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People mocking the silliness of woke arguments and reactions are not necessarily wiser. For those who have made the opposition their source of income, criticizing may serve their interests. For anyone else, it is a losing game. You are not on the right side of history. Even if your arguments sound smart, engaging in these battles is not wise. You are contributing to further escalation and the amplification of divides. The argument of this book points to other aspects than rational discourse in cancel wars. Therefore, you cannot win by having “better” arguments. Stepping away from this game may have much better impact. Instead of submitting to the elites’ manipulation that may be underpinning the recent woke wave, pointing to the potential economic interests that two opposing camps may be serving is the third option that we are missing. If you really care, you should ask yourself whether you really want to contribute to disempowering people and draining energy that is not going to opposing the dispossession and enclosure. Have you considered why these replacement issues have gained such a prominence in the attention market right in the minds of a substantial structural change helped along by COVID-19?1
We are witnessing a cultural transformation. Being messy at first is the nature of transformation and growth. We should allow this state of chaos to help a new way of thinking emerge and sink in. This process’s outcome will be no more like the old way of thinking if we give it conditions to unfold fully without impatiently cutting it off to protect ourselves from discomfort. We need to be patient and believe that some creative solutions are possible. We can go beyond the rigid reactions and canceling those who trigger us. Introducing rules will not bring us any further. We need to understand also how the structure is inducing certain types of behavior in us. We need to understand how we are shaped to fit the dominant culture. Searching for hacks and swift solutions is one of its symptoms. Finding a solution or fixing it should not be our focus. Good intentions may bring dangerous results. We would advance faster if we recognize that it is our shadow and become intimate with it. In this way, we have a chance of undergoing a more profound transformation than being stuck in the old divides. Once we unmake the dominant culture within us, the right choices will occur naturally. Now we observe that both sides are in a state of rigidity. This may be a necessary stage in order to understand what a new culture could be like.
Old wounds constrict our imagination. It is difficult to see beyond two options when painful memories are activated. Once we understand the emotional underpinnings of opposite ideologies, we give ourselves a chance to explore other options. There is a space for creating a third option between contradictions, which can become richer because both sides have been included and excluded at the same time. The third option promises freedom and expansion because it does not need to suppress the other.
In the quest for a third option, we need to consider an alternative to the current modes of communication. What if we considered that cancel culture prompts people to express their needs in an ineffective way? Clicktivism and canceling may serve the need of addressing one’s trauma and living out emotions that have not been attended to – this can also include vicarious trauma of learning about the suffering of others. There also exist other forms of communication and spaces for healing to meet this need. Containing these processes requires skills that cannot be asked for from a crowd. Instead of putting time and energy in canceling campaigns, these resources could be channeled in creating such spaces.
Culture is part of the system of oppression and economic exploitation. Cultural creativity can be seen as an antidote to the helplessness induced by divides, which make the people in power thrive. If you observe that political debates are structured around two options, it is worth asking who has defined these options and who is interested in omitting other options. Notice how often the interests of corporations are not questioned in the two opposite options! Ivan Illich illustrated how the competition and exploitation between sexes had its origins in the grabbing households’ resources for subsistence and delivering people to the labor market.2 The energy put into prescribed opposite views is dispersed and cannot be channeled into fundamentally empower ourselves against the corporations.
The feminist writer Helen Lewis expressed concerns about gender self-identification as a ruse to enter single-sex spaces, which might have been behind the decision to exclude her from game Watch Dogs: Legion.3 People voicing similar views called a “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (TERF). Objections that are voiced by so called right-wing people regard the protection of women. They are afraid that an anatomical man may intentionally misgender himself to enter spaces like female prisons or similar female-only places. Another issue are the equal opportunities in sport competitions. While transgender people want to have their preference recognized, there are also consequences of such a regulation to take into account. The concern for safety in uni-sex spaces can be addressed with special measures without denying that some people do not identify with the sex they had at birth.
The binary thinking around gender and the conflicts around this issue are a symptom of cultural deprivation. We cannot think of other solutions caught up by the wounds inflicted on us by the system of exploitation in which some were used by others based on their otherness. If our ancestors had been raised in a culture with strong egalitarian values and ways of being, we would be more creative. The solution to the conflicts like the one between the trans community and TERFs requires a re-thinking of cultural assumptions behind the perception that there are only two options. Our culture seems to be limited by two options: either fluid identity is ignored, or the sexual differences are denied. Neither suppression nor denial can bring us to a place of respect and maturation.
