Cancel Culture

DISCLAIMER: This report, unlike my book reviews, is subject to change/updates as new information becomes available. This is a constantly changing topic, so this post is subject to updates/changes as they come up.

Before I dive into this topic at all, let me first start off by saying: I am in no way trying to minimize the changes that are being attempted by “cancel culture”. I agree that change needs to come to publishing – and I definitely agree that people need to take responsibilities for their actions.

What I don’t agree with is how some of these “cancel culture” attempts have gone down.

I intend to do two reports/deep dives, one where I more or less agree with the need to, for lack of a better term, “drag them through the mud”, and another where I feel people may have made a decision without all the relevant information.

Now, I would appreciate you opening respectful dialogue with me if you disagree or if you have information I missed that may change things rather than hate-unfollowing me for any of the opinions [or information] I share here. I have collected and presented all the information I’ve found as unbiasedly as I possibly can.

Before I was first informed of the problematic information on these authors, I had read and reviewed their books. I enjoyed them, so please understand that I didn’t come to the decisions I’ve made here lightly. I’m not defending or dropping these authors lightly, nor will I do so going forward with any authors brought to my attention. But, with these two authors and the recent increasing number of people pointing out author’s mistakes with little-to-no room for forgiveness, it occurred to me that maybe, maybe, this movement to improve publishing has lead more to people getting -and therefore craving – a taste for blood rather than trying to do good.

I’m getting off-topic. My point here is that I appreciate knowing this new information, and I’m making my own decisions and adjusting my own actions accordingly, but I also wanted to state that, with these two authors, I will be info dumping a lot of stuff upfront because this all started as an attempt to help those trying to navigate the issues surrounding these authors and come to their own decision. I will be adding my own decision post-info dump at the bottom, for anyone curious on my reaction to the research I’ve spent the last few months scrapping together and digging for.

Now, if you disagree with my final decisions at the bottom of these posts, that is, of course, your right. Again, I would appreciate you opening respectful dialogue with me to discuss any differences in opinion before canceling me, but that’s your decision.

Now, onto “cancel culture” itself – as has been shared by Adrienne Young in her “YA Pub Culture” highlight, it’s created a lesser acknowledged “fear culture”. It’s causing authors to worry that their best attempt at going for their dream job, especially if they’re aiming to include the diversity the publishing world so badly needs, will result in being canceled. Now, while I agree with pointing out and making readers aware of truly problematic representation, that doesn’t seem to always be the case with “cancel culture”. Instead of authors always being given the chance to react, they’re given an impossibly short amount of time [24-48 hours, especially for those who aren’t constantly on their social medias, seems to be the normally allowed time, and not terribly long] to make a response the collective “cancel culture” movement accepts. Even if the timeline expected wasn’t an impossible standard on its own, expecting any answer to make everyone happy, and therefore end the “cancel culture” movement against them, is also impossible. That leaves people who are falsely accused, have a small mistake blown out of proportion, or have made a mistake but genuinely want to make amends and apologize stuck. They are then treated like those who either intentionally created problematic representation because of their personal beliefs or who don’t see their actions as problematic and refuse to change.

Before going on, I’m going to include some screenshots from the “YA Pub Culture” highlight I previously mentioned, which I highly suggest you go look at. Below will be the screenshots of the text slides from that highlight, but there are video slides I can’t screenshot, which is why I suggest you go take a look at the highlight yourself.

I know that was a lot, and many of you are likely wondering why I included all of those. There are two reasons. First, because I believe it’s all important information and worth sharing. [And let me just tell you – that first article, the one that pushed Adrienne Young to start this highlight to begin with, is so close to being spot on as to why I started this “project” all the way back in April of this year, when it seemed a lot of authors were being accused of being problematic, that I have to include it. And, even as someone who doesn’t like reading essays, it’s an incredible read, and goes into publishing history that I don’t touch here because they did a spectacular job, but, more importantly, is super important and relevant.] Second, because Adrienne Young asked for me not to alter any of her quotes, and I figured the best way was just to provide all of them [the written ones, anyway] to you, so that I don’t accidentally take things out of context.

