Cancel culture is the horror movie that has people transfixed by their computer screens, lost in the make believe exchanges of social media when suddenly, all too real, a monster steps out of the screen and into the lives of actual people, seeking their destruction and reveling in their pain and loss.
On June 9th 2020, Tabitha Morris posted a video on Facebook in which she stated that she does not support the Black Lives Matter movement. When the video went viral, Tabitha’s place of work, a Kentucky hospital, received thousands of complaints and threats, and fired her from her job of twenty years.
All you hear on the news is celebrities that are being canceled, famous people that are being canceled. The story is it's not just celebrities. It is regular everyday American people—we don't have millions of dollars to fall back on. - Tabitha Morris
We're putting The Atlantic's journalistic process under a microscope. We made every effort to provide a fair, honest and thorough assessment of each claim made in the article, and evaluate the sources that Tiffany relied on.
In the traditional journalistic world, a critical piece by a major outlet like The Atlantic would go unanswered by its targets. In the new media landscape, that target gets to have her say, in full, on a small platform like Plebity. With the threat and reality of big tech censorship, the role of small independent platforms like ours becomes more apparent.
This episode is special because we hear from a teenager who goes against the grain, who is a true independent thinker. Amy describes the culture of her some of her peers as one of silencing and thought-policing:
“People would be messaging you privately like ‘this kind of sounds sketchy,’ so maybe you should not say that, otherwise you’ll get in trouble. I was like, who is going to get me in trouble? It’s that kind of conversation where you have to watch yourself because if you’re not watching, then someone else is.” -Amy, @crimeofcupid
Mary Kate (M. K.) is a feminist writer, activist, and engineer. She is the Founder and Editor in Chief of 4W and the Co-founder of Spinster.xyz. M.K. joined me to compare our experiences of being fired after expressing our gender critical views. We also discussed censorship, radical feminism versus liberal feminism, the left’s problem with class and free speech, and more!
Murat Kurnaz was nineteen years old when he was arrested by Pakistani authorities and sold to the United States for a bounty. It was 2001 and the United States had distributed fliers in Pakistan promising money in exchange for suspected terrorists. Murat was a civilian who had not committed any crime. He ended up at the United States prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where for five years he was denied the right to due process and subjected to torture. His attorney, Baher Azmy, fought the Bush Administration to help get Murat and others released from Guantanamo.
It's Women’s History Month. But flags flying the definition of the word woman (“noun / adult human female”) for International Women’s Day were removed with an apology from town council buildings in Sefton, England after accusations that the flags represent hatred against transgender people. In December, when a woman named Maya Forstater was fired for tweeting that sex is based on biology and not internal identity, an employment tribunal judge said that her speech is not “worthy of respect in a democratic society.”