OT Cancel Culture: Discuss

The phrase is certainly used as a shorthand for, “I don’t like the way you think about this”, or “how dare you try to marginalize my views on this?” The fact is that we live in a society made up of people with widely-varied worldviews and we don’t tend to suffer those who disagree with us very well. It would be nice if people sometimes just took a breath before overreacting. Sometimes “happy holidays” is just meant as a simple “enjoy the season no matter which days are special to you.” Sometimes it’s okay to not go to DEFCON 4 if you’re an atheist and someone with general good intentions towards you happens to wish you a merry Christmas.

 

Who do you think I stole it from?

 

I agree with you. I'm interested in actual discussions of issues and concepts, rather than either using terms as shorthand in a culture war or assuming that anything said is shots fired in a culture war. And obviously both sides are guilty of that.

 

Many years ago my old Toyota broke down and I had to call for a tow. They take it to the nearest place. Driver told me the mechanic should be able to do a good job fixing my Japanese car because he was Vietnamese. Which makes exactly as much sense as saying a Spaniard should be especially good at fixing a Volvo.

 

River I suspect that my education about the natives in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s was probably better and more accurate than your education about them in the 60s or 70s.

 

My grandmother was half Lakota..half French Canadian..I grew up across the river from the rez...my parents are from Deadwood and Wounded Knee...(both depression era orphans) .if you know this history, you wouldn't think cancel culture was a new thing....that's my entire point. Native American baseball teams from the rez couldn't compete with the public school state teams...adults were not allowed to drink in local pubs.... It's something I've been brought up around my whole life.. Also McCarthyism....bad cancel culture ....I was born in 1954....I don't think many people from my generation were as close to that culture as I was. I'm certainly not an expert but I've had long talks with people who actually are and read extensively about it. I worked as a bricklayer on the rez first summer back from the war. You may have a more modern education than I but have you experience with that culture? Did your grandmother tell you the stories? If your education was better...you'd have known tribes were separated and put in mixed reservations removed from their heritage...this was in response to....lumping Native americans tribes together....which we absolutely did in this country. the 80s, 90s and 2000s weren't nearly as politically active as the 60s or 70s....they were entertainment, consumer addicted eras .....if you think the Viet Nam war was less political than the Nirvana fanclub....I don't know what to tell you...the biggest civil rights demonstrations in history happened back then....Wounded Knee happened back then too...See Dennis Banks and Russell Means...how they spent that era

 

We're talking about the phrase "cancer culture."

I have no idea how you tied this all to native Americans. I don't really have any particular opinion or really the desire to carry on this bizarre side conversation.

 

So I think the most recent example that comes to mind is the whole "womxn" thing.

So on the one hand we have people who just want to be accepted as a woman, like any other woman in the eyes of society. That's fine. Happy to oblige.

So why do we need a phrase that separates them out? It makes no sense to me. I think someone pointed out last time this came up (maybe it was you) that this isn't a widely accepted term by the trans community, but stilll.... it just doesn't make sense to me. It seems counter-productive to what they're trying to achieve.

Or the BIPOC thing. To me, POC should be pretty well all-encompassing. Not sure why we need to identify POC and also black people because they need their own letter in the acronym, and indigenous because of how shitty we were to them. I don't get it.

Isn't the end goal that we stop looking at race entirely? Perfect world, wouldn't that be what we're striving for?

 

cancer culture? Who is we? I"M BEING CANCELLED!!

 

Yeah, I was the one who pointed that out, but there are a couple of schools of thought: one is that separate terms exclude people, which is bad. Another one is that for marginalized people, terms that put some emphasis on their existence are a helpful thing. I'll go a bit more into that second one down below.

Do you really consider more terms to be better treatment, though? I think for people who have been marginalized, and still can be, terms that they prefer just amount to respect. Do they really gain any power or fortune from them? Continuing from what I was saying above, I think the main "benefit" of these terms is for the group itself--it's better for self-image to have terms that emphasize their importance after generations of them being invisible in wider society. How terms and representation and all affect self-image in-group can be pretty important.

I'd consider "want to be treated better" to be more rights than other people have, different (positive) treatment under the law, etc. I haven't seen anyone advocate for that. I think wanting self-chosen terms for themselves is fine. Often times, there's so many terms because different people have different views on what's empowering (as illustrated with the womxn thing). Not all black people prefer BIPOC. Not all black people even use POC. It's not like black people got together and decided, as a group, that they need all these terms. Different people felt different terms were good and individuals use them as feels good to them.

 

You don't understand that the initial conversation was about cancel culture and then it shifted a bit about something else?

 

Nate...I was talking about the topic...just putting it in perspective..you posted you didn't want to address that "weird" perspective or something like that....so as I say...pm mode is for selective conversations and the public forum is...well...public. I'm out....enjoy!

 

I do understand it shifted. It just seemed funny that at first you told river it shifted away, you're not discussing cancel culture, and within that shift, included what river was discussing, and then you told him the discussion was on cancel culture and not the shift.

 

I'm doing my part as did my grandparents! It'll take another hundred years probably..I always liked the line of Bruce Willis' from the 5th Element.....identify yourself..." I'm your standard meat popsickle!

 

You know those Honda 125 motorcycles with the milk crate basket on back all over asia? (They are red or blue)...I had one for 10 years and before moving home to Oregon sold it to a Kiwi friend living in Kaoshiung and it was stolen there...cops said it was smuggled to Viet Nam and they lost trace after that. Somewhere my little red honda is cruising around in Vietnam!

 

They're bigger than they're rated...they say 125 because that's the limit for a motorcycle in Taiwan in many places..or was...the motor is actually closer to a 250 ...I think the body is probably the same as a 350 honda in the states....we called them farmer bikes....I loved mine...drove it all over the island...had a windshield with a manual wiper for rainy season...they were generic hondas but also made by Kimco and Sanyang...same bikes

 

It was two very weird conversations. He came in with his take on cancer culture but he quoted us talking about POC.... and then he started talking about native americans getting canceled and I have no idea what that has to do with any of this thread. So yeah.....

 

I never wrote a word about "cancer".....not sure where this is coming from...I thought it was your typo but you're still spelling it that way