- I hate the cancel culture conversation
because what it brings to the forefront
is how many people are willing
to just fully suspend disbelief,
how much patience and understanding
we are all encouraged to give to men
who do violative things to women.
So a little while back,
there was an article that got posted called,
"Canceled at 17".
What I hate about this article
is its very interesting definition of canceled.
The author, whose name is Elizabeth Weil,
details a story about a 17 year old boy
who was canceled at his local high school
for sharing the underage nudes of his teenage girlfriend.
As a response to him sharing those nudes,
a group of girls wrote his name on the wall,
along with many other names of boys
to watch out for on campus.
This article was quite frustrating to me
because first of all, it's written by a woman,
and in the article,
the language that the author uses
is just quite suspicious.
There's a lot of fluffy language
that really downplays what happened.
So let's read this bullshit.
In the article, his girlfriend is described
as psychedelically beautiful.
"Fiona was Diego's first real girlfriend.
"She was almost psychedelically beautiful:
"pale, celestial skin,
"a whole galaxy of freckles,
"a supernova of lush hair.
"This made everything, even the pandemic, okay.
"Diego would do online school
"and skate and hang out with Fiona.
"Sometimes she broke plans with Diego
"to go on hikes with her parents, which Diego's mother-"
What? Who cares if she's psychedelically beautiful?
I'm sorry.
He shared- okay, let's keep reading.
Okay.
"Then, in the middle of last summer,
"Diego went to a party.
"He got drunk and Diego really fucked up here.
"Everyone, including Diego, agrees on that,
"so please consider setting aside judgment
"for just a moment.
"He showed a nude of his beautiful girlfriend
"to a few kids there."
Now what I didn't like about this was establishes her
as just, oh my God, so psychedelically beautiful,
and then buffers, like really, really buffers
the punch of him sharing a nude of an underage girl
with a group of friends.
And of course, his girlfriend was upset about this,
no matter how celestially beautiful she was,
and decided to break up with him.
And then his name ended up on the wall
of boys to watch out for because of what happened.
And what I don't love about this
is a lot of this cancel culture discourse
just happens to be so frequently about women
not quite calling out the abusive actions of men.
I can't help but notice that is something
that is so prevalent among a lot of these conversations.
A lot of people are sort of describing women
as calling out their abusers
or people who have violated them in some sort of way
as cancel culture.
So frequently the feelings of the women,
the feelings of the girls who are impacted by this,
are undermined and downplayed
all because of the reputation of a man.
This is a grown woman describing this boy
sharing underage photos of his girlfriend
as though it is some injustice that he faced.
It's very, very frustrating for me to read.
The way that this author writes
about this teenage boy sharing photos
of his girlfriend as though he had no choice but to do it.
Of course you would share the nudes
of your celestially beautiful girlfriend.
And it's so aggravating because no,
that's wrong 100% of the time.
And as you can imagine, this article did not go off well.
It was not well received.
Quite a few people were upset by it
and some people did some digging
and that's when The Gawker decided to post an article.
In the Gawker article,
there are quite a few things that pop up.
And one of the things that is revealed,
which gave a lot more context to this whole thing,
was that Elizabeth Weil actually has a child
that used to go to the same exact school
where this incident happened.
Now, the child was not currently enrolled in school
while Diego was at school,
but that is how the story arrived on her desk
because it's something that's happening currently
in her community.
What was also discovered,
and this is the really important part,
this is the really important part,
is that the list of boys to look out for
only appeared in the girls' restroom
because the school administration
was not properly punishing boys on campus
who did indeed sexually violate the girls on campus.
A really important part of this conversation
is that there have been a change
to what are called the Title IX Federal Rules.
And Title IX is a federal law that was established in 1972
that prohibits discrimination based on sex or gender.
And these rules were changed I believe two or so years ago.
And what it essentially did is made it harder
for people to report sexual harassment.
And they did that by changing the language ever so slightly
so that now if you experience sexual harassment,
it really does have to arise
to a really, really high standard
or else nothing's going to be done about it.
It made it much, much, much, much, much harder
to describe certain actions as sexual harassment.
Additionally, and this is the most important part,
the new change also made it so
that if someone was violated off campus,
that they were not going to receive
any sort of reprimand on campus,
which was not exactly how things went in the past.
So what this means is that girls can go to a party,
be sexually assaulted by a fellow classmate,
and then they will have to go to classes with this person
because it doesn't violate Title IX.
So as you can imagine,
there are a lot of girls at the school
who felt like they were not actually getting justice
for what had happened to them.
And that's when they decided to go in the women's restroom
and make a list of boys to look out for.
Now, I think it's actually really important
to point out the way that this happened
because in the women's restroom,
obviously you're only expecting for other women
to be in the women's restroom
or other girls be in the girls' restroom.
