Lottie Pike Blogs a defence of online activism.

Call-out culture and online activism – a defense

During the Obama Foundation Summit in Illinois at the end of last month, former President Barack Obama spoke up about his views on call-out culture, the media-based custom of essentially holding people accountable for their actions. He argued that this ‘keyboard activism’ is ineffective, and if continued will fail to bring about real change.

I strongly disagree.

To argue my points, I’m going to be addressing things that Obama mentioned, as well as making reference to an article published by The Sunday Times which conveyed the same message. I would also like to point out that it is of the utmost importance that we acknowledge that there is a fine line between calling someone out, and simply hatefully attacking them just because you share different opinions on something. There is a reason why two fifths of students ‘favour censorship and no-platforming of controversial speakers’, research used by The Times has shown – there is a difference between hate speech and free speech (hate speech is defined as ‘abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation’). The Times also stated that ‘undergraduates…are often too intimidated to espouse unpopular views on campus’ – again, we must not mistake ‘unpopular views’ or opinions for hate speech; too often misunderstandings such as these lead to misinformed opinions being formed. Similarly, a growing number of women around the world are becoming hesitant to identify as a ‘feminist’; feminism is defined as ‘the social, political and economic equality of the sexes’ – why, then, do fewer than half of millennial women identify as one? Unfortunately, the stereotype of the ‘feminazi’ has been perpetuated by the media, and is too often mistaken as being what feminism itself represents. In short, I believe that calling people out is a crucial element of online activism, and a necessary substitute for the international shortage of education with regards to social awareness.

Firstly, Obama suggested that call-out culture achieves little and ‘isn’t bringing about change’ – I do not agree; in my experience, it has more often than not inspired global conversations, and done nothing less than educate those on social media platforms on what is respectful. Online activism is incredibly powerful and is often the facilitating force behind protests such as the Global Climate Strike, raising awareness in a way that wouldn’t be possible without the Internet. In the video, Obama sarcastically says ‘if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right…then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself’ – I really believe that not only Obama, but many people nowadays, seriously underestimate the power of the Internet. Yes, it may only be a hashtag, but think about what it represents. Arguably the most influential example of online activism from the past couple of years, the #MeToo movement, was made famous predominantly through the sharing of hashtags. Cast your minds back – what did those hashtags symbolise? Certainly not something worth mocking. This exact wave of activism is a prime example of the immense benefits that can arise from calling people out online and raising awareness of an issue too often silenced by the view of it being too ‘taboo’. To further my point, in spite of the liberation the #MeToo movement gave to countless victims of sexual abuse, President Donald Trump still proceeded to tweet ‘#MeToo’ in response to a tweet from McDonald’s asking followers who wanted a lifetime supply of Big Macs. Would you not agree that this is incredibly disrespectful? I would hope your answer would be yes, and if so: why not do something about it? As Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘there comes a time when silence is betrayal’ – this is that time. If you have the opportunity to speak up about something then you have the responsibility to stand up to injustice, as many do not have this privilege. Obama described call-out culture as being ‘as judgmental as possible’; I call it fighting for social equality.

An article published by The Sunday Times titled ‘Douglas Murray interview: The tyranny of woke thinking has caught us all napping’ also contains many problematic areas, in my opinion, and I feel obliged to address them as best I can to explain my stance further. To give you a sense of the stance of this article before I start, it genuinely asked ‘Why is wearing blackface make-up any worse than dressing in drag?’ – besides the fact that one is cultural appropriation and one isn’t, I think that the answer to that question is self-explanatory. As mentioned in the article, call-out culture is primarily involved with race and sexuality, discrimination on the basis of which has been socially unacceptable for decades. Therefore, when someone says something harmful, whether it be intended or not, why shouldn’t we call them out on it? To me, it only seems logical. To the individual being called out, the backlash may seem disproportionate to their action, one reason why many people believe this ‘call-out culture’ should be stopped – because it isn’t fair to the individual to receive so much hate for merely one tweet. However, it is unreasonable to expect that said tweets will be received in isolation and out of context; I happened to find an article on HuffPost which explained this perfectly, and did so using the following analogy: punching someone’s arm with moderate force might not hurt all that much, but if you were to punch a broken arm using the same force, that would produce significantly more pain. The same can be said about hurtful tweets, for example, on an already sensitive topic where oppression and discrimination has already taken place, such as racism. As opposed to Douglas Murray’s profession that ‘gay went past equal and went to better. Black went past equal and went to better’, I am able to acknowledge that certain groups are marginalised and too often victims of hate – to disregard this is the start of a slippery slope of the perpetuation of discrimination and inequality through turning a blind eye. As society often fails to be, the Internet has to be and is widely regarded as a safe space for many of these groups, and therefore it is our duty to protect this and not allow for harmful messages to be spread by not speaking up about them. An illusion of unity helps no one.

