• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Cancel culture IRL

Status
Not open for further replies.
Anyone tryna get Cleveland folks canceled over the (old or new) team name? Have there been calls for sanctions or boycotts? Just curious to see how the name change intersects with "cancel culture," such as it is.
 
d4m10n said:
Anyone tryna get Cleveland folks canceled over the (old or new) team name? Have there been calls for sanctions or boycotts? Just curious to see how the name change intersects with "cancel culture," such as it is.
Click to expand...

Probably would have to dig back through older news items, as the announcement to abandon the racist name occurred in 2020, and ditching "Chief Wahoo" was a couple years before that. I can't recall if the right wing freakout about cancel culture was in full swing by then or not.
 
So remind me: are the Vikings still OK? If not, is it because of their mockery of Scandinavians with all the a-historical horny helmet cartoon imagery, or is it because they celebrate White Supremacy?

So many people are so selectively offended these days. Particularly on behalf of someone else. Quite frankly, it all strikes me as a waste of time and energy.
 
Last edited:
Trying to get this topic back on track somewhat. An interesting case from FIRE.org



In April, a Cypress College student recorded a tense exchange over Zoom with his adjunct professor who peppered him with questions about his presentation, an exercise in persuasive argument for a communications class. As the clip went viral — fueled by anger over the professor’s cross-examination of the student’s discussion of police as “heroes” — the student, who had provided the college’s recording of the class to a journalist, said that he did not want the professor identified or punished.

Others who viewed the viral clip did not agree. As FIRE reported in May, the intense backlash on social media against adjunct instructor Faryha Salim precipitated Cypress College’s decision to place Salim on administrative leave. In response to the public anger, Cypress College released a statement focused on Salim, announcing that Salim (who had not yet been identified) would be “taking a leave of absence” from the college and that administrators were “reviewing” the exchange “and will address it fully in the coming days.” Privately, the college told Salim that unspecified “safety” concerns prompted the college to remove Salim from teaching — a class Salim taught online, from home. Yet that did not mollify the public anger, and soon threats — real safety concerns — mounted.
Click to expand...


https://www.thefire.org/cypress-college-used-safety-as-pretext-to-endorse-a-hecklers-veto/
 
Graham2001 said:
Trying to get this topic back on track somewhat. An interesting case from FIRE.org






https://www.thefire.org/cypress-college-used-safety-as-pretext-to-endorse-a-hecklers-veto/
Click to expand...

I remember reading about that situation. It's absurd. The entire project is about persuasive speaking, and learning how to handle a hostile audience is absolutely necessary for that. I've been through both sides of that training - both being the persuasive speaker faced with a hostile audience, and playing the hostile audience for a persuasive speaker.
 
Ron Obvious said:
So remind me: are the Vikings still OK? If not, is it because of their mockery of Scandinavians with all the a-historical horny helmet cartoon imagery, or is it because they celebrate White Supremacy?

So many people are so selectively offended these days. Particularly on behalf of someone else. Quite frankly, it all strikes me as a waste of time and energy.
Click to expand...

I think it's mostly because too many people don't understand that a Viking was a job title as in being a warrior, in particular, a raider, and not an entire people, who were of course the Norse.
 
It used to be about the music, man. This one is from a couple years ago. Obey Convention is/was an annual music festival in my town. It started off pretty small, and was mostly about punk, noise, experimental, and music/visual combinations. Over time it grew, broadened it's range of music and visual arts and it started hosting more international acts. Eventually the directorship changed hands, and it slowly started getting more and more political. For the most part, I liked it, whatever. I went as often as I could to as many shows as I could. The 2019 event was where it all definitively took a turn for the suck. imo, the quality of performances became outweighed by the identity of the performers. Anyhow, cancellation: okay, I did not go to the Gay Guerilla lecture. I actually couldn't tell from the program what kind of happening it was, like if there was going to be music, or if it was just a talk or what. It was given by Mary Jane Leach, a composer, about another composer named Julius Eastman. Eastman was a gay, black man involved in the academic, minimalist music scene in New York in the 70s-80s. He died young. A handful of his instrumental pieces had aggressive titles, some incorporating the n-word. Leach gave a big preamble about the word, quoted Eastman on his usage of the word, gave pre-apologies and trigger warnings and then said the composition titles once. Controversy ensued.

