Long time listener, first time caller (commenter)... thanks for writing this! I am a digital subscriber to the NYT and I had not seen or heard about the piece (clearly I am insufficiently active on social media). I agree with you on the failed juxtaposition of "cancel culture" and active legislative attempts to invalidate and criminalize speech, but I'm in more violent agreement with the revelation (which should not be revelatory to the NYT editorial board) that free speech is not now (nor has it ever been) free of social consequences. Ever since I found my voice I have always been an outspoken person and I have taken a ton of grief for it over the years. In other words, I've never operated under the notion that the constitution should protect me from the fallout of my words.
Also, my grandma never told me that bull$h!t about not saying something nice, either. They were two peas in a pod those two...
Finding my voice (and knowing what I thought or felt about some topic) was a huge part of my development into being a grownup. Feeling shame and doing better was too. Thank you for more clearly saying this than most everyone else I read online.
Right, and sometimes that discussion sheds light on the fact that those values are NOT shared, and then the community sets about adjudicating what those values should be and/or whether they can be shared. What is called "cancel culture" so often has to do with people holding different understandings of what they think those shared values should be and then responding vehemently when someone else expresses an opinion in that betrays a different understanding of the value.
The GOP legislative efforts to limit the speech activity of public servants is the result of a lawful political process. (Public employees do not have 1a rights at work, see Garcetti.) The remedy to legislative overreach could not be clearer: elect different representatives who will pass better laws. The policies might be wrong, but we have a set of rules so we can change them.
The corporate infringement upon political expression is much more pernicious because there is not a political remedy. If Amazon, or Haliburton, or Yale decide that certain political expressions are disqualifying for anyone who wishes to work for them, they are not violating anyone's 1a rights, but they are infringing upon the political sphere in ways that are difficult to undo. We can't easily undo them because we can't vote out the board at Amazon, or Haliburton, or Yale Law.
And sure, companies have always tried to use their power over employees to serve their political interest. The difference is that, during the GWB administration, when companies were pressuring employees to donate to, and support political candidates favorable to those industries, we on the left objected to threatening employees' livelihoods to compel political cooperation against their own interests.
If you think that you are simultaneously expressing the muffled voice of the unheard and getting Ivy League universities and Fortune 100 companies to enforce your opinions through threats to the livelihoods of the wage slaves that work for them, perhaps it is time to reassess.
The labor rights movement is full of efforts to extend free speech protections to insulate employees from employers. That the new left sees this corporate power as a new tool for social engineering and not a threat to our political sphere is a truly sad development.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I think our discussions here — and the Times editorial that prompted it — come down to a difference in what we're talking about when we talk about cancel culture.
You're right that, ostensibly, a different legislature might eventually be able to overturn these restrictive policies. And I absolutely support labor efforts to extend free speech protections for employees — including, yes, the cringey librarian-rapper at Smith College. What I'm protesting is the equivalence. The idea that public shaming or shunning based on opinion is the same as workplace retaliation or banning certain titles from public libraries or certain topics from the mouths of schoolteachers.
Boycotting, shaming, and shunning are also exercises of free expression.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment. I think we actually agree or very close to it. I don't think there is any symmetry between government policies and social/corporate practices, and strong disagreement, but perhaps for slightly different reasons.
I, perhaps naively, see policy outcomes (laws) as downstream from debate. So GOP banning of books in school libraries is an outcome of discourse, not really an example of it. That isn't to excuse or defend terrible policies, but when it comes to the government acting, the check is the first amendment. The Constitution is the right way to think about whether a policy is lawful. That of course doesn't tell us if a policy is wise; and that sends us back to the political realm.
And here is where I'd like to posit another distinction. Strongly disagreeing with someone, even trying to get others to see that your interlocutor is wrong is fine. Getting people to agree with you and disagree with your opponents is the very nature of politics!
I think the distinction that I would make is the cooptation of other, non-discursive, disciplinary apparatus, to effectively circumvent or prohibit certain arguments is categorically different than either government policy or strong disagreement. Disagreeing with someone, reaching an impasse in the argument, and then going to your interlocutor's employer isn't 'speech' anymore than threatening to burn someone's house down is 'speech.' Sure, both involve an utterance, but the content isn't discourse, it is a material threat.
This isn't theoretical. I was having a legal argument with a former colleague (we both work in law) about whether it is a good idea to encourage black people to seek affirmation of their rights through the courts. My position was that many civil rights advances had been secured within the justice system and that that was good and should continue. And my former colleague was firmly of the mind that seeking affirmation through the courts was both dangerous and counterproductive for black people; that the courts were fundamentally hostile and dangerous institutions to black people. (This was in the Autumn of 2020.) Unable to come to a mutual understanding, my former colleague threatened to report me to my department chair for "endangering black people." The content of that argument is "agree with me, or I'll destroy your livelihood." That isn't speech, it is extortion. You can see this pattern in other places, like the Trent Colbert affair at YLS.
