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Just this past weekend a disabled animator was blacklisted from the industry because an ex-friend objected to their NSFW drawings on a twitter handle (completel

Just this past weekend a disabled animator was blacklisted from the industry because an ex-friend objected to their NSFW drawings on a twitter handle (completely separate from their professional handle). The number of death threats were also an immense psychological toll, and a bit more than just "being yelled at" (I am open to the fact there is a fuzzy continuum between the two). Regardless - "some companies won't work with you" is effectively a blacklist for those who don't have traditional backgrounds. Another point is that the online social circles acts as a support network for some disenfranchised folks (queers like myself), and when that gets turned against them, it gets ugly. I don't think I'm exaggerating that we're in a satanic panic against certain kind of art and works. (Not providing public links out of real concern for safety, but happy to if individuals DM me here.)

threatofrain 6y ago
If people don't like you, whether justly or unjustly, then they don't like you. Try persuading people who have a choice to work with people they dislike. The only way to stop this is enforcement with teeth.
- kradeelav 6y ago
  On a practical basis, I would agree as somebody that fits a number of protected categories, and have had to work around this. Ethically, this is why we have organizations like the ACLU, ADA, and many, many others to be the enforcement with teeth. It's an uphill battle. I would disagree in the sense that pushing back against censorship - particularly of minorities - has many battlegrounds, not just enforcement with teeth. Greater social awareness/acceptance, education (history of blacklisting of sexual minorities for example), grassroots activism of simply supporting authors at risk of being deplatformed ... no sense in ignoring a tool that's available.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hannasanarion 6y ago
Are you suggesting that blacklists are a new phenomenon? "cancel culture" has always existed. The only thing that is changing is that who is "cancelled" is no longer chosen by TV producers and news editors (ie, white men), but democratically by self-directed popular discourse. In 2003 the Dixie Chicks said at a show in london, "We don't want this war, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas". Immediately their recording contracts were cancelled, venues would no longer book their shows, radio stations would no longer play them, MTV stopped showing their music videos, they lost all of their sponsorships, and their colleagues in the genre ostracized them and started including segments in their shows about how the Dixie Chicks are terrorists. If that's not cancel culture, what is? Why is it okay and normal for white male venue owners, disc jockeys, and record label CEOs to destroy somebody's career for a single sentence of political speech, but "political correctness run amok" when marginalized people on twitter decide that they aren't going to buy tickets to a show with a comedian who's known for assaulting female stagehands?
- kradeelav 6y ago
  To the first line: not at all, we'd both most likely point to Hollywood's blacklisting in the McCarthy era as one of many examples. To the second point: I would disagree in the sense that (a) it is dangerous to conflate 'people in a position of power actively using their established power to censor others' and 'mere disagreement'. Censorship becomes censorship when there is active harassment. (b) The latter example of marginalized people on twitter disagreeing isn't such - until the threats are stated. And there is a lot of horizontal violence that exists on that platform. The way I'd personally reframe this issue of (self)-censorship is that we're in a moral panic wave - certain platforms have made it incredibly easy for creators to be mobbed if they step out of acceptable discourse, regardless of their politics. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
- dash2 6y ago
  I don't think anyone claimed that what happened to the Dixie Chicks was OK. Also, it sounds as if you think that cancellation is better if it's democratic. If so, you need to address the 150-year old argument made by Mill, that democratic popular opinion can be particularly oppressive and dangerous to minority viewpoints: "Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."

threatofrain 6y ago

If people don't like you, whether justly or unjustly, then they don't like you. Try persuading people who have a choice to work with people they dislike. The only way to stop this is enforcement with teeth.

kradeelav 6y ago
On a practical basis, I would agree as somebody that fits a number of protected categories, and have had to work around this. Ethically, this is why we have organizations like the ACLU, ADA, and many, many others to be the enforcement with teeth. It's an uphill battle. I would disagree in the sense that pushing back against censorship - particularly of minorities - has many battlegrounds, not just enforcement with teeth. Greater social awareness/acceptance, education (history of blacklisting of sexual minorities for example), grassroots activism of simply supporting authors at risk of being deplatformed ... no sense in ignoring a tool that's available.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hannasanarion 6y ago

Are you suggesting that blacklists are a new phenomenon? "cancel culture" has always existed. The only thing that is changing is that who is "cancelled" is no longer chosen by TV producers and news editors (ie, white men), but democratically by self-directed popular discourse. In 2003 the Dixie Chicks said at a show in london, "We don't want this war, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas". Immediately their recording contracts were cancelled, venues would no longer book their shows, radio stations would no longer play them, MTV stopped showing their music videos, they lost all of their sponsorships, and their colleagues in the genre ostracized them and started including segments in their shows about how the Dixie Chicks are terrorists. If that's not cancel culture, what is? Why is it okay and normal for white male venue owners, disc jockeys, and record label CEOs to destroy somebody's career for a single sentence of political speech, but "political correctness run amok" when marginalized people on twitter decide that they aren't going to buy tickets to a show with a comedian who's known for assaulting female stagehands?

kradeelav 6y ago
To the first line: not at all, we'd both most likely point to Hollywood's blacklisting in the McCarthy era as one of many examples. To the second point: I would disagree in the sense that (a) it is dangerous to conflate 'people in a position of power actively using their established power to censor others' and 'mere disagreement'. Censorship becomes censorship when there is active harassment. (b) The latter example of marginalized people on twitter disagreeing isn't such - until the threats are stated. And there is a lot of horizontal violence that exists on that platform. The way I'd personally reframe this issue of (self)-censorship is that we're in a moral panic wave - certain platforms have made it incredibly easy for creators to be mobbed if they step out of acceptable discourse, regardless of their politics. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
dash2 6y ago
I don't think anyone claimed that what happened to the Dixie Chicks was OK. Also, it sounds as if you think that cancellation is better if it's democratic. If so, you need to address the 150-year old argument made by Mill, that democratic popular opinion can be particularly oppressive and dangerous to minority viewpoints: "Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."