Our world is changing in wonderful ways: people are living longer, parents are spending more time with their children, stigma around mental health is declining, and differing life experiences are increasingly becoming part of our everyday.
This last point has been alarming to some. The increasing visibility of life experiences they don’t relate to conflicts with values they acquired long ago. Their ignorance leads them to believe that this out-group acts in ways that are improper. They are consequently alarmed when decision-makers validate concerns exclusive to these interlopers. Out of this comes a desire to stop this change in their lives and return to a world where this minority was without perceived presence or agency.
So it is this group of predominantly white, straight and cis people oppose all tangible measures of inclusion. How they express that opposition depends on how society regards the ascending minority. If it is socially acceptable to do so, they will be blunt about their disdain. If, however, society has moved on from praising such direct expressions, then they are in a quandary. Not wanting to believe that they are prejudiced, they will instead gravitate to narratives that inverse the discourse of who is being wronged using a comparable language of rights.
As Republican strategist Lee Atwater elaborated in 1981:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968, you can’t say “n*****” – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
These abstractions are called dog whistles. They grant members of the public who are uncomfortable with those different than them the means to keep them away and the excuse not to sound bigoted while doing it. These are commonly prefaced with assertions of a belief in equality.
Public discourse is rife with these excuses. For gender and sexual minorities these narratives are tightly coupled to specific objectives:
The one making the rounds these days is cancel culture. It’s a reformulation of the freedom of speech argument which I’ve previously addressed to various degrees here, here, here, and here.
“Cancel culture” is used to admonish platforms that have declined to amplify misinformation and hateful commentary about the perceived threat of trans people, Muslims, and people of colour. The term is also used to decry any criticism of this rhetoric.
This is presented through the lens of victimhood, where for example innocuous views about the dangers of accepting trans people are unfairly silenced. The pairing of transphobic prejudice with invocations of cancel culture is evident in the news coverage.
For instance, take the article BreakPoint: Big-name liberals reject cancel culture, but why?
Of all of the signatories, J.K. Rowling knows this tendency firsthand. This longtime progressive superstar has faced an avalanche of accusations and criticisms, and a campaign to cancel her work. The reason? She fears that radical transgender ideology threatens the existence and protection of women, and she’s been willing to express these very feminist views out loud.
As another example, take When it comes to boycotting opinions, ‘cancel culture’ is preventing dialogue from occurring:
Amitay has been criticized for his views on gender identity. He’s argued that concern about gender is more likely “identity confusion” and that some trans individuals come to regret gender affirming procedures.
“In my specific case, the criticism is that cancel culture prevents any type of nuanced discussion about controversial issues,” he said.
For another example, see Will 2020 will be the year of reason in the cancel-culture wars?:
Dr. Zucker, a pioneer and leading expert in the field of gender dysphoria, is a cancel-culture veteran, and remains a magnet for trans activists’ ire. In 2015, when he headed up the Gender Identity Clinic at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), a post he’d held for decades, he was targeted for condemnation by trans activists, who accused him of practicing “conversion therapy,” a false allegation that led to his summary dismissal.
Note for that last quote – there are multiple first-hand accounts of people including in my own social network who went through conversion therapy at the Gender Identity Clinic. The claim that it didn’t occur is false. The clinic was shut-down when conversion therapy for children was outlawed in Ontario in 2015.
Because the use of “cancel culture” isn’t really about what it portends to be – protecting marginalized voices – the same editorial boards and writers who decry it are silent when it’s trans voices being censored on YouTube for discussing their lives, taken down on TikTok, removed from Tumblr, banned on Facebook, eliminated on Instagram, etc. They are equally unconcerned by the lack of access trans people have to the very legislative assemblies, newspapers, television shows, book deals, leadership roles, and tenures they so believe are threatened of their own. Nor are they influenced by the fact that those they claim are victims of cancel culture have access to plenty of outlets, just not entitled to them all universally.
What this is about is a subset of straight white cis people uncomfortable with those unlike them having any input in decision-making. Which is why if its a platform declining to amplify something at the behest of people like them, then its not deemed cancel culture and its fine. Twitter bans accounts spreading Covid-19 misinformation amid the pandemic or Facebook censors any photos with perceived female nipples and no news organization publishes a scathing op ed. It is when decision-makers at a platform integrate the concerns of voices beyond this narrow demographic of straight white cis people that it is labeled cancel culture.
This subset are habituated to decision-makers only ever listening to people who look like them. Through this they’ve mistaken their needs as universal. This is particularly pernicious in a society that’s inherited policies and laws designed with only the interests of this group in mind, to the detriment of all others. Yet any change to the status quo is perceived as a loss and therefore unwelcome. What they seek in using this term of “cancel culture”, whether or not consciously, is a return to their hegemony.
The thing with dog whistles is that they are designed to captivate a segment of the public beyond those who openly disparage minorities. Years ago liberals and conservatives bought into the national security argument which was concocted to fire government workers for being gay. Now they now buy into this cancel culture trope that’s designed to force platforms to host homophobic and transphobic propaganda against their wishes. The deception works. The CBC is talking about cancel culture as a serious problem. Comedian John Cleese says its taking the fun out of life. The U.S. government announced it will defund universities that choose not to amplify this hateful rhetoric.
At some point, people will look back upon this dog whistle with the same incredulity we accord others like “the homosexual agenda” today. Until then though, we need to call it out for what it is – a ploy disguised as a legitimate concern.
Postscript
Earlier in this article I brought up the objectives to criminalize gay relationships, criminalize positive representation, etc. These might sound far fetched to some, but these have happened in the lifetime of a teenager today:
- Up until 2003, positive representation of gay people was illegal in Great Britain, as it was against the law to “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality“. Up until the same year, gay men were arrested for being in consensual relationships in the United-States.
- In 2015, the Conservatives in Canada proposed legislative changes to explicitly make discrimination against trans people legal; denying them access to crisis facilities, washrooms, and changing rooms; and incarcerating them with the wrong gender in correctional facilities.
- In 2016, it became illegal for trans people to use washrooms in parts of the United-States. The following year, the US President announced that he would fire all trans people from the military (“the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military“).
- Up until 2017, it was illegal for same-sex couples to marry in Australia. The law had been specifically amended in 2004 to exclude gay people.
- In 2020, it became illegal for trans people to participate in sports and to correct gender on identity documents in parts of the United-States, Hungary passed a law ending legal recognition of trans people while the President of Poland introduced a constitutional amendment to ban adoption by same-sex couples. A third of Poland also declared itself an “LGBT-free zone”.
It’s important to take these dog whistles seriously. Left unchallenged they will weaponize institutions against minorities.