Before the acculturation by the American state, some Native American communities had embraced gender fluidity. Mohaves had distinct names for anatomical men and women who identified neither as a man or a woman. For Native Americans, preferred work defined their gender identity. Both men’s and women’s work were equally prestigious. This gender equality may explain the tolerance for gender fluidity. Their religion and traditions recognized this predisposition for non-binary identity and gave a unique role to these individuals in society. Non-binary people were treated differently. Women were especially discouraged from entering the male social role, which was related to the physical differences. The anatomical gender of non-binary people was not denied. They belonged to a third category or the fourth one because one could be either anatomically a man and prefer a female role or an anatomical woman who preferred a male role.
Elizabeth C. Lyons described a case of the elderly being against same sex marriage. She explains this opposition to tolerance in the context of gender issues with Christianization and the state’s repression and cultures. Cultural genocide of the Native Americans took place between 1800 and 1900.4 Re-embracing the tradition of gender fluidity has taken place in some Native American communities. For example, the Two-Spirit Powwow was organized in 2019 in Arizona. The presence of the pink and blue transgender flag and Miss Indian Transgender Arizona amplified the character of the event.5
I believe that there are other options besides determining who has the power to define someone’s sex in a binary way. Many disagreements would be obsolete if the debate moved beyond this question. If we transformed our concept of gender by including several categories, many conflicts about gender issues would become obsolete. If our culture recognized more than two genders, having prisons or competitions for the third and fourth gender would naturally evolve. In this way, both sides of the debate could be heard in their fears and demands. Mohaves did not question body differences but had separate gender categories for non-binary people.
Another issue spurring controversy is the access to sexual transition, puberty blockers, and hormonal intervention. The third option not considered in this context is the right to have one’s hormones in balance according to anatomical sex. Hormonal perturbators are part of our daily life because corporations add them to many products. Furthermore, unhealthy nutrition and lifestyle may contribute to hormonal problems. For example, obese men have more propensity to experience higher estradiol and deficient testosterone levels. This imbalance correlates with depressive symptoms.6 For some reason, there is a heated debate about influencing one’s hormonal system and none about maintaining one’s hormonal system in its natural balance. Finding out more about the conditions fostering a healthy hormonal system and mental health may become an antidote to sexual transitioning and its potential side effects. The third option would focus on improving the conditions of living rather than curing their symptoms. It may be challenging to ask scientific questions about the physiological or situational causes in the current ideological climate. Third option thinking could bring us to the hypotheses related to hormonal health and lifestyle factors to shed more light on this phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with the individuals who voice this concern, but there may be something unhealthy in the conditions of their childhood that affects their hormonal balance and causes a feeling of inadequate gender attribution.
Instead of seeing only two options, namely that there are no differences between men and women or that there are, the third option inquiry would focus on the reasons why there is a clash between these two options. Nowadays, money is spent on encouraging females to take up technology and science professions. The underlying assumption is that the inequality in pay between human-intensive and technology-oriented tasks is something natural. Calling women to adapt to the system and work in better-paying jobs may be an attempt to legitimize this difference in salary. Finding out how to make all tasks paid more evenly would make these debates obsolete and increase the opportunities to live in integrity with oneself.
The third option is a difficult choice because it requires us to analyze issues beyond the dominant culture’s discourse and worldview. The third option may question the established power relations. The third option may need to be preceded by the liberation from the technocratic dogma and extractive companies. This is what cancel culture may prevent us from doing by channeling the time and energy into the options carved out by the legacies of domination and oppression.
Those who submit to canceling request are the real danger. Creating precedents like this will fire up further spikes of radicalization and canceling. Those who fire or cancel individuals who have been attacked by the cancel culture mob recognize, hence strengthen, its authority. Instead, ethical reasoning rather than short-term interest in peace by obeying is due if we want to evolve as society.
Becoming aware of the dangers of cancel culture invites us to create two spaces for reflection on building ethics organically: 1) How can education help people to find constructive ways of living in difference and express their emotions? 2) How can people in executive positions be empowered to withstand pressures to perpetuate cancel culture?
1For a historical parallel, I invite you to read the criticism of the Left by Pier Paolo Pasolini in the 1950s-1970s. Naystneetsa Katharsia (2021): Pasolini’s Lutheran Letters and Our Times. frontporchrepublic.com, March 9.
2Ivan Illich (1982): Gender. Pantheon Books.
3Olivia Olphin (2020): Helen Lewis controversy explained: Why was she removed from Watch Dogs: Legion? The Focus, November 9.
4Elizabeth C. Lyons (2011): Normal for Whom? Gender Acculturation in Native American Communities, DePaul J. Women, Gender & Law.
5Katherine Davis-Young (2019): Native Americans push for return of understanding of gender, sexuality, Santa Fe New Mexican, March 31.
6Patrícia T. Monteagudo, Adriana A. Falcão, Ieda T. N. Verreschi & Maria-Teresa Zanella (2016): The imbalance of sex-hormones related to depressive symptoms in obese men. The Aging Male 19(1).