And the Creepy Boss of the Week Award goes to … this dude posting on Reddit

It still seems to me like “call out culture” is just a reframing of something that has always happened. Gossiping about and ostracizing people for a minor offense or other silly reasons. It’s just moved to the internet now. Again, I’m not seeing how it’s a these days kind of thing or an exclusive problem on the left.

The term probably does have some legit applications (and the issue could go a long ways to being fixed if social media platforms did a better job of stopping users from harassing and bullying other users), but it seems a lot of the time it’s just used in an attempt to silence people from speaking out against oppression. That’s certainly the way the troll was using it with his strawman accusations.

@zumahzumah

Diego, the reason people took issue with your post is because you already acted a bit defensive in the first post. That is something which sets off the commentators here because they sniff out an opportunity to be morally outraged.

First off I appreciate the intent and the support you display in trying to empathize with my situation, however I don’t think that’s what the commenters here are doing or do. I have been lurking the comments section for a while now.

Likewise, I’ve been a feminist for years now, though I’m not perfect and considering my upbringing, the culture we live in and the mindset that is ingrained upon boys from a young age I know I can get shit wrong lots of times. This just happens to be one of those times.

I’ve dealt and seen people deal with different forms of oppression before: whether it’s by means of racism or misogyny. Correcting people who are wrong and setting them straight shouldn’t always be assumed as hostile. Even if it is hostile you should always try to understand where that person is coming from, because as a male I can clearly recognize that I haven’t had had to deal with the same type of situations they deal with on a daily basis. Much like it wouldn’t be the place of a White woman to try to define what real racism towards Hispanics is like.

Correction can hurt and it might even border on humiliating for some people, but that’s only if you assume yourself infallible and you have too highly an opinion of yourself. I would rather listen to what they are saying and adjust accordingly than continue to engage in both behavior and language which perpetuates the problem.

Policy of Madness already accused you of being a dangerous creep that is sexually harassing her. If you then respond to defend yourself even further that will be called doubling down and dying on a hill and will unite everyone here to oppose you even if they didn’t previously care about your point.

She did not, she said I was coming across as creepy (which is not the same as outright calling me a dangerous creep), something which implies that this is her perception based on my responses. And nowhere in her post did she state that I sexually harassing her.

This is why outrage and call out culture on the left, which this site is highly prone to, is a sort of purity politics that will serve to make leftwing politics irrelevant because it can not ever bring itself to make alliances with any group below their moral standards. So they will create ever more exclusive groups of morally superior people that all represent the true feminist left or whatever.

I brought this up before but I will do so again because I feel this is not often addressed enough on this and other sites. There’s nothing wrong with calling a person out, especially if you are giving them the run down of what is wrong with their behavior. Just like they are letting me know what parts of my behavior help perpetuate misogyny towards women I too have called out other people before, on different issues. If you are not personally affected by a particular issue, moreover if you form part of the group that is doing the oppressing, you do not get to redefine what constitutes oppression or pejorative language or behavior.

Again, your sympathy is appreciated, but we have to know when to be quiet and listen to other people without taking offense.

@dslucia

I would be lying if I said I was entirely sure myself. Just felt that it struck a personal chord and I might misinterpreted David’s original intent. Again, this was my perception of things which, admittedly, does not necessarily reflect the author’s intent.

@Diego:

I would be lying if I said I was entirely sure myself. Just felt that it struck a personal chord and I might misinterpreted David’s original intent. Again, this was my perception of things which, admittedly, does not necessarily reflect the author’s intent.

Like, just for the record, I do understand where you’re coming from, because I’ve certainly felt the same way before, but like other people have said, the context of the situation just made your defensive posts out of place, and your wording implicitly minimized the creepiness of the guy in the OP by shifting the focus onto a hypothetical.

And, well, intentions aren’t everything, you know?

@ Lukas: I agree. “Jennifer” sounds pretty savvy to me, and so far she’s handled everything right — including not getting into a car with her boss-who-has-been-acting creepy. I would bet a nice dinner that she’s also been documenting the hell out of his behavior — screencaps of the texts, journaling of the conversations, etc. Unless the entire culture at this company is toxic (which is, unfortunately, too common), I suspect there’s going to be one hell of an exit interview.

It still seems to me like “call out culture” is just a reframing of something that has always happened. Gossiping about and ostracizing people for a minor offense or other silly reasons. It’s just moved to the internet now. Again, I’m not seeing how it’s a these days kind of thing or an exclusive problem on the left.

Oh yeah, for sure. It’s basically religious orthodoxy for secular subcultures. It happens all kinds of places, it’s just that when it happens in our circles, it becomes our problem to deal with.

But I’m sorry for bringing it up in response to a troll; you’re right that wankers will happily use it as an excuse to make people in-fight to deflect attention from obvious trolling.

