How would you apply your sense of justice to cancel culture?

Q: Hi! Do you think that cancel culture is a bad thing? I enjoyed your discernment blog article and comments on justice, so how would you apply a sense of justice to people who do bad things on the internet or through a brand?

A: I think that cancel culture serves a purpose, but ultimately, is an incomplete process. With any given situation, there is going to be a unique solution tailored to its needs! It also depends on the scale we are working with when we look at each scenario. I am going to speak about cancel culture on a small scale in a moment (Say, a small company OR a single individual.). When it comes to corporations, which honestly have far too many loopholes, “cancel culture” is one of the few powers people have apart from unions (if they exist for that entity) to create change and be heard. Most corporations don’t care about doing the right thing- they want to generate the most revenue possible while remaining in relatively good standing with their clients. When they do something bad, they often need to be “canceled” (usually this is temporary and does not have nearly the same impact as it would on a small business) so they have to listen. Most of them don’t listen until they are forced to. For example, I applaud the VERY high percentage of people who were walking away from the Dungeons and Dragons community when Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro) made stupid changes to the OGL (What everyone started boycotting was a leaked, updated version of the OGL: Version 1.1.). You can’t exactly “cancel” DnD in terms of gameplay once and for all, and this issue mostly affected creators, not people who just go on and use the 5e books as casual players, but the impact was heard and WoTC reneged on their choices. My point is that people were going to keep playing DnD or creating spinoffs (that’s how Pathfinder started), but the WoTC company was going to lose big time if they kept to their selected trajectory. I read their justifications for why they were doing what they were doing, and though there were some good intentions in there, the way they went about it was going to be very harmful to small third-party creators. I think that trying to stop hate before it really gains a foothold is an amazing goal, but the people who would pay the price most likely would not be people publishing hateful content. Because WoTC was somewhat “canceled” and a lot of people got rid of their D&D Beyond memberships, WoTC executives were required to listen. DnD should be a player-led experience overall… and should not be constantly subjected to the whims of greedy corporate entities. It is going to take some time to restore trust after what WoTC did, but to their credit, and because of the immovable convictions of DnD players, players and creators received a solution that benefited them… for now. Corporations and major companies should always be making decisions that best help their clients with the exception of, say, extremist groups. The truth is that they do not always make good choices, and the people who utilize their services have to remove their support from the corporation for the corporation to take them seriously. Sometimes it’s the only language powerful companies speak. This is just one example as to how cancel culture can serve us on a larger scale, and it’s a milder example than a large corporation creating hate. (Though WoTC has, allegedly, according to the main fan base, been the primary publisher of problematic DnD content.) It needs to be noted that WoTC claims that one of their main goals was to stop future creators from making DnD content that would be hurtful or offensive to others, but the plan was just going to end up charging insane royalties to smaller creators and requiring them to report income above $50k. To me, it seemed like more of a money grab, since it does not seem like WoTC has taken the steps to see if current content is problematic (as I gathered from a WoTC exec’s interview with Ginny D on Youtube), but each person can evaluate and come to their own conclusion.

I think you, and most others, want to talk about smaller-scale cancellations- ones that occur on a small business or individual level. Again, each situation will be unique. Sometimes, someone being removed from their platform (Exhibit A: Andrew Tate) is a very, very good thing. But what about people who say something inappropriate or make honest mistakes that hurt people, but are willing to appropriately address the issues? What about people who mess up (To be human is to mess up sometimes. That’s unavoidable.), but who are willing to do their inner work, make reparations, and move in a better direction?

This is where I think cancel culture does fail people. It does not follow a transformative justice model. Transformative justice is a model that strives to solve the ROOT issues behind problems instead of doling out random punishments. Then, it seeks to provide a re-entry procedure for people to come back into their community. So, say Sarah makes a comment on her bookish Youtube channel that is misogynistic, but she does not know that it is misogynistic. A bunch of people call her out in the comments, and she realizes, “Oh gosh, I really messed up.” Should she be canceled? Well… It does depend on the situation. She said something awful, and most of us need to step away and take the time to process why we said what we did when we mess up. We need to educate ourselves so that we do less harm in the future. Sarah may also need to supply an apology to the group who was harmed and make reparations somehow (it will be situation-specific each time). But what if she does those things? In cancel culture, we don’t have a great re-entry process for people to rejoin their community after they make a mistake. We need to realize that even though harm is not okay and that the people who create harm do need to go through a justice process, the justice has to be transformative. It needs to help the person who perpetrated the harm change in a positive way. The prison-industrial complex almost never does this, and cancel culture usually isn’t great about it either (it depends).  After people make a mistake, they do need to be able to go through a process that helps them heal and make amends for the purpose of maturing as a human. I am not saying that anyone has to forgive them or trust them again, but we can’t just erase people from human life when they make mistakes. We all make those. The person who performed a finite crime or wrongdoing needs to have the opportunity to reconnect to daily life once justice is delivered, the problem is transformed, and reparations have been made. I think if we work on this one thing, cancel culture can evolve into an arm of transformative justice instead of a vehicle for bullies and trolls on the internet to utilize when they get mad.

