I appreciate the author of this piece for taking the time to write and share it. Their experiences sound really tough, and this isn’t an easy subject to discuss.
I always find it interesting what people think should be the focus of change in our spaces. This piece says we need to address ~call-out culture~* and disposability. From my personal experience (personal experience strongly runs through this piece) I see the thing to fix as the way that our society’s structures of oppression and hierarchy play out in our relationships. Similar, but I think there are a few key differences.
On calling people out
“Call-out culture” is a topic of much critique, both from the right and from pieces like this one. Given the barrage of shit out there, and the vagueness of the term*, I think it’s important to be very clear in any critique what exactly you’re against, as much as what you think needs to change.
I don’t think this piece does that very well. There are spaces out there that valorise performative call-outs even in situations where they aren’t useful, just as there are spaces where call-outs are done only when necessary**. Most spaces will have a mix of both – and unless you’re in someone else’s head, it can be hard to know which is which.
In my spaces, if anything I see far more things go unchallenged that should be addressed, than I see things ‘unreasonably’ challenged. I do occasionally witness what this piece describes – the “if they hurt us, hurt them back” mentality – but more often I see people expending substantial emotional labour to make strangers feel like critiques are comradely and kind.
To me, the relevant question is: why do people call out others in a hostile way? Because the answers are often: that they’re tired from multiple microaggressions, that they’re drained from having their critiques ignored and not addressed, that they see others with more energy to challenge shitty stuff sitting by silently.
And that’s why “I see the thing to fix as the way that our society’s structures of oppression and hierarchy play out in our relationships” – because I think this piece individualises the actions it’s denigrating, by not providing the nuance. In communities I’m in where steps are taken to address the causes of hostility, I rarely if ever see the classically ‘hostile call-out’ that ~call-out culture~ haters hate on.
On disposability
I think this piece also undersells the risk of posing ‘callouts’ and ‘removing people from our spaces’ as “disposability culture”, and then framing that as a bad thing. Without the nuance, we risk painting these two tools as solely harmful.
Some ideas should be challenged, some ideas should be challenged publically, and some ideas may be challenged in a hostile way (see above, or other things). Without making that clear, any critique of call-out culture is a bit empty, and runs the risk of suggesting that we shouldn’t hold each other to account.
In a similar vein, any critique of removing people from our spaces should be firmly couched in a justification of why it sometimes needs to happen. In my experience, it’s not a step I have ever seen taken lightly. If anything, I think our spaces could benefit from more strong repercussions for repeated, unrepentant, harmful behaviour. Some people need to be removed from our spaces. Punishment isn’t the same as justice, for sure; but equally, some tools can come under both banners.
Disposability and indispensability aren’t opposites. People are indispensable, in that everyone has some value; people are disposable, in that no-one’s desire to associate with others immediately overrides and takes precedence over the harm that they do.
On making our spaces better
I think it’s possible from these positions to call for more compassion within our spaces – but it needs to come from an understanding of why it doesn’t seem to be there in the first place.
From there, the suggestions in the piece can be implemented in good faith; without that interim step, you run the risk of bolstering the hands of the people in our spaces who attack “call-out culture”* from a position of not wanting their abusive behaviours to be challenged.
The piece says: “Only the most vulnerable – folks without large
friend groups and social stability – were excluded permanently.” If we care about exclusion, then we need to stay focused on who can access our spaces. That means getting the bread and butter sorted (wheelchair access, literal price of access) as much as it does thinking of who doesn’t come back after hearing a shitty thing or who never gets to the door.***
P.S. if you agree with the gist of this article – that revolution is about interpersonal relationships as much as physical resources, that accountability as a process starts with ourselves, that the division of people into monsters/angels hides harm, that we could all probably be a bit more compassionate – then I suggest reading into anarchism + black feminism if you haven’t already <3
* “Callout culture” has become
quite a shibboleth (that’s the first time I’ve tried using that word in a
sentence), a broad category that means a different thing to each person, a marked category that seems to suck up accusations of
wrongdoing like a sponge. I can only ever use it in scare quotes bcs tbh the idea that there is a bad coherent powerful thing that is call-out culture, like what this piece is arguing, is just a bad one to me.
**
This piece’s take on call-outs feels like over-generalising
from personal experience, tbh. This is just a guess, obviously – I’m saying it only because many similar thinkpieces online fall into the “I saw a bad callout therefore callouts are terrible” category.
***
I acknowledge that the point I am making is different to the one this
quote is going for! I think that call-outs as a tool, like most tools, reinforce the power dynamics of the spaces they’re used in. They can be used to protect group members against the incursion of sexist societal norms, just as they can be used to ‘protect’ group members from the incursion of trans women in women-only spaces through selective challenging of social transgressions. In my head, how this reflects on call-outs to you depends on your view of power – a liberal view of power would maybe want the people negatively affected by call-outs to not be disproportionately ~oppressed~ / with a more “radical” take on power, I guess I see the flaw as in the spaces with shitty norms, not with the tool - at least until someone brings along a better tool.