Question: is it just the Shakesville comments that are bad? I like reading the blog sometimes, and Melissa McEwan has smart, interesting things to say on the blog and on Twitter. Wondering if I missed some shittery on her part specifically ?

She’s…complicated. She has her own entire hatedom. (I won’t link to it here but you can look it up if you are interested.)

But surely the takeaway is that you can perfectly well like her blogging and shouldn’t have to feel like she did something bad and now she’s an outcast and you’re not allowed to like her. You can judge for yourself if anything she’s done feels too sketch for you.

@ IP that is so cool. And very well said.

Yeah tumblr callout culture is often more about posturing and being right than protecting anyone. It also ignores subjectivity in fandom (just because someone likes a ship or character does not mean they romanticize the ship’s dynamic of the character actions, especially from people irl).

Like the worst thing I heard was someone went up to a fanartist at a con and gave the cookies. With needles in them. Because they felt her fanart was “wrong” somehow. It was SO over the line.

Callout culture’s been getting a lot of callouts itself over on tumblr form a lot of people who are darn ticked off that it’s coming to define the site thanks to overzealous, under-informed twerps sending death threats over fanart and ship wars.

you know whether you’re pointing something out because you genuinely think it’s going to cause harm and people need to be warned about it (and that public outcry is the correct option rather than, eg, contacting the artist privately), or whether you’re pointing it out because you want the attention, or because you don’t like the artist and want to tear them down.

I have to say that I think even the first instance can go over the line and often does. Just because you genuinely think something doesn’t mean it’s true, and even if you’re right sometimes the response is disproportionate.

I once saw a thing on tumblr once where a fairly young woman (~17 iirc) posted something that was both common cultural cachet and also anti-trans. It was a mistake, and she was called out … far too much. Even after she apologized, people kept harping on her and slamming her, until she deleted her tumblr and who knows what happened to her after that.

No individuals were harmed by her comment, it was just the usual contributes-to-the-culture-of-harm that we see a lot. It wasn’t an okay comment, but the response to it went faaaaar over what was necessary to make her understand why the comment was not okay. It was like the people attacking her were competing with one another to see who could be the most vicious about it. It was one of those situations where two wrongs really don’t make a right, and one of the wrongs was way out of proportion to the other.

My impression of the Shakesville comment sections isn’t so much that the commenters dogpile. It seems more that the mods will delete comments or ban people for disagreeing with Melissa. There also seems to be an insistence on putting content notes on absolutely everything and not just things that would normally be disturbing or triggering. I saw a content note for eyeballs once when a commenter was discussing her eyes. I was like, ???

There’s some good posts on that site and I often read it, but have never bothered commenting and don’t usually even read the comments because it seems really no fun.

I’ve noticed a few “call outs” in which people aggressively went after someone who was maybe 16-20 years old who said something relatively minor. A few times it involved misunderstanding and issues non-bigoted people can reasonably disagree about, like whether very specific worked out policies will have a positive outcome or not, though figuring out whether someone is arguing in good faith can be really subtle.

Self-examination is always good.

re: Call-out culture – I think one of the big places where things get sketchy is when folks start reacting to (perceived/actual) problematic or abusive figures based on what they think that person deserves, rather than what is right or productive.

F’rex, if one of the leading manosphere doxx-and-terrify-women brigade got doxxed and terrified, I’d have a hard time mustering a lot of sympathy for him–I think it could be reasonably argued that he deserved a taste of his own medicine. BUT, I would never doxx him, or encourage/condone/retweet/reblog/publicize someone else who did, or send threatening letters to his house, etc. etc. etc., because whether or not he “deserves” that kind of treatment is irrelevant to the fact that it is wrong to commit that kind of action, period. It doesn’t stop him, and it doesn’t un-harm the women he harmed. There’s no good outcome of it.

It seems like where “call-out culture” gets toxic is when people decide that doxxing, harassing, DDOS-ing, etc., is wrong–unless someone is bad enough to really deserve it. And then on an internet full of people of varying maturity, reason, and restraint, “bad enough” can mean just about anything. “So-and-so is bad enough because he abuses women”, vs. “Such-and-such is bad enough because she ruined my favorite movie franchise”, vs. “That one is bad enough because they are wrong about a basic fact (which may or may not actually be a basic fact)”.

Having a handle on who deserves what is useful only insofar as it establishes baseline reasonable boundaries–no one inherently deserves my good opinion, benefit of the doubt, time, attention, emotional labor, or support. No one deserves to never be corrected, or to only be corrected in a manner they deem sufficiently polite, or to be excused for everything they frame as “just a joke”. Everyone deserves basic human rights. etc.

Cool: “[Figure] said/did [problematic thing]; that’s gross and I don’t think I want to support them anymore, and you may not want to, either” = totally the author’s prerogative

Not cool: “[Figure] said/did [problematic thing], and so it is our duty as the Just Ones of the Internet to make their lives miserable for it” = wayyyyy too ripe for abuse