I'm not really a poster of comments but this hit my inbox as I'm sitting here watching the Premier League and I got sucked in. Real quick like... I was blithely nominally aware of the brouhaha over the Times ed (I've been sort of more apoplectic about goings on in Ukraine) but I find it ironic that the Times should be complaining about the perceived demise of free speech (and I agree with everything you say about freedom of speech being conflated with freedom from shame or shaming or, for that matter, praise, and the board's inflation of the defition) when certain of us remember (or at least know of) the time when the Times itself was guilty of same. https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/11/aids-new-york-times-obituary-history.html
It’s what you so often want to shame people for. With a preening conviction that things ‘will get better’ as you put it. So, for instance, you would most likely want to shame anyone who expresses publicly that they feel it wrong that a biological male is winning collegiate women’s swimming competitions. No? Tell us where you stand.
Because people have lost jobs expressing that thought and certainly many more have been shamed for it and countless others have declined to share their thoughts at all out of the fear of what might happen to their lives. Starting with being publicly shamed.
But you’re not only okay with all that you would also necessarily have to be firmly behind the idea of biological males competing against biological female swimmers in NCAA women’s events. To you, apparently, that constitutes this things-are-finally-getting-better outcome. And damn, quite literally, anyone who thinks otherwise.
Thank you for reading — though I don't think of myself as having a preening conviction of anything.
I don't care at all about collegiate swimming competitions, so I don't really care about Lia Thomas's title. Among those who do care — I would be surprised to learn that someone had lost a job expressing their opinion on a swimming competition, and I will be dismayed to be proven wrong.
Perhaps I should have made this more clear: I don't think people engaged in practices of shaming and shunning others for opinions they have deemed beyond the pale are *always right*. I'm saying instead that this is very much how public discourse works. The new thing now is that the dominant cultures and presumptions can be more loudly challenged than they have been previously.
Long time listener, first time caller (commenter)... thanks for writing this! I am a digital subscriber to the NYT and I had not seen or heard about the piece (clearly I am insufficiently active on social media). I agree with you on the failed juxtaposition of "cancel culture" and active legislative attempts to invalidate and criminalize speech, but I'm in more violent agreement with the revelation (which should not be revelatory to the NYT editorial board) that free speech is not now (nor has it ever been) free of social consequences. Ever since I found my voice I have always been an outspoken person and I have taken a ton of grief for it over the years. In other words, I've never operated under the notion that the constitution should protect me from the fallout of my words.
Also, my grandma never told me that bull$h!t about not saying something nice, either. They were two peas in a pod those two...
Finding my voice (and knowing what I thought or felt about some topic) was a huge part of my development into being a grownup. Feeling shame and doing better was too. Thank you for more clearly saying this than most everyone else I read online.
Thank you, and thank you so much for reading!
It's true, Rob, you have never been afraid to say what you think! (Neither was Dorothy!) Thanks for reading.
Shaming may be fundamentally communitarian, not divisive. The one who shames accuses the shamed of hypocrisy in light of their presumed shared values.
Right, and sometimes that discussion sheds light on the fact that those values are NOT shared, and then the community sets about adjudicating what those values should be and/or whether they can be shared. What is called "cancel culture" so often has to do with people holding different understandings of what they think those shared values should be and then responding vehemently when someone else expresses an opinion in that betrays a different understanding of the value.
Perhaps you have this precisely backward.
The GOP legislative efforts to limit the speech activity of public servants is the result of a lawful political process. (Public employees do not have 1a rights at work, see Garcetti.) The remedy to legislative overreach could not be clearer: elect different representatives who will pass better laws. The policies might be wrong, but we have a set of rules so we can change them.
The corporate infringement upon political expression is much more pernicious because there is not a political remedy. If Amazon, or Haliburton, or Yale decide that certain political expressions are disqualifying for anyone who wishes to work for them, they are not violating anyone's 1a rights, but they are infringing upon the political sphere in ways that are difficult to undo. We can't easily undo them because we can't vote out the board at Amazon, or Haliburton, or Yale Law.
And sure, companies have always tried to use their power over employees to serve their political interest. The difference is that, during the GWB administration, when companies were pressuring employees to donate to, and support political candidates favorable to those industries, we on the left objected to threatening employees' livelihoods to compel political cooperation against their own interests.
If you think that you are simultaneously expressing the muffled voice of the unheard and getting Ivy League universities and Fortune 100 companies to enforce your opinions through threats to the livelihoods of the wage slaves that work for them, perhaps it is time to reassess.