I was originally going to include either a summarization or a word-for-word representation of the “verbal” slides, but I don’t want to, like requested, alter anything accidentally. Instead, I pulled a few quotes out that stuck with me:
“Cultural norms stay cultural norms as long as we are participating in them. And you don’t have to be one of the people leading the charge in order to be a participant. If you’re just present all the time, and you’re one of those people scrolling, and, like, retweeting and jumping on bandwagons with absolutely no critical thinking or deep dive into whatever is being claimed, at all – zero responsibility put on these people to actually present any kind of thorough evidence or context to their claims – it’s just bizarre. It doesn’t make sense at all. But even if you’re just a retweeter or you’re just there to observe this, like, abuse sport that’s happening – you’re participating!”
“But, I mean, I’ve been in situations with people I really love and care about and respect where they’re balling their eyes out on the phone because they are just having to silently accept severe abuse, harassment, threats online, and they can’t say anything about it, because if they do make a statement, it’s going to be torn apart, it’s going to be taken out of context, line-by-line, nothing is ever good enough, it only adds fuel to the fire. And then, to be asked, as a friend, ‘please don’t say anything, please don’t defend me, if it comes down to it, throw me under the bus’ – these are real conversations.”
“But I also recognize there are a majority of authors who are not in a position to be able to speak freely about this topic, and, when I was reading Nicole’s article the other day, I had a couple of, like, big ‘ah-ha’ moments. The first big realization I had was: there’s no other area of my life in which I would ever allow myself to be treated in this way. So why am I allowing it in my professional life? The second realization I had is that, in my deep, like, confliction about speaking publicly about this topic – what I really did not understand is that, either way, I was screwed. I could either continue to be quiet about it and not speak up and eventually fall under the axe, because, as long as I keep publishing books and if the culture doesn’t change, eventually – someone is going to cancel me. Someone is going to drag me. It’s just the nature of our industry right now. So I could either stay silent and eventually . . . draw the wrath anyway, or I could talk about it and demand that myself and my colleagues be treated with dignity and respect and compassion like any human being deserves to be treated, and risk drawing the ire of the mob, right? It’s like, either way, I’m [beep].”
[The only “altering” I did to the above was to “clean up” some word-stumbles and guess at grammar/punctuation, but please – go watch the slides for yourself.]

To piggyback off of the “making a statement” comment Adrienne Young made, quoted above, Nicole Brinkley said something similar in her essay, and it bears repeating, “Now add in the permanent-record status of the internet. Once you say something online—no matter what it is—it exists forever. Even if you have made a mistake and apologized for it. Even if your opinion has changed. Even if you have learned better. The internet, in its current form, does not let you change and grow.” That’s the opposite of what we’re pushing for here, isn’t it? If your reaction to that is, “No, there are plenty of mistake-free, marginalized authors out there who deserve to replace the problematic ones! Just deal with it!”, maybe you should read what Adrienne Young said above about how this is happening more often to marginalized authors than to anyone else. In Nicole Brinkley’s essay, she mentions, “This scrutiny and demand for perfection is infinitely higher for marginalized authors, who are often the target of the most critical segments of their own reader communities. Black authors must be perfect representations of Blackness despite the wide range of Black experiences. Queer authors must be out of the closet, in a neatly labeled box, for their queer representation to even be considered acceptable.”

. . . Did you read that correctly? This scrutiny and demand for perfection is infinitely higher for marginalized authors, who are often the target of the most critical segments of their own reader communities. That means it’s more likely that people who identifies the same way the marginalized author does, which implies they likely have experienced similar things and are, “the only ones who could truly understand what they’ve been through”, are more likely to be attacked for making unforgiveable mistakes than non-marginalized authors. That’s insane when the call-to-action here is to add more diversity to publishing. But what else does that imply? There is no such thing as mistake-free. There is no “perfect author”. Everyone makes mistakes.

So, for those of you saying, “Well, who cares? They deserve it.” . . . Who cares? They deserve it? Something we sometimes forget – authors are people too. They don’t suddenly stop being human beings because they published a book. For the people who are problematic, I somewhat agree – they deserve to be treated appropriately. They deserve for their problematic work not be published, supported, and/or promoted. But the people who didn’t try to create problematic content, or those that, when presented with evidence that they have written something problematic, take steps to correct that problematic content, don’t deserve to be treated like their irreformable peers. And to say otherwise is . . . well, it’s going against the aim of “cancel culture”. If your aim is to reform publishing, to improve it and weed out the problematic parts, then saying canceling those who try to reform their behavior and get better go against that. No one, no one, deserves to have their career destroyed for making a mistake they are willing to learn from and correct.

