You're right in that there are multiple things that people mean when they say cancelling. Specifically, in the NYT article, the phrase "based on an opinion or an action" really struck me as capturing a common issue I have with use of the term, which is to lump together public shaming/pressure to fire/boycott based on e.g. sexual assault, with that based on an opinion. As you say, Weinstein was cancelled.
Of course, because I have one opinion, I read the original sentence saying that cancelling is often used to refer to simply facing consequences and immediately agree, because those examples are at the forefront of my mind. True, I can think of examples of canceling I thought were unjustified, like the case of Justine Sacco. But I know that someone else will read that sentence and have it immediately conjure up a glut of examples of canceling they consider to be outrageous, and they will take exception to the implication of the sentence if not the literal meaning.
I think that it can be legitimate to read an entire article and draw conclusions about the underlying message, motivation and mindset of the author. Individual sentences don't emerge immaculately from the void.
Which is what I find so disturbing about the Spectator article. Completely pervaded by a flagrant attempt to twist every possible detail to fit his narrative.
- It states "fake evidence was manufactured" but doesn't actually cite any fake evidence.
- It eventually states, in as obscurantist a manner as possible, that Lindsay doesn't believe that trans women should be called women. The author then writes "said her condemnations of violence were not the reason for her ostracism. What then? Perhaps she had committed a micro-aggression", when he had, as I’ve just described, previously given a clear reason for the criticism.
- He concedes that "Although the intolerant right dominates politics in Westminster, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and New Delhi, and although the far right is a dangerous source of terrorism, the far left remains world beaters in the deployment of McCarthyism". This really captures the incredible asymmetry. Conservatives may hold all of the levers of power, dominate government, institutions, and the plutocratic class, but the vociferous criticism of a tiny number of fringe activists is treated as a social problem on a par with the discrimination faced by e.g. trans people, i.e. as if it were some serious social ill.
- The most sinister part of it is when he writes “The police warned her and staff at the library their physical safety may be in danger. Detectives had heard that an antifa group might target them.” This is a terrifying demonstration of what is so dangerous about this sort of rhetoric. Look up how much violence has been committed by people professing to be a part of antifa. It is vanishingly rare. Now compare it to violence committed against trans people. Compare it to violence committed by far-right groups. And now consider that the police, a vast arm of the state itself completely riddled with adherents of the far right, actually accords credence to these nebulous claims. It’s this sort of manufactured fear of persecution that leads to the pre-emptive violence and state brutality which have been so rampant this year.
> I think that it can be legitimate to read an entire article and draw conclusions about the underlying message, motivation and mindset of the author.
Absolutely agreed, and that should inform the way you interpret the events described in the article. That said, I think it's important to keep in mind that even if the author is biased that doesn't immediately make everything they say false...
> - It states "fake evidence was manufactured" but doesn't actually cite any fake evidence.
That's interesting, because in my reading the text immediately following this sentence (about using menstruation as a metaphor, etc) was the specific description of the evidence that was found and that the author considers "fake". I'm not sure whether your disagree with the "fake" characterization or whether in your reading this was simply disconnected from the previous sentence.
> It eventually states, in as obscurantist a manner as possible, that Lindsay doesn't believe that trans women should be called women
Again, interesting. My reading of the article was that this was the "extreme reading" of the specific poem "The Imagined We", and the views imputed to Lindsay by her accusers, not a statement about her actual views.
I don't know whether you watched the linked video with the poem's recitation; it's annoyingly slow compared to reading, of course. But the poem doesn't directly say anything remotely like "trans women are not women"; it does talk about menstruation as something "we" (women) experience. Which is of course not true for all women, just like the other things mentioned in the poem are not necessarily experienced by all women.
I admit that I could be wrong here, but I did do some searching both when I originally read the article and just now and have not been able to find any evidence of Lindsay actually explicitly saying that she does not believe trans women should be called women. I'd welcome correction on this point if I'm wrong!
