culture is care work. ending cancel culture is death to the old paradigm of pain and punishment for every little thing. ending cancel culture is new paradigm work.
cancel culture does not have a malleable definition. it is a very specific and strategic approach to impact someone’s reputation, livelihood, and access to community. part of it is functions on identity authoritarianism, which basically states that because i’m afro-indigenous I say what’s right/wrong and cannot be questioned because then you’re bad or racist. cancelling relies on public censure. one individual cannot cancel anyone. it is really important to be clear on what cancelling is so that it is not conflated with having boundaries re: engaging with someone’s work or natural consequences for violent actions. it specifically involves the internet (irl “cancelling” is just old school ostracization, though internet cancelling does often impact the offline) because the scale can become uncontrollable, the impact can become international, and the accusations can be vague af, unlike regular degular life where you have to be able to back it up. cancel culture operates on the assumption that it is okay to harass people (communicate with them regarding their accountability without their consent, mobilize others to target them) in a public container such as the internet, a strategy which is very hard to replicate IRL.
gratitude to Mariam Kaba, adrienne maree brown, clementine morrigan, juniper camryn, and mole frances for their work on this topic that has changed my life, starting at my nervous system and ability to forgive myself for ever participating.
when we end cancel culture, harm will still happen. when we abolish the prison industrial complex, unthinkable harm will still happen. it is going through traumatic, unimaginable experiences that led me into cancel culture, and it is what led me out. more on that another time…