Recently, a friend of mine showed me a Facebook post by a girl we both know. Let’s call her Angie. It read: “A gross man child made a bunch of rape threats to me on Twitter so I did some very basic Google searches and eventually called his girlfriend at work to have a conversion about it. Jamie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I interrupted your shift at the South Illinois Dairy Queen to tell you that your boyfriend threatened to ‘manhandle’ me.”
I’m not a huge fan of “call-out” culture; that type of “activism” invented by radicals and progressives and made possible by social media. I understand that it is important to bring issues of racism, sexism, and any other “-isms” to the public, but this is armchair activism. I wonder if sometimes the public performance of the call-out starts to mean more than the actual call-out itself. It’s a slippery slope. It’s tricky. I’m treading lightly when I write this – that’s what you have to do when stating anything publicly, because, you know, sometimes the call-out of an armchair activist can cause enough retweets that you lose your fucking job.
But call-out culture has also given voice and support to people who are normally silent, and not believed. This can be a productive raising of awareness. However, no group of people is inherently devoid of malicious intentions.
I can get down with “calling in.” This is what the progressives call confronting the person who offended you face-to-face and without an audience (what the rest of the world would call an intimate conversation). This is not always an option. But if Angie could find some random Twitter user’s girlfriend just with simple Googling, then anyone can find my grandmother’s email address. We are all so accessible now. (Even my grandmother, who thinks her computer is the weirdest typewriter EVER.)
Two years ago, a young gaming journalist and video blogger got sick of all the trolls on YouTube leaving her overtly sexual comments and telling her that she deserved to be raped and pillaged. She began researching a few of the repeat offenders and to her surprise, these were not 35-years-old men, but mostly teenage boys, presumably still living with their mothers.
“[Young boys] don’t know any better, so responding to them rationally didn’t resolve the situation,” she told The Guardian. So, Pearce used Facebook to contact the boys’ mothers and revealed exactly what their little angels were saying. Most of the mothers were disgusted, referred to their boys are “little shits” and took care of it.
Pearce got a bazillion retweets and some mild celebrity. I would imagine Pearce’s online harassment tripled, but at least she took charge in the way she wanted and those boys got reprimanded for writing cheques their prepubescent wieners couldn’t cash. I can see why Pearce decided to contact their mothers given that they were minors. They definitely knew better – if they didn’t, they would have stayed away from the R-word, which they fucking knew would get a rise.
But Angie’s “oppressor” is a grown man, just like she is a grown woman. And if it was so simple to obtain the phone number of his girlfriend at her South Illinois Dairy Queen job, then it would have been just as easy to CALL THE MAN AND TALK TO HIM. Because what does this have to do with his girlfriend? Nothing. NOTHING.
Angie’s personal issues with this man are not another woman’s problem. Imagine you’re slinging Dilly Bars at Dairy Queen, chewing your hair, waiting for closing time, and you get this call from some random girl who starts telling you that your boyfriend threatened to “manhandle” her on Twitter.
How is his girlfriend responsible for his actions? Either Angie thinks the Diary Queen is controlling her man like a puppeteer and has the ability to reprogram his shitty behavior (she doesn’t), or Angie wanted to rat him out, hopefully resulting in some kind of negative repercussions. An eye for an eye. You threatened ME on Twitter? I’ll ruin your relationship to your girlfriend. I’m sorry, I meant, an eye for a scrotum.
Everyone has the capability to be a hateful selfish piece of shit. We have all done spiteful shit and will probably again in the future. That’s life. People disagree. People act rude and stupid. People inflict pain on one another.
Call-out culture has created a civilization of armchair activists attempting to shame the unwilling into conforming to their personal values. I’m all for free speech: if you want to say something, say it. I love debate and discussion. That’s why I wish Angie had just called up the man she had an issue with instead of involving an innocent bystander and parading the results on social media.
Look, it sucks when people threaten you on Twitter. It’s annoying and vile and barbaric, especially when the threats are sexual. There’s this writer here in Vancouver named Lauren Southern. She’s controversial and pisses off all the feminists because she questions their political logic. I once saw Lauren tweet something very “Lauren.” One so-called feminist wrote back, “If [Lauren Southern] was being raped, I would make a special trip to her house to laugh and watch.”
Again, no group of people is inherently devoid of malicious intentions.
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