The labor rights movement is full of efforts to extend free speech protections to insulate employees from employers. That the new left sees this corporate power as a new tool for social engineering and not a threat to our political sphere is a truly sad development.
Sorry, for the "but it is not happening!" peeps: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.html
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I think our discussions here — and the Times editorial that prompted it — come down to a difference in what we're talking about when we talk about cancel culture.
You're right that, ostensibly, a different legislature might eventually be able to overturn these restrictive policies. And I absolutely support labor efforts to extend free speech protections for employees — including, yes, the cringey librarian-rapper at Smith College. What I'm protesting is the equivalence. The idea that public shaming or shunning based on opinion is the same as workplace retaliation or banning certain titles from public libraries or certain topics from the mouths of schoolteachers.
Boycotting, shaming, and shunning are also exercises of free expression.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment. I think we actually agree or very close to it. I don't think there is any symmetry between government policies and social/corporate practices, and strong disagreement, but perhaps for slightly different reasons.
I, perhaps naively, see policy outcomes (laws) as downstream from debate. So GOP banning of books in school libraries is an outcome of discourse, not really an example of it. That isn't to excuse or defend terrible policies, but when it comes to the government acting, the check is the first amendment. The Constitution is the right way to think about whether a policy is lawful. That of course doesn't tell us if a policy is wise; and that sends us back to the political realm.
And here is where I'd like to posit another distinction. Strongly disagreeing with someone, even trying to get others to see that your interlocutor is wrong is fine. Getting people to agree with you and disagree with your opponents is the very nature of politics!
I think the distinction that I would make is the cooptation of other, non-discursive, disciplinary apparatus, to effectively circumvent or prohibit certain arguments is categorically different than either government policy or strong disagreement. Disagreeing with someone, reaching an impasse in the argument, and then going to your interlocutor's employer isn't 'speech' anymore than threatening to burn someone's house down is 'speech.' Sure, both involve an utterance, but the content isn't discourse, it is a material threat.
This isn't theoretical. I was having a legal argument with a former colleague (we both work in law) about whether it is a good idea to encourage black people to seek affirmation of their rights through the courts. My position was that many civil rights advances had been secured within the justice system and that that was good and should continue. And my former colleague was firmly of the mind that seeking affirmation through the courts was both dangerous and counterproductive for black people; that the courts were fundamentally hostile and dangerous institutions to black people. (This was in the Autumn of 2020.) Unable to come to a mutual understanding, my former colleague threatened to report me to my department chair for "endangering black people." The content of that argument is "agree with me, or I'll destroy your livelihood." That isn't speech, it is extortion. You can see this pattern in other places, like the Trent Colbert affair at YLS.
I'm not really a poster of comments but this hit my inbox as I'm sitting here watching the Premier League and I got sucked in. Real quick like... I was blithely nominally aware of the brouhaha over the Times ed (I've been sort of more apoplectic about goings on in Ukraine) but I find it ironic that the Times should be complaining about the perceived demise of free speech (and I agree with everything you say about freedom of speech being conflated with freedom from shame or shaming or, for that matter, praise, and the board's inflation of the defition) when certain of us remember (or at least know of) the time when the Times itself was guilty of same. https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/11/aids-new-york-times-obituary-history.html
Thanks for this link. I hadn't seen — or hadn't recalled — this. And thanks for reading!
It’s what you so often want to shame people for. With a preening conviction that things ‘will get better’ as you put it. So, for instance, you would most likely want to shame anyone who expresses publicly that they feel it wrong that a biological male is winning collegiate women’s swimming competitions. No? Tell us where you stand.
Because people have lost jobs expressing that thought and certainly many more have been shamed for it and countless others have declined to share their thoughts at all out of the fear of what might happen to their lives. Starting with being publicly shamed.
But you’re not only okay with all that you would also necessarily have to be firmly behind the idea of biological males competing against biological female swimmers in NCAA women’s events. To you, apparently, that constitutes this things-are-finally-getting-better outcome. And damn, quite literally, anyone who thinks otherwise.
Thank you for reading — though I don't think of myself as having a preening conviction of anything.
I don't care at all about collegiate swimming competitions, so I don't really care about Lia Thomas's title. Among those who do care — I would be surprised to learn that someone had lost a job expressing their opinion on a swimming competition, and I will be dismayed to be proven wrong.
Perhaps I should have made this more clear: I don't think people engaged in practices of shaming and shunning others for opinions they have deemed beyond the pale are *always right*. I'm saying instead that this is very much how public discourse works. The new thing now is that the dominant cultures and presumptions can be more loudly challenged than they have been previously.