The case for cancellation insurance

That thing that isn’t happening has happened again. Cancel culture has seemingly claimed its latest victim in Sasha White, a literary agent reportedly fired by her employer after trans activists complained about her retweeting a social media post that said ‘being vulnerable to male violence does not make you women’. Her biography on a previously anonymous Twitter account asserted that ‘gender non conformity is wonderful; denying biological sex not so’ and she had also expressed support for J.K. Rowling, a hate-figure for gender extremists. That’s that.

British feminist Julie Bindel warns that ‘women are losing their jobs, reputations, university education and livelihoods’ as a result of cancel culture, that lurid right-wing fantasy that is also totally normal and justified. Bindel describes a culture of fear among women who have the misfortune to hold the wrong views about gender:

‘In recent months, I have heard from a number of feminists living in fear of losing their income as a result of being called to task for a) refusing to add pronouns to emails b) liking a JK Rowling tweet c) questioning whether single sex workplace toilets should become free-for-all, and d) refusing to use language in official documents such as “cervix havers” and “chest feeders”.