While there are marginalized authors this is happening to, I’m not aware of who they are, because their friends and loved ones are protecting them. [Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not saying that’s a problem, I’m saying that means I can’t do a deep dive on their behalf and show the other, minority-author side of this problem. I’m not siding or showing preferential treatment with the white authors I’ve done research on. I’m explaining why the authors I’m doing this research on are white. It’s for no other reason than these are the authors I’m aware of at this time. If I’m made aware of others, that may change, though I don’t have any intention right now of continuing this series beyond these two authors.]

As one of the posts shared in the highlight screenshots above put it, “Cancel culture is used interchangeably with accountability, but to me, the two are distinct. One seeks damnation & one seeks reconciliation. Cancel culture is an angry mob, and its aim is vengeance. Accountability is a critical coach, and its aim is growth.” With that in mind, I should explain my stance by clarifying: I support accountability, not “cancel culture”. I want people to be given the opportunity to change, not to commit one offense and have their jobs, their careers, their dreams destroyed over it.

[For those of you who haven’t read the linked post above, it’s the same post shared in the screenshots above. The quote comes from someone who was a former participant in “cancel culture” and is now speaking against it. Someone who used to agree with it, and now has seen what the movement has become and doesn’t approve.]

I’m not here to minimize voices. I’m not here to erase or invalidate feelings. If you were hurt by these authors, your feelings are valid, but, just like censoring Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill A Mockingbird or any other controversial reads, it doesn’t help people learn. If we begin teaching everyone that they can’t make mistakes, no one will take risks. Including bringing the much needed diversity and change to publishing. With this no-forgiveness approach to authors’ attempts to sensitive and diversity-related topics, all we’re doing is teaching people to return to the status quo world of white-washed, no-diversity writing, and that’s not what publishing needs.

If we keep on the trajectory we’re on, we’re not going to see a decline in problematic representation, we’re going to see a decline in people willing to take the risk we’re calling for, if not a decline in people willing to become, and stay, authors, period. We’re going to see an increase of authors riddled with anxiety and fear, authors who won’t engage with their readers or attempt the diversity we need for fear of the backlash and angry mob, authors who’s stories deserve to be shared with the world but now won’t be.

As Adrienne Young mentioned, there’s this fear about speaking about it – and it’s not just authors. As a small, baby bookstagrammer who hasn’t broken 1k followers yet, I was worried that speaking my mind about cancel culture would get me canceled before I had really begun. That, before I got to really help and support the book community, it would be over and all my bridges burned. But then I realized: did I really want to promote and support a community that was making me fear what I posted? Did I really want to promote and support a platform that censored my actual thoughts and feelings because I was worried someone would be offended or take me out of context and drag me too? And then I realized – if I couldn’t be myself, and have my own opinions here, what was I even doing? What was the point of writing reviews if I couldn’t be honest but instead blindly followed the mob? What’s the point if I’m worried that standing up for an author I believe deserves my support will get me canceled? If I wasn’t willing to make a stand for something I believed in, what did I stand for? I realized that trying to make publishing, and the book community, the place it was when I was a kid, back before it was so unforgiving, was the hill I was willing to die on. Please understand – I have thought and thought about and scrutinized and critically evaluated my opinions and planned actions to see if maybe speaking out about this was wrong in the same way that people in our history books were on the wrong side of a controversy should have. And, if I decide later that I am wrong, I’m coming back and changing what I say here because, as I stated originally, this post is designed to be fluid as I learn new information – which may result in a change to my feelings.

But, as Adrienne Young put it in one of her highlight slides, “And, once I realized that, and then I shared, especially yesterday, how I was feeling, is kind of like spending night after night hiding under the covers because you’re really scared. And then, when you finally get the courage to look under the bed, there’s actually no monster there. ” And I’m hoping she’s right. I’m hoping this post becomes a step in the right direction instead of a step in the wrong one – but only time and change will tell.

Please stay tuned for my author reports/deep dives that I will be posting shortly. I’m just trying to polish it as best I can, and then they’ll be up. Please be safe, be kind, and keep reading!