I hate using the language of "canceled/canceling" because it feels delegitimizing but this thing with John Mulaney and Dave Chappelle is a situation where canceling can be something positive and meaningful. On the one hand, people have overblown canceling as this rabid force attacking everyone and everything. On the other, it's become a glib "oh no, don't let the libs cancel you" joke for ultimately pretty harmless shit. But this is someone immensely popular with a platform and a large audience inviting an infamously transphobic comedian to deliver a surprise transphobic, homophobic, and weirdly ableist opening on their tour and then calling that person their best friend.
The first tweet hits particularly hard because it's a reminder that being the butt of a joke that 12,000 people laugh at isn't very far from being the victim of a hate crime. It's not just offensive, it's fucking dangerous. It's demonstrably unsafe.
Transphobia isn't "brave" or "unsanitized comedy", it's a crucial tool for maintaining the status quo of interpersonal and legislative violence.
So yeah, cancel John Mulaney. Hold public figures accountable for targeting us, over and over again.
I would like to remind people that the "gay panic defense" is still very much a thing
So yeah having a fucking transphobe out there telling "jokes" that only further dehumanize trans folks is extra disgusting
You cant say "its just a joke!" When people literally use gay and trans people just existing as an excuse to assult and murder them
I come in kindness when I say this, but the way you approach canceling is part of the reason why people like Chapelle and Mulany were able to do this.
Canceling is real when it impacts people who effect you, but it's not when it impacts others. I urge you to look at why saying that cancelling is overused or incorrectly used until something "actually" bad happens may be harmful, and why it's contributed to the rise of things like this.
You can scrutinize the use of cancelling when it's mostly been used for racist people and highly demonized by the the right, and when the term originated in black circles to go after racist, but understand the correlation it has to this
What makes cancelling less or more valid?
@witches-ofcolor, thank you for bringing this up! Since this post has blown up in the last 24 hours, I'll take the opportunity to clarify some things.
What I was intending to reference here is two very different understandings of what "cancelling" is - neither of which are what cancelling ACTUALLY IS. Cancelling is a crucial tool we have to hold powerful people (public figures, celebrities, etc) accountable for racist, antisemetic, transphobic, and otherwise deplorable behavior. But, in public discourse, you commonly see cancelling used in one of two disingenous ways, which makes begining a conversation with the phrase "John Mulaney is cancelled" sticky, hence my own discomfort begining a convo that way.
The first I reference in my original post is a definitively right-wing stance that "cancelling" is a Liberal Agenda Tool, a CULTURE which has the effect of silencing people "the libs don't like". Most often the cancelled are framed as innocent of all wrongdoing, guilty only of not being "liberal sheeple". To see how "Cancel Culture" gets framed as hysterical, overblown leftist attacks, you don't need to look much further than how conservatives talk about the cancelling of JK Rowling or of Gina Carano. People who are familiar with this idea of cancelling tend to hear "so-and-so is cancelled" and roll their eyes. The effect is the controversy - the racism, misogyny, antisemitism, etc - gets delegitimized as part of the "leftist culture wars"; something that simply twists SJW's britches in a knot and is of no real consequence instead of the demonstrably harmful fuckshit that it is.
The second popular misonception about cancelling that I reference in the original post is this idea that, yes, cancelling IS a tool for social good, but it's ALSO something that can be applied to anything we don't like. A good example of this is #[person]-is-cancelled-parties and you look into it and it's like... a moderately popular youtuber said something stupid, recognizes that what they did was harmful, took tangible steps to rectify their behavior, and made a sincere apology. At that point, you don't need to continue berating that creator. (That's not to say that you aren't justified if you choose to stop engaging with that content - that's totally fine and justified! Sometimes, someone fucks up, but they fuck up in an extremely personally hurtful way that turns you off of them forever, despite taking steps to fix their fuck up. This is not what I'm talking about.) What I'm talking about here is the REVELRY, the perverse ENJOYMENT of harassing someone, of making someone of not-considerable power miserable - sometimes when they've already taken every reasonable step to do better.
As others have justly said, this shift in popular understanding to one or the other above (a conservative finger-point or a gross harassment) is largely due to abuse/misuse by white people. As a white trans person, I'm not going to talk more about that reality because POC in the notes & reblogs have done and will do that much better than I could (see @neshatriumphs' reblog in particular)!
But, I don't think that calling attention to these popular misconceptions and how that has translated to personal discomfort with the verbiage of "cancelling" implies that cancelling itself is in any way less valid. If that was the effect of my original post, I apologize and will reiterate: cancelling Mulaney and Chappelle is NOT an example of the later or the former. This is someone with a MASSIVE AUDIENCE contributing to WIDESPREAD SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE against a vulnerable minority.
Hence why I conclude, "cancel John Mulaney. Hold public figures accountable for targeting us, over and over again."
And this is a small side note, but having seen a lot of the tags on this post, I also want to say that besties, it is OKAY if you really liked John Mulaney. It's not a sin to think his comedy was funny, to like his Netflix bits, or to have been shocked by this turn of events. It is the responsibility of public figures to Not Be Fucking Jackasses. It is not your responsibility to spidey-sense dickholes in advance. I fucking loved John Mulaney and I was rooting for him when he went to rehab. I'm not beating myself up for not seeing this coming. I'm disappointed in the people who deserve the blame: Mulaney and Chappelle.