I didn't find out about this until later that evening. The final show was supposed to include a composition by Mary Jane Leach, and I was wondering why the lights were coming on before all the acts were done, and the art director came out and gave the cancellation announcement, citing feelings of unsafety of marginalized communities, and he called the festival and himself racist, and apologized for the violence(!) against community members. I had an email exchange with him. In the end, I felt a bit sorry for the poor bastard, because he really painted himself into an ideological corner. The Board needs more lgbtqbipocs! But how does one go about getting them without colonialist tokenism! A lot of self-flagellation.

The whole thing makes me kinda sad. I am, overall I guess, a lefty and a progressive. Also someone into arts, culture, and expression. This festival failed pretty hard in all these respects. I don't think the progressives won. Okay, the left has the ball! and they are heading for the goal . . . no, wait, they're taking their ball and going home! Yay! And to me, this is another example of marginalized voices - Julius Eastman - being silenced by those claiming to be the protectors.

Mary Jane Leach's take:
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/julius-eastman-incendiary-titles-13168/

I am fully aware of how controversial these titles are and keep trying to figure out what approach to take to address them: don’t repeat the exact titles and ignore the wish of the composer, or cite them as intended and risk offending some members of the audience? Here is Eastman the trickster at work, creating a problem for which there is no good solution. I can almost hear him cackling away as he takes in peoples’ discomfort from beyond.

My solution for lectures in the past has been to play Eastman’s spoken explanation before I start, followed by a warning and an apology in advance for articulating words that are so offensive. Near the end of my talk I discuss the arc of Eastman’s titling tendencies—from early pieces with conventional titles (Sonata and Birds Fly Away) and suggestive ones (Touch Him When and Joy Boy) to the ****** series and on to religious invocations (The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc and Buddha). I cite the problematic titles just once at the beginning, and then subsequently refer to them indirectly. This is what I did at the OBEY festival in June.

But in a pre-planned group discussion following my talk, I soon realized that the subject wasn’t going to be Eastman and his music but instead an inquisition into me that would wind up marginalizing—again, as had happened to him so often in the past—the true subject at hand. What I hadn’t known was that there had been earlier discussions before the festival about whether it would be ethical for me, a white woman, to speak about a gay black man, and that the moderator of the post-lecture discussion—the leader of an activist group of queer people of color—agreed to take part in what I later learned would be characterized as a “facilitation that unpacks privilege in the conversation around Eastman’s work and Mary Jane’s life in relation thereof.”

What was missing in that premise is the reason why I find it so important to speak and write about Eastman: In a time when identity politics command so much attention—most of it well-deserved and long past its due—it’s also important to stress that he was more than a gay black man. He was also a musician and composer of immense talent. While I am not a gay black man, I am a musician and composer, and Eastman and I were colleagues, having first met in 1981 at a rehearsal of a piece by fellow composer Hugh Levick.

...

The group discussion after my talk grew contentious. Attendees asked why I had shown so many photos that included white people, putting me in the strange situation of being asked to justify Eastman’s own life choices and the musical world he traveled in. Then, of course, there were objections among some—many of whom I later learned had missed my earlier lecture—about my having stated Eastman’s titles as they were written by the artist himself. Evelyn White, the author of a biography of Alice Walker (Alice Walker: A Life, 2004), spoke up and called the decision “brave and important.” But her words were largely brushed aside.

Later that night I was to present a concert of my own music—another reason I was at OBEY, the organizers of which asked me to give my lecture about Eastman in spite of not programming any of his work on its own. At the end of the first of two sets, the festival director approached and asked if we could talk. He brought me into a room with three other people, looking solemn, and said that they had received complaints about my lecture and were pulling my music from the program.

I was incredulous and asked them to reconsider, but they insisted that they had to provide a safe space for vulnerable communities and that the people who had objected to my lecture were adamant that it would be too traumatic for them to have to listen to my music.
Click to expand...


The article includes a broken link to the Obey Convention's sad-funny-cringey-offensive apology. Here is one that works. Note: the festival name has been changed to Everyseeker.
https://www.everyseeker.com/news/public-apology-2019

While OBEY Convention creative director Andrew Patterson was well aware of Eastman’s work, their titular language, and their complicated legacy, he failed to have a thorough-enough dialogue with Leach and We Are Missing in lead up to the event. This resulted in surprise, shock, violence, discomfort, harm and a number of associated experiences for the presenters and those in attendance. We sincerely regret the lack of forethought leading up to the event and the lack of immediate action during the event. We recognize that the violence imbued within this event caused specific harms to members of the QTBIPOC communities present. Our organization intends to centre the feelings and experiences of these people as we endeavour towards accountability.
Click to expand...