So something that's kind of done in
a really secretive, almost private, very, very private way.
And maybe this is gonna make me sound like a bit
of a conspiracy theorist,
but especially after the repeal of Roe V Wade,
I don't exactly feel like
this is too farfetched for me to say,
but I think a lot of this discourse,
a lot of these conversations,
are going to continue to go in a direction
where it's just harder and harder and harder
for anyone to get justice for being violated.
For women especially, for girls especially,
to get justice for being violated.
And so what I think more people need to start doing
is having these very insular private conversations
where we're talking about
here's who you need to watch out for
because they're not gonna be actively removed
from these spaces.
I hate the cancel culture conversation
because what it brings to the forefront
is how many people are willing
to just fully suspend disbelief.
How much patience and understanding we are all encouraged
to give to men who do violative things to women, right?
This article is so full of the author basically saying
his future is ruined
because he made one simple mistake.
She kind of says a lot of stuff like that.
And there's a lot of fluffy language
that really downplays what happened.
And this is a similar thing that we see
in so many of the other conversations
that we've had about cancel culture.
When a comedian jerks off in front of a woman,
apparently that's just something
that shouldn't have been a big deal.
When another comedian pressures a woman into having sex
and she kind of doesn't really wanna do it
and feels pressured,
that's just something that she's supposed to accept
because she went on a date with him.
It's gonna be harder and harder and harder
for women especially to call out this shit
because we're folding cancel culture
into women being able to stand up for themselves,
into women being able to stand up against violations.
And so I do believe that to some degree
we should start looking out for ourselves.
I'm part of several groups in Los Angeles
where women post stories of abusive people in the LA area.
Cause here's the thing you guys,
and this is an important point to make,
even when these people get arrested, go to jail,
have charges rallied against them,
more often than not,
the men who violate women are not punished.
One of the things that's interesting to me
about the groups I'm part of is that
I see these men all the fucking time out and about.
Even though LA is so big, it's really so small.
It's so common for me to run into men
who are known abusers in LA,
who we whisper about
because someone else went and called them out.
And look, I've watched this happen.
Someone went and called them out,
didn't receive justice,
now they're being spoken about
as though there's some crazy unhinged bitch,
and the abuser goes free.
So to some degree, I think we have to
start looking out for ourselves
because the system is not going to do it.
The system is not going to do it.
I don't believe that the kind of world
where Roe V Wade could be repealed
and so many people are just willing to accept
that maybe some women are gonna be raped
and have to ha be forced to have their children,
I don't believe that kind of world
is gonna be one where we're gonna be seeing
a lot of justice for this shit.
That's what really frustrates me.
You know, I will say that maybe to some degree
there is something to be said about the mob mentality,
about how social media has really made that worse,
and that there's something there.
So I'm not gonna say that cancel culture
doesn't fully not exist,
but it's just interesting how frequently
the cancel culture discourse is really about
a man not appreciating that a woman stood up to him,
not appreciating that she brought
the abuse to the forefront,
not appreciating that she had the audacity
to draw attention to his abusive behavior.
I'm tired of seeing women silenced.
I'm tired of seeing girls silenced.
I'm tired of people feeling like there's no reason
to call out this shit because nothing's gonna happen anyway.
So this whole story bothered me
because you really do get the fuller context
when you realize that this woman had a kid at the school
and that's how she's connected to it.
And that the list on the wall
was not these girls trying to cancel these boys,
it was them trying to protect each other.
It was them trying to protect each other
in a situation where the administration
is not properly punishing boys who violate them.
And this isn't the first time that we've heard a story
of girls organizing in this way on campus
and then having the administration come against them.
So I just wanted to share that with you guys.
I would love to know what you guys have to say about it.
This was a story that really frustrated me
because as I was reading it, I was like,
I can't believe that a woman wrote this.
And that's the thing that's also quite concerning to me
about a lot of this stuff
is that there are quite a few women
who write these things, who advocate for these things.
Title IX only really changed because of Betsy DeVos.
Like there are a lot of women right now
who are sort of moving through the world in this way
where they are defending abusive men
and really normalizing the idea
that women should just sort of accept that abuse,
shouldn't call it out because that means
there'll be a cancel culture person
or da, da, da, da da.
Like, you know what?
Even before the internet, even before cancel culture,
a lot of times,
if a guy did something shitty to a girl,
it was pretty common for him to be ostracized
in his school environment.
Like, come on you guys, this is not a new thing.
And I think that this author really wanted
to use all of the discourse around cancel culture
to get their article popping, I guess
and it did not go the way that I'm sure she was expecting.
So what do you say when people are starting
to describe you standing up for yourself against a violation
as cancel culture?
Like where do you go from there?