> Conservatives may hold all of the levers of power, dominate government, institutions, and the plutocratic class
Again, interesting. I would not say that conservatives dominate either "institutions" or "the plutocratic class", for what it's worth. Certainly not in terms of social attitudes.
> i.e. as if it were some serious social ill.
I do think that a climate of fear in which people are afraid to say anything other than enthusiastically parroting what is perceived as "the party line" because it will be misconstrued and twisted in ways that get them fired _would_ be a serious social ill.
I think there's a good argument to be had about whether we are currently experiencing such a climate; it seems to me that in some social/professional circles we are and in most we are not, at least so far. Depending on which of these circles one belongs to, the seriousness is therefore perceived very differently.
> Look up how much violence has been committed by people professing to be a part of antifa.
Yes, the whole antifa angle seems pretty clearly to be bunk and the police response seems like self-serving lies to me.
And going back to the original issue that set off this whole series of events, I don't have any good evidence for how much _actual_ anti-feminist violence is committed by "trans activists" or anyone associated with them. That is, whether the belief in "violent action" in the original "Skinny" article is actually something that leads to "violent action" in practice or whether it's basically people venting in ways that I happen to think are crude and inappropriate but are apparently acceptable in a number of communities. My prior is that there is not much, if any, actual violence going on here.
That said, I can understand someone opposing the idea of normalizing threats of violence of any sort, on the belief that once threatening of a particular kind of violence is normalized, people will in fact start acting on those threats.... There is some historical support for that belief.
You're right in that there are multiple things that people mean when they say cancelling. Specifically, in the NYT article, the phrase "based on an opinion or an action" really struck me as capturing a common issue I have with use of the term, which is to lump together public shaming/pressure to fire/boycott based on e.g. sexual assault, with that based on an opinion. As you say, Weinstein was cancelled.
Of course, because I have one opinion, I read the original sentence saying that cancelling is often used to refer to simply facing consequences and immediately agree, because those examples are at the forefront of my mind. True, I can think of examples of canceling I thought were unjustified, like the case of Justine Sacco. But I know that someone else will read that sentence and have it immediately conjure up a glut of examples of canceling they consider to be outrageous, and they will take exception to the implication of the sentence if not the literal meaning.
I think that it can be legitimate to read an entire article and draw conclusions about the underlying message, motivation and mindset of the author. Individual sentences don't emerge immaculately from the void.
Which is what I find so disturbing about the Spectator article. Completely pervaded by a flagrant attempt to twist every possible detail to fit his narrative.
- It states "fake evidence was manufactured" but doesn't actually cite any fake evidence.
- It eventually states, in as obscurantist a manner as possible, that Lindsay doesn't believe that trans women should be called women. The author then writes "said her condemnations of violence were not the reason for her ostracism. What then? Perhaps she had committed a micro-aggression", when he had, as I’ve just described, previously given a clear reason for the criticism.
- He concedes that "Although the intolerant right dominates politics in Westminster, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and New Delhi, and although the far right is a dangerous source of terrorism, the far left remains world beaters in the deployment of McCarthyism". This really captures the incredible asymmetry. Conservatives may hold all of the levers of power, dominate government, institutions, and the plutocratic class, but the vociferous criticism of a tiny number of fringe activists is treated as a social problem on a par with the discrimination faced by e.g. trans people, i.e. as if it were some serious social ill.
- The most sinister part of it is when he writes “The police warned her and staff at the library their physical safety may be in danger. Detectives had heard that an antifa group might target them.” This is a terrifying demonstration of what is so dangerous about this sort of rhetoric. Look up how much violence has been committed by people professing to be a part of antifa. It is vanishingly rare. Now compare it to violence committed against trans people. Compare it to violence committed by far-right groups. And now consider that the police, a vast arm of the state itself completely riddled with adherents of the far right, actually accords credence to these nebulous claims. It’s this sort of manufactured fear of persecution that leads to the pre-emptive violence and state brutality which have been so rampant this year.