Finally, I would like to do something that unifies two of my points: why calling out someone is a positive thing to do, and why I disagree with the previously mentioned article. Therefore, I will do my own bit of calling-out, which will hopefully help to illustrate my points in another way. As previously mentioned, call-out culture is largely based on race and sexuality; coincidentally, when I was reading this article for the first time, it came across as rather transphobic. Having had this impression, I thought I might include this instead of using some unrelated example I found online.

The overriding argument that this article presents is that the younger generation is creating a problem over nothing, as we feel we missed out on something to properly fight for. It opens with ‘The Stonewall rioters fought for gay rights. Martin Luther King had a dream. But a younger generation without a cause has to create its own’. My response: bold of you to assume that there are no causes worth fighting for in today’s society. This ignorantly suggests that homophobia and racism have been defeated and are issues of the past, no longer needing fighting for. If that were the case, why are LGB (Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual) youth almost five times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts? These are still pressing issues, and to pretend like they’re not is dangerous. Murray professes that ‘[call-our culture] says the fight is not over’, and rightly so, as it most definitely is not.

Furthermore, and onto the main reason why I want to raise issue with this article in particular, there are multiple parts of this article that could seem harmful to the transgender community– by calling these out, my intent is to educate those as to why I consider them to be harmful to hopefully prevent this from happening again, therefore leading to no more unnecessary harm. Firstly, the article mentions Sam Smith and their decision to announce their wish to be referred to with ‘they/them’ pronouns. Despite literally having just written this, the article then proceeds to refer to Sam Smith using ‘he/him’ pronouns – whether intended or not, this needs to be pointed out (yet seeing as this article was almost definitely proofread, coming from a source as widely read as The Sunday Times, I would suggest that using ‘he/him’ pronouns was not a mistake). I’m not at all saying that the author meant this maliciously, but nevertheless, the outcome is the same, and will still have the same effects regardless of their intentions. Misgendering is a harmful act, and although it may not seem like that big of a deal to those doing it, for those on the receiving end it can cause a lot of pain; hence, we should take extra care when using pronouns, something the author of this article disappointingly failed to do. Furthermore, the article expresses its distain at the now ‘banished’ feminist Germaine Greer, who expressed harmful transphobic statements that essentially invalidated transgender people’s identities (saying that you cannot change from the gender you were assigned at birth); I find this truly shocking – just because someone has done good things in their lives, does not at all mean they should expect to be exempt from consequences if they were to then do something bad later on. Obama argued that ‘people who do really good stuff have flaws’ – yet, no matter how much good stuff you do, this does not excuse actions like these, and she has to be held accountable just as any other person would be.

The article then goes on to refer to the new baby of Hobbit Humphrey and Jake England-Johns and their informed decision to raise their child as ‘gender neutral’, so that they are not subject to unconscious bias from society’s gender-role expectations and can decide when they are older how they want to identify – a perfectly reasonable decision, right? Not according the article, which patronisingly said that ‘poor baby Anoush has not been liberated, “they” has been trapped into buying something that cannot be sold.’ Funnily enough, this is a prime example of why calling people out is good – first and foremost, ‘they has’ is obviously not the grammatically correct way to refer to Anoush, it should actually be ‘they have’ – just as with the previous incident of misgendering Sam Smith, I’m not assuming that this was done with malicious intent, but nevertheless could have been avoided if the author were properly educated about how to use pronouns with respect they deserve. Secondly, does it not seem contradictory that, when actually giving someone more freedom, they are described as ‘trapped’? Due to the severe lack of LGBTQ+ education in schools, the younger generation have had to rely on social media to educate the ignorant, calling people out when they get things like this wrong. Without a doubt, if these people were properly educated in the first place, call-out culture would not be as prevalent or necessary in media today.

I support call-out culture because the notion of a world where people can express hate towards others and not face repercussions truly fills me with fear; if you still do not support this, I implore you – look at the alternative. How are people meant to learn from their mistakes if they are not aware that they made one in the first place? Call-out culture is the necessary measure needed to make up for the education we were never given; yes, people may know their times tables, but do they know how to treat others with respect?

By Lottie Pike, Year 12