That is barely even of whiff of the epic three-part statement. Read the whole thing if you enjoy watching the left eat itself. I am going to listen to Crazy ******, a piece for four pianos.
 
porch said:
It used to be about the music, man. This one is from a couple years ago. Obey Convention is/was an annual music festival in my town. It started off pretty small, and was mostly about punk, noise, experimental, and music/visual combinations. Over time it grew, broadened it's range of music and visual arts and it started hosting more international acts. Eventually the directorship changed hands, and it slowly started getting more and more political. For the most part, I liked it, whatever. I went as often as I could to as many shows as I could. The 2019 event was where it all definitively took a turn for the suck. imo, the quality of performances became outweighed by the identity of the performers. Anyhow, cancellation: okay, I did not go to the Gay Guerilla lecture. I actually couldn't tell from the program what kind of happening it was, like if there was going to be music, or if it was just a talk or what. It was given by Mary Jane Leach, a composer, about another composer named Julius Eastman. Eastman was a gay, black man involved in the academic, minimalist music scene in New York in the 70s-80s. He died young. A handful of his instrumental pieces had aggressive titles, some incorporating the n-word. Leach gave a big preamble about the word, quoted Eastman on his usage of the word, gave pre-apologies and trigger warnings and then said the composition titles once. Controversy ensued.

I didn't find out about this until later that evening. The final show was supposed to include a composition by Mary Jane Leach, and I was wondering why the lights were coming on before all the acts were done, and the art director came out and gave the cancellation announcement, citing feelings of unsafety of marginalized communities, and he called the festival and himself racist, and apologized for the violence(!) against community members. I had an email exchange with him. In the end, I felt a bit sorry for the poor bastard, because he really painted himself into an ideological corner. The Board needs more lgbtqbipocs! But how does one go about getting them without colonialist tokenism! A lot of self-flagellation.

The whole thing makes me kinda sad. I am, overall I guess, a lefty and a progressive. Also someone into arts, culture, and expression. This festival failed pretty hard in all these respects. I don't think the progressives won. Okay, the left has the ball! and they are heading for the goal . . . no, wait, they're taking their ball and going home! Yay! And to me, this is another example of marginalized voices - Julius Eastman - being silenced by those claiming to be the protectors.
Click to expand...


And that is a real problem, once you start arguing that 'only X should write about/discuss/perform X' you're creating silo's and actively working against diversity, unless the only diversity you are interested in is the most simplistic kind of all, that of appearance.
 
porch said:
The article includes a broken link to the Obey Convention's sad-funny-cringey-offensive apology.
Click to expand...
I feel like the cringeworthy social justice apology should have its own Reddit. Awhile back, we got to see a series of anti-racist apologies from people involved in a specific Q&A at Skepticon (formerly an event about skepticism prior to refocusing on applied social justice) each of which took pains to acknowledge an institutional or personal failure to decolonialize the agenda by allowing two white women to speak on a topic which was (partially) about campus race relations.
 
Something the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has been doing for a number of years is highlighting school 'speech codes', particularly when they are unusually vague or restrictive.


A municipal court judge in New Jersey recently ordered a homeowner to remove banners containing the phrase “F--- Biden” from her property or face a $250-a-day fine, finding she violated a borough ordinance on obscenity.

The judge’s decision was widely derided, as the language on the banners is clearly protected by the First Amendment and does not even come close to the legal standard for obscenity set forth in Miller v. California and articulated in the ordinance. Facing this outcry (and the homeowner’s representation by the ACLU), the town decided last week to dismiss the underlying summons against her.

But at Kean University, a public institution located just two miles from the banners in question, students can still be punished over the very same phrases.
Click to expand...
(ed. Obscenity censored)


https://www.thefire.org/august-2021-speech-code-of-the-month-kean-university/


But where it really gets interesting is this quotation from the New York Times editorial board:


“a growing sense among many Americans that the United States cannot afford to maintain the full measure of its foundational commitment to free speech.”
Click to expand...


Coming from a newspaper that's eagerly established a censorship office (aka a 'Sensitivity Office'.) I find that a bit rich.
 
A plan to cancel Thomas Huxley, apparently the evidence the Woke used was supplied by the Discovery Institute...