We have to learn how to build community so that we can claim people and help them work through their traumas and pain. I have taken a back seat in terms of listening and learning about this topic. I have recently read a lot of books about transformative justice to see what possibilities we have… As it turns out, there are a lot! This is not a hatefest toward police, but police, as one example, often make things worse and are dangerous to call on when a dispute involving Black people surfaces. Some communities are actually creating their own version of 911 support systems for situations where calling the police could escalate something or harm more people than it helps. People in these groups often volunteer their time as medics, public liaisons, counselors, and rescuers, and some are even trained in how to talk to police just in case the police are called and end up escalating an issue. This is just one possibility. When we facilitate something like this, we have to build trust in a community so that people call on us for help. At the bottom of this writing, I am going to list a book that goes wayyyy more in-depth about what this looks like. It will be better for you to delve into the subject while reading the perspectives of people who have far more training in being transformative justice activists than I do. I am not saying we have every single answer right now (For example, what do we do with actual psychopaths who are not able to feel empathy or remorse?), but TJ is a good model to start using on a small scale. So many Black, Indigenous, and queer communities are doing this work, so I tend to follow their lead. Many communities have been utilizing TJ for centuries! I don’t have the experience on planet earth that they have, and I am integrating their ways as I think about how I want to practice them in the future.

Back when I had my old Tumblr, I used to say that I didn’t have a good sense of justice, but what I was actually saying, was that I did not resonate with the current justice system we have overall. The prison-industrial complex is a mess (Look into how it incarcerates Black people at disproportionate rates and basically enslaves them- even those with minor “offenses” or who just became victims of racism- to be exploited for labor. Private prisons make A LOT of money.), punishments for the sake of punishments do not usually equal transformation (though I do acknowledge that long prison sentences for very dangerous people CAN remove them from doing more harm to the public), and cancel culture does not always give people the tools to make their change matter in the world. This is a large and nuanced conversation, and I am just a little earthly fledgling absorbing all the wisdom.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read my article. In it, I actually addressed an opposite problem in Sedona. Instead of “cancel culture” we have “encourage-it” culture by placing blame on victims and feeling bad for the people who do harm. Misplaced sympathy/empathy hurts everyone twice over. Even though the problem is inverted in my city, transformative justice will still be an appropriate solution. All in all, as usual, I am advocating for a balanced world. One where, perhaps, cancel culture does have a place if someone (like Andrew Tate) is actively creating harm and radicalizing people to do harm (incels/boys/men on the internet). The thing is though, Tate is still not beyond the reach of transformative justice in my opinion. The use of TJ does not mean that consequences fly out the window. I do not feel sorry for him. He has done disgusting things with his power. But I do have compassion. I think that even though he should not have an online platform to spread hate, misogyny, and r**e culture around, he does deserve to receive good counseling, a steadfast community committed to his healing and growth process, and a transformative program designed to help him and anyone else he encounters in the future live a better life. Is that still cancel culture? I guess it depends on who you ask, but I do think it’s the best approach right now. Tate does need to be removed from the general public in my opinion, but prison itself is not going to help him heal from his festering insecurities and traumas. If anything, he’s most likely going to cuddle into his insecurity complex and feel even more sorry for himself unless the proper people show up to help him. Agents of justice, healing, and wisdom will need to attend to him regularly for this to work. He needs constant accountability and a safe environment to be able to explore those deep wounds. Not every situation requires a full community, but some do. Transformative justice also does not have any start or end date. For example, those of us who want to deconstruct internalized racism, bigotry, and misogyny are setting out on a lifelong journey. Since these things are systemic, we are constantly in conversation with a world that facilitates these constructs without always meaning to. Trains go where the train tracks are built. It’s going to take time for us to derail the old system and build a new one in its entirety, but the daily, weekly, and yearly steps we take do make a huge difference and literally save lives. I am pro-cancel culture to some extent, but it needs to expand and grow into something more (TJ). Criticism, call-outs, call-ins, and accountability are all essential to healthy communities, but there needs to be a purpose and healing process so that we don’t get stuck in the “you said a bad thing and will always be a bad person” gunk. The more we educate ourselves about the way our world is structured, the more I think we will let go of seeing most humans as “good” or “bad” and see people as utilizing good or bad systems and worldviews instead. Again, I am not excusing any harm done. Victims/survivors do not owe their abusers forgiveness or contact. Some people do not want to learn or grow. All of these things need to be taken into account, but I think we can all do better in terms of transforming cancel culture into an apparatus that seeks change before it seeks rote cancellation with no redemption arc.

I went in a lot of different directions here, because this topic is HUGE. I hope my perspectives lend some insights into where I am at in my own perception of justice! Here is a book I recently read which will introduce you to transformative justice. It really sharpened some of my viewpoints and gave me new ideas for cultivating small-scale community wellness. We are all here to be better, do better, and love better. The good news, as this book demonstrates, is that it is possible, and transformative justice is currently unfurling as a reliable option for people ready to do the work! <3