YSU Celebrates Women’s History Month 2022
YSU Women’s and Gender Studies is inviting the exploration of the idea of “cancel culture” this year. Are we, as a society, just being too sensitive? Does canceling someone really do anything?
“Cancel Culture” is the idea that a person, event, or issue can be taken out of existence and/or relevance for something that was done or said.
Merriam Webster defines it as “canceling and cancel culture has to do with the removing of support for public figures in response to their objectionable behavior or opinion.”
Doing call-outs of problematic people and behavior is not new. As Dr. Meredith Clark of the University of Virginia explained to the podcast You’re Wrong About, marginalized groups have been utilizing media to do call-outs for years. When a marginalized group utilizes a hashtag en masse on a platform like Twitter, that allows their issue to be seen by people in power. Twitter in particular has changed the ways that minority and marginalized groups interact with the rest of the culture, especially more dominant groups.
Nevertheless, there are some that claim cancel culture has run amok, unfairly upending people’s lives and livelihoods over something that is declared to be offensive. But is anyone really truly canceled?
Consider attending our slate of events, including our keynote from Dr. Treva B. Lindsey from The Ohio State University on March 17. In the tweet below, she offers some food for thought about this topic: