When JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Noam Chomsky are among 153 signatories to an open letter to Harper’s Magazine, it’s quite an event. The letter — coming on the heels of a storm of abuse that came Rowling’s way for what was perceived as her transphobia — warns of a rapidly spreading climate of “censoriousness” that is leading to “intolerance of opposing views”. It speaks also of a growing fad of “public shaming and ostracism”.
The letter, and the reams of support and abuse it has in turn received, brings us back to the basics, makes us re-examine values we once took for granted — a journey that much of political, social and cultural life is forcing us to undertake today. The circling back to first principles is not bad, but the process comes with pain, anger and hurt on all sides.
The letter writers say they are fighting to defend, in Rowling’s words, “a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech”. They object to what has been nicknamed ‘cancel culture’ — the quick, ruthless elimination of anyone who speaks or acts in a way that is considered politically incorrect. Cancel culture has led to public shaming, trolling, demands for social boycott, and even job losses.
As the letter says: “editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class...”
As during the #MeToo movement, there’s been some attempt to portray the conflict as one between old and new gen influencers; one columnist describes the letter as a reaction to “political narratives being wrested away from traditional actors”. I doubt the explanation is so facile. Nor do I agree with the letter-writers dismissing all cancel culture as leading to “panicked damage control”.
Were it not for Twitter outrage, the white woman in New York who threatened to call the police on a black man because he wanted her dog leashed would not have been forced to apologise. Unfortunately, she also lost her job, but had her threat worked, the black man would have likely lost much more. In India, Twitterati did not just condemn Shubham Mishra’s foul rape threats against a stand-up comedian but also tagged the Vadodara police repeatedly, leading to his quick arrest.
From customers turning away delivery staff because of their religion to policemen assaulting vegetable vendors, when an incident is uploaded on social media, cancel culture has taken over and ensured action against the offender. It’s by no means a universal or magical solution but for many people on the margins — like delivery boys and domestic workers — an apology or an oppressor’s takedown would not have come so swiftly in a pre-cancel era.
The problem begins when cancel culture becomes as oppressive as anything it seeks to replace. It recognises no degrees — ignorance or lapses are tarred by the same brush used for grievous crime. ‘Cancellers’ insist that ‘punishments’ must be for a lifetime when the law awards even a murderer parole. They refuse to support urgent causes because a ‘cancelled’ person also supports it. They crush people for using wrong terminology.
Politically correct phraseology changes every day. When does one replace ‘women’ with ‘people who menstruate’? When do you use womyn or womxn? We have moved from LGBT to LGBTQ to LGBTQ+ to LGBTQIA+. When people err with these terms, it doesn’t necessarily indicate an absence of empathy, so why not be more tolerant? Why not create awareness and take people along slowly rather than cancel them out altogether?
This intolerance was highlighted recently when a three-year-old talk by dancer Aranyani Bhargav on the origins of Bharatanatyam became the target of a furious attack, with Bhargav being called a ‘savarna apologist’ and an ‘appropriator of marginalised voices’. Bhargav’s failure to use the currently correct phrase — ‘hereditary courtesan dance community’ — didn’t come from malice but oversight. She has consistently fought the upper-caste appropriation of Bharatanatyam and to attack her is to attack a supporter. More importantly, why attack when she could have simply been asked to update the terminology.
And that is my problem with cancel culture — it tends to shoot first. And it shoots more people on its own side than on the other. As the names on that letter show. A little less cancel and a little more compassion could win it far bigger battles in the long run.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.