If you’re reading Harry Potter because you like J.K. Rowling’s alleged transphobia, you’re doing so with intent and are a bigot.
If you’re reading or watching Harry Potter because you like fantasy stories about wizards and magic, you’re not a bigot. Indeed, even if you’re reading just to see what all the fuss is about, you’re not a bigot.
If you don’t even think Rowling is seriously transphobic because she seems more to be just plain naive about society and culture, congratulations! As God is my witness, before the Rowling row I personally did not know that trans-folk menstruated at all, I thought they just got a Depo-Provera shot or something to have done with it. Nevertheless, Rowling doesn’t realize that Twitter isn’t the place to have this kind of in-depth debate and stupidly digs her way in deeper every time she opens her yawp. I’m still not convinced she’s intentionally bigoted.
If you bought Load O’ Lakes butter because you like having submissive female native Americans kneeling at your breakfast table to feed your imperialist fantasy, you’re a bigot. And weird.
If you bought Load O’ Lakes butter because it’s just damn butter and never gave a thought to the packaging, you’re not a bigot.
Wanna see more? Right this way!
So Many Wonderful Ways to be Canceled!
If you like Dr. Seuss because you like his unflattering depictions of minority races, you’re a bigot. If you collected and shared specifically his depictions of just African natives to the exclusion of all other Dr. Seuss material, you’re a bigger bigot.
If you are just joining us and literally just learned about the Flit commercial ads he was paid to do back in the 1930s when standards were looser about this kind of thing, and read Dr. Seuss because you have kids and Dr. Seuss is literally in schools, stores, and TV 24/7, you’re not a bigot. If you just like The Cat in the Hat because you loved the Mike Myers movie, you are a sick puppy, but not a bigot.
So we're just gonna cancel Dr. Seuss books because "they're racist?" Pfft. pic.twitter.com/Tp0fhAzXfU
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 7, 2021
If you like Aunt Jemima syrup because you miss the good ol’ Southern plantation days when mammy would cook breakfast for the house while you sipped mint juleps on the porch and watched the rest of the slaves pick your cotton, you’re a bigot.
If you just bought it because it was a damn bottle of syrup, you’re not a bigot. By the way, if you went out of your way to buy a different brand of syrup in specific protest of Aunt Jemima’s branding, you’re not Martin Luther King Jr. You were just virtue-signaling to other people at the store who never looked up long enough to care.
If you sought out “Mr.” Potato Head because you were out to enforce cisgendered het culture… I’m still not sure you’re a bigot. There are thousands of “Mr”s throughout culture. There is the Batman villain Mr. Freeze, the cleaning product Mr. Clean, and the No Doubt song “Excuse Me Mr.” There are millions of literal living people who go by the title of “Mr.” all the time.
If you don’t even understand this one, you’re not a bigot. You’re just a person with plain common sense. If you use the phrase “common sense” you are not “ableist” because “being an asshole” is the opposite of “using common sense” and is not a recognized disability in any country.
And then there’s the case of Lola from Space Jam:
As left and right fight over Lola’s bosom, hardly anybody notices that the image on the left isn’t even official, but fanart. There’s no bigot test here at all. If you’re online fighting about bunny tits, you’re just a loser.
Yeah, this works for the other side too!
If you went on eating french fries after 2000s-era Republicans tried to cancel them out to “freedom fries,” you are not anti-American. You were just hungry and wanted some fries.
If you never ate french fries until France went on the record as opposing the US-Iraq war, and then you ran right out to get some french fries, you do not exist because literally nobody did that.
If you went on following Kathy Griffin after she posted a photo of herself holding Donald Trump’s severed head, you’re not anti-American or even anti-Trump. You realize that comedians base their very profession on the tradition of the jester, whom alone has license to point out absurdities on every hand in the interest of keeping everyone on their intellectual toes.
If you don’t follow Kathy Griffin because you think this stunt went too far and she damned well knew how the public would react, it doesn’t mean you’re pro-Trump. It means you respect the office of the presidency even when you don’t agree with them, and also think bloody heads are gross no matter the context.
Oh yes, if you tried to cancel the board game Dungeons & Dragons because you thought it was a gateway luring children into worshiping Satan, you’re nuttier than squirrel poop. If you played Dungeons & Dragons because you wanted to get into Satanism, you must have been very disappointed. And yes, this actually got embedded into pop culture deep enough that they made a whole Tom Hanks movie about the evils of fantasy RPGs.
If you were part of the religious groups who boycotted The Golden Compass because of its supposed anti-Christian stance, you’re one of the people who failed to explain this line of reasoning to me because I asked everyone and nobody could explain it. I’m still waiting.
If you watched and enjoyed The Golden Compass, you are not a bad Christian and Jesus will still forgive you because He never commanded you to not watch anything except media produced by Christians. In fact, Jesus specifically rebuked people from rushing to judge others, even if they weren’t perfect.
This is Why Witch Trials Are Bad
“Intent,” as defined at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, is a very big deal in legal proceedings. It refers to “the mental aspect behind an action.” It is shown by “circumstantial evidence such as the acts or knowledge of the defendant.”
If you run over a pedestrian in traffic, that might have been an accident. You can still be put up for “negligent manslaughter” as it’s called, but you will never be up for murder.
However, if detectives found a note in the diary in your apartment dated for the day of the incident stating “Today I think I’ll go out and mow somebody down.” Aha! Intent!
Intent is a necessary condition of guilt, even in an accident if it can be shown that you deliberately disregarded general safety precautions and were willfully reckless. Intent can be dis-proven if it can be argued that your mental state was such that you were not in control of your actions, hence the “insanity defense,” as well as the “crime of passion” defense.
These legal precedents apply to more than just murder charges. They apply right down to misdemeanors, which is why you can’t be charged with shoplifting if somebody sneaked an item into your coat pocket in the store without your notice and you walked out with it.
Where do “Cancel Wars” Really Come From?
During the Trump administration, everybody expressed their extreme shock at how many Americans came out of the woodwork as slobbering morons. Oh my goodness, we had insurrectionist terrorists under our noses the whole time and didn’t know it!
Well folks, where do you think Republicans go during a Democrat administration? They don’t burrow underground and cocoon like cicadas. The same MAGAs that have been in your face for the past four years are still out there, it’s just their off-season now. What they do is go online and antagonize everyone. You know that they don’t have to wear a sign on their neck that says “former Trumpist,” right?
Do you really believe that anyone, liberal or conservative, gives a runny damn about the gender of a plastic toy? Were there American natives picketing Land O’ Lakes butter on every street corner? Do you actually know any of these trigger-happy offense magnets in real life? Why is it that all the radical, irate culture watchdogs are online, but when you ask your coworkers about it everybody’s all “meh who cares”?
-OR-
Could it be that companies get free advertising whenever they wave their product around and yell “now with 20% less racism!” The lecherous cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew was a distant fringe character in the Warner brothers’ canon even in his prime. They could just quit putting Pepe Le Pew in anything and shut up about it. Nobody cared in a billion years.
But instead we get news headlines blasted to our feed about how he was cut from the Space Jam series because he “normalizes rape culture.” And by the way, you now know there’s a new Space Jam movie coming out. Mission accomplished!
You think I’m just speculating? It’s called “shock advertising,” a method where you put into practice the old maxim, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” There’s many a marketing campaign that has deployed it, but in our current time, there’s a handy new shortcut. You don’t need to spend money on the actual campaign, just issue a press release for your latest straw gesture of newly awakened sensitivity and let Facebook run away with its new treat.
Once again, we see the facts in a new light thanks to the illuminating concept of “intent.” Tell a friend about the magic of applying “intent” today!
Next, the right, who never knew Pepe Le Pew existed, go online to post all their fake outrage. Then more of the right, who couldn’t care two tinker’s damns about women’s rights, put on their “librul” wigs and post more fake outrage right back. And eventually they catch some left-wingers up in the chum. Mission accomplished!
This is where it’s all coming from, guys. There are fewer SJWs going around canceling everything, and fewer toxic bigots defending them, than the media tells you. The point is to keep us all divided and squabbling, because nothing terrifies the MAGAs like two Democrats who are getting along together.
In other words, it’s all one big troll party. Did you think Russian troll brigades meant to hobble the West just shut off because a Democrat’s in office?
Canceling Online Cancels
The “intent” aspect deflates nearly every Internet cancel event in history. This is probably why Twitter cancellations are not legally binding. Too often in online culture, we accept the accusation without once questioning the facts. This is giving gossipers too much power over our heads.
I know my little post isn’t going to fix anything, but here is where you can bail yourself out when the hounds come after you (as they inevitably will come after everybody): Start chanting “Intent!” You can’t prove intent on the Internet. Don’t let the bullies get you down, bark back and they’ll move on to the next, easier target. That’s what bullies do. If they weren’t cowards, they’d be doing it in real life, and nobody is as tough in real life as they are on Mr. Internet, now are they?
