Hacker News Reader

Comment by thelopa | Hacker News Reader

Look, I get it. Cancel culture isn’t healthy for our society, but can we be realistic about our examples? JKR is doing just fine after posting her transphobic screed last year. The various lawmakers across the US that sponsored anti-trans legislation this year haven’t been forcibly removed from office. Leading up to the presidential debates last year, speakers at the RNC made explicitly transphobic comments. Trump himself has started to wade into the fray. None of these people have lost their jobs, livelihoods, or platforms as a result. Yeah, some people decided they didn’t want to read JKR’s books any more, but when her essay is being read in debates in both UK parliament and US congress I wouldn’t exactly say she lost her platform. I’m not saying backlash to anti-trans sentiment doesn’t exist, but can we at least acknowledge that the backlash isn’t nearly as severe as you’re implying?

View on HN

First of all , these are rich people whose removal would be largely inconsequential to their livelihood. Under them you 'll find a sea of people who are self-censoring because their positions are much more precarious, and they see the whims of the mob.

> haven’t been forcibly removed from office

Second i find this insinuation that a mob should be able to remove elected people from office problematic

A much better criticism of that line would be that it was attacking a strawman. It was a hyperbolic representation of the fears I was trying to quell. Saying that I was implying those politicians should be forcibly removed from office requires ignoring a LOT of context. It wouldn’t make very much sense for me to signal that I supported using violence against detractors while arguing that the backlash to transphobia is massively overstated.

I think cancel culture is much worse for people who are close to the community tgat cancels them than people far removed. This is sorta obvious if you consider how much effect a community can have on someone by cancelling them.

Sometimes cancel culture affects people outside the community. And then everyone is on the barricades. But I think the real damage is being done inside these communities. Essentially the communities lose the ability to be self critical. A lot of these communities are trying to improve the rights of certain people. But this lack of self criticism makes them much less effective at convincing outsiders.

This is especially bad for reaching the people who disagree quite strongly. I think this is part of why the American political centre seems to be empty.

Are you inside the trans rights movement and have seen this happen first hand, or can you cite an advocate for trans rights that was shunned by the community? What you describe is an interesting hypothetical problem. In my experience as a trans person participating in the trans community, it is completely divorced from the reality of the situation. People aren’t “canceled” because they aren’t ideologically pure. It’s the opposite, actually.

Trans people often need to grapple with “internalized transphobia”. I experienced this firsthand when I realized I was trans and then felt a wave of disgust and horror. I felt it the first time I went to a trans group meetup and felt embarrassed to be seen with trans people. I felt it every time I was terrified of anyone knowing I was trans. I’m not alone in having these experiences, but my experiences were probably more on the extreme side. Almost no trans person has the luxury of being entirely free of internalized transphobia, and internalized transphobia can manifest in one’s political beliefs. If we shunned every single person who ever disagreed with the “groupthink” then there wouldn’t be anyone left. By necessity, we need to welcome and encourage the process of people learning and growing.

That’s a far cry from the idea that the trans community expels anyone who is critical of them.

I am adjacent to the trans community. Pretty knowledgable with sime friends in their. My main source for these ideas was contrapoints. Though notably, I wrote my comment to be much more widely applicable. I think it equally applies to wider queer communities, femisim, and maybe the wider woke anti racism movement. Heck, it probably applies to a lot of people left of the democrats.

I hypothesise this because I am trying to understand why the general left is so ineffective. Why it engenders so much actual hatred when the message is quite positive. I think a large part of this is some apparent logical gaps in our arguments that are taboo to discuss. Those can be quite infuriating, and also make for very easy strawmaning. (e.g. "all trans people say biology is meaningless")

None of the 'larger' more affluent people.. sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com