As I reported on August 9, Western Washington University (WWU) is poised to change the name of its well known Huxley College of the Environment, named after “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley and listed as one of the University’s “notable degree programs“. The reason? It’s the usual, detailed in a committee-produced document residing on the website of WWU’s President.
Click to expand...


https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/08/20/response-to-proposal-to-cancel-t-h-huxley/


The response itself:


https://huxley.wwu.edu/files/2021-08/Response to LRTF report 7-18-2021_1.pdf
 
Interesting article from "The Line" - it discusses 'Cancel Culture', but suggests that there are actually two distinct practices going on: cancellation and excommunication. I think it adds a dimension to this discussion that is worth considering.

Philippe Lagassé: Cancel culture is real. But it's not always what we're talking about

Conservative governments are trying to stamp out “cancel culture,” particularly in universities. The British Parliament recently passed a law guaranteeing free expression on campuses. Ontario and Alberta legislated similar provisions in recent years. This raises the question: does cancel culture exist?

...

To help clear up the debate, we need to recognize that what we call cancel culture is two distinct things. Once we break them apart, it becomes easier to understand what it is, what it isn’t, and whether it’s happening.

Cancelling is what you do to your opponents. It can involve deplatforming someone, protesting them, trying to get them fired, mobbing them off social media, tarnishing their reputations, organizing boycotts, and so forth. The aim is to impose personal or professional costs on those who you find reprehensible.

...

But cancelling isn’t the only thing we’re seeing. A lot of what’s occurring isn’t cancel culture, but excommunication culture.

Excommunicating is what you do to members of your ingroup. It involves shaming, degradation ceremonies, and exclusion. Those who violate the ingroup’s norms, dissent on core issues, or question new orthodoxies risk excommunication. The range of errors that qualify for excommunications has grown, as has the statute of limitations on infractions, owing to status seeking within ingroups; when your status is tied to your ideological purity and zeal, it’s necessary to find past and novel impurities to denounce. There’s an impurity arms race that occurs, where the list of damnable sins keeps getting longer as ingroup members compete to be seen as more righteous. As well, to demonstrate that you’re truly committed to the cause, it’s necessary to slam those who aren’t, particularly if others are doing it, too. Quietly “calling in” an apostate isn’t as effective as “calling out” the disgraced when you want to show that you’re one of the good ones.
Click to expand...
 
Commentary on the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education website on the impulse to censorship.


In a recent episode of her podcast, Iona Italia expressed frustration about bad arguments against freedom of speech that she’s had to combat over and over again. I am therefore submitting something that is less of an article and more of a listicle: responses to some of the most common arguments against freedom of speech, and, where possible, suggestions for additional reading.

Assertion: Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.

Answer: Speech equals violence isn’t a new idea. It’s a very old—and very bad—idea.
Click to expand...


https://www.thefire.org/answers-to-...ng-that-xkcd-cartoon-everyone-likes-to-quote/
 
And a rock feels no pain

A two billion year old rock with pedagogical value to geology students was removed from its place on Observatory Drive on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because some students objected to it. As near as I can figure out, it had once been referred to by an unacceptable name in a newspaper in 1925. Private donations were used to fund the cost of moving it off campus. I attended UW-Madison, and I never heard anyone refer to the rock by any name, let alone an unacceptable one. It was originally named after a scientist who was head of UW-Madison for five years. I had not heard of a rock getting cancelled, until I read one of the following articles: Link1 Link2
 
Last edited:
Chris_Halkides said:
A two billion year old rock with pedagogical value to geology students was removed from its place on Observatory Drive on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because some students objected to it. As near as I can figure out, it had once been referred to by an unacceptable name in a newspaper in 1925. Private donations were used to fund the cost of moving it off campus. I attended UW-Madison, and I never heard anyone refer to the rock by any name, let alone an unacceptable one. It was originally named after a scientist who was head of UW-Madison for five years. I had not heard of a rock getting cancelled, until I read one of the following articles: Link1 Link2
Click to expand...

A rock was referred to with a racial slur nearly a hundred years ago... so the ROCK has to go, even though it hasn't been called by that epithet in decades? The existence of the rock in plain view is a cause of deep pain to people whose parents hadn't been conceived when the slur was used?

This makes as much sense as arguing that we should burn down the lower east side of manhattan because in the early 1900s is was referred to by a term that is anti-semitic.
 
John McWhorter's response

At the NYT John McWhorter had an Op-Ed about the Chamberlain rock six days ago, but it is behind a paywall.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom