Has Call-Out culture achieved its goal of strengthening movements for social justice and the abolition of hierarchical constraint, or has it weakened them by turning conflict into moments for virtue-signalling and revolutionary morality policing? It has been said by people on the left that cancel culture is a myth of the entitled, irresponsible and reactionary, that what we are dealing with is actually accountability culture. Who is accountable though when we conflate being criticised with being attacked, and recast the experience of being contradicted when we don’t feel like it right now into an experience of oppression? Who is accountable when accusations are guilt, and we use personal accusations to shut down criticism and debates we can’t control? Who is accountable for purgings and internet mobbings plural?
Asam Ahmad || Call-out culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on. Because call-outs tend to be public, they can enable a particularly armchair and academic brand of activism: one in which the act of calling out is seen as an end in itself.
What makes call-out culture so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isn’t just a private interaction between two individuals: it’s a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are. Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more significant than the content of the call-out. This is why “calling in” has been proposed as an alternative to calling out: calling in means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle of the address itself.
In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out culture but also in how progressive communities police and define the bounds of who’s in and who’s out. More often than not, this boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and terminology – a language and terminology that are forever shifting and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is impossible not to fail at least some of the time. And what happens when someone has mastered proficiency in languages of accountability and then learned to justify all of their actions by falling back on that language? How do we hold people to account who are experts at using anti-oppressive language to justify oppressive behaviour? We don’t have a word to describe this kind of perverse exercise of power, despite the fact that it occurs on an almost daily basis in progressive circles. Perhaps we could call it anti-oppressivism.
Humour often plays a role in call-out culture and by drawing attention to this I am not saying that wit has no place in undermining oppression; humour can be one of the most useful tools available to oppressed people. But when people are reduced to their identities of privilege (as white, cisgender, male, etc.) and mocked as such, it means we’re treating each other as if our individual social locations stand in for the total systems those parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out, narrow definitions of a person’s identity count for everything.
No matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to call people out that do not reduce individuals to agents of social advantage. There are ways of calling people out that are compassionate and creative, and that recognize the whole individual instead of viewing them simply as representations of the systems from which they benefit. Paying attention to these other contexts will mean refusing to unleash all of our very real trauma onto the psyches of those we imagine to only represent the systems that oppress us. Given the nature of online social networks, call-outs are not going away any time soon. But reminding ourselves of what a call-out is meant to accomplish will go a long way toward creating the kinds of substantial, material changes in people’s behaviour – and in community dynamics – that we envision and need.
When Calling Out Makes Sense
In the first part of this essay, I argued that often in progressive spaces, there is a tendency to view “correct” language and terminology as indications of the integrity of one’s politics; that sometimes call-outs can feel performative rather than educational; and that often, the practice of calling people out means reducing individuals to their social locations of privilege, as if that accounts for their oppressive behaviour in all instances. I argued that paying attention to other locations and contexts may help us in better educating each other and holding ourselves accountable without disposing of each other.
While I wrote this critique to help improve how call-outs happen, it has since been mobilized frequently to argue that calling people out is always harmful, and that people should keep all their grievances in the private sphere.
But sometimes the only way we can address harmful behaviours is by publicly naming them, in particular when there is a power imbalance between the people involved and speaking privately cannot rectify the situation.
Since power exists on multiple planes, it is not always easy to tell who has more power than you, but class, race, gender, and ability all play a part. “A Note on Call-out Culture” doesn’t distinguish between call-outs that happen among members of the same communities, and those happening between people with different levels of access to power and privilege. But paying attention to this distinction can be crucial in determining how we move forward when being called out.
But sometimes the only way we can address harmful behaviours is by publicly naming them, in particular when there is a power imbalance between the people involved and speaking privately cannot rectify the situation.
Discussing the toxic aspects of call-out culture requires acknowledging that some people’s anger and rage continues to be considered legitimate and reasonable (white men’s, mostly) while our culture teaches us that Black, racialized, and Indigenous people – particularly women – are always already angry and hostile. The question of whose anger counts as legitimate and valid is never just a neutral question; it is informed by what someone looks like, the colour of their skin, their gender, as well as their social standing and location. When thinking about call-out culture or being called out yourself, it is illusory to pretend that everyone’s voice is equally heard.
Imagine someone is calling you out. If you benefit or are perceived as benefiting from a privilege that the person calling you out does not have, demanding that the calling out happens privately isn’t productive because it maintains your own power. In these instances, I think the most productive way we can respond is by listening, especially in a world that refuses to make space for the anger and rage of Black, racialized, and Indigenous people. This does not mean the culture of outrage that continues to flourish in activist circles does not need to be challenged, but insisting that people from historically marginalized groups only address their grievances politely and privately is another way of insisting that their anger is not legitimate or valid, and should not be heard. As the author A.M. Leibowitz notes: “This is literally what it’s like to be part of a marginalized group: politeness is met with a refusal to listen, and anger is met with demands for politeness.”
Call-out culture is also often conflated with attempts by survivors of sexual and physical violence to hold their abusers accountable. While my essay was concerned primarily with instances of language and terminology being called out, it has often been used to attempt to shut down conversations around transformative and restorative justice. This is particularly alarming given the endemic nature of sexual violence in our communities.
It is important to note here that there is often a knee-jerk reaction to name many instances of conflict as abuse: the word “abuse” can end up referencing a range of harm, from sexual and physical violence to gaslighting and even straightforward meanness.
But at the same time, we must listen to survivors of sexual and/or physical violence, particularly when they tell us they have not been able to receive accountability through private interactions alone. Survivors publicly naming their abuser are often met with a refusal to listen to their stories, and with tone policing, gaslighting, and/or generally being dismissed. This, despite the fact that survivors going public often do so at an incredible personal cost, and often after years of having tried to privately rectify the situation.
When we insist that all of these conversations must remain in the private sphere, we are insisting that accountability is always a private matter. The history of our movements very clearly shows the opposite is often the case. People continue to take the side of those with more power, more privilege, and more capacity, and often these people are never held accountable for the harm they have caused. This is precisely why call-outs need to happen sometimes.
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