Why Cancel Culture is Immensely Worse for Women

Cancel culture has found its latest victim: YouTube personality Jenna Marbles.

Jenna has been producing content for YouTube for more than ten years. During this time, she built an audience of over 20 million followers on the platform. Fans fell in love with her personality, her entertaining videos, and her honesty.

However, in the last weeks, Jenna became the center of a controversy. In 2012, she posted videos that contained racist jokes, which included doing blackface. In light of recent events that brought racism to the center of discussions, Jenna decided to speak up.

In an 11-minute video, Jenna apologizes for disseminating content that hurts other people. She doesn’t try to justify or defend her actions. Still, the YouTube star decided to quit the platform for the time being. In the vídeo, she says:

“I think now it’s hard for that content to exist at all because I think people watch it and don’t bother to look at when it was posted or care about what path I took to get to where I am. It offends them now, and, if that’s the case, where people will watch something and be offended now, I don’t want it to exist.”

The Cancel Culture

Now, let’s ensure that we are all on the same page regarding the definition of cancel culture. The dictionary defines it this way:

“Cancel culture is the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.”

So, cancel culture happens when the public uses their voice to hold famous people accountable for their mistakes. With the internet, this process gets exponential. Now, the public has a place to express their views for the first time. It becomes easier to find what others posted online, even content published years ago, to use it as an argument for canceling someone else. Not to mention how threads on Twitter and other social media get viral.

Don’t get me wrong, cancel culture is not all bad. It’s great that famous people don’t get away with their actions, especially since some accusations include serious topics like sexual assault and racism.

But the problem with cancel culture is its duality. It assumes that people are either good or bad. There is little room for the process of learning, which often consists of: making mistakes, reflecting on them, and improving.

This consciousness is particularly important when speaking of complex issues that need to be addressed properly. Culture oversimplifies these topics to a right or wrong scope, making the discussion weak — because complex topics require a robust solution.

In Jenna’s case, there is no doubt that she made a mistake. However, simplifying this to canceling her online stops us from taking a deeper look at the topic in question. A better way to approach this might be: learning about the history of blackface and racism, how it affects our daily attitudes in our culture, which unconscious actions each one of us makes that reinforce structural racism, and what steps we can take to make long-term changes for the better.

The Canceled Women

Cancel culture has multiple victims, regardless of gender. However, I can’t help but wonder if the consequences for women are severer than for men.

To start, the reasons why men are canceled are sometimes tremendously serious. Take the example of Louis CK and Kevin Spacey. Both of them are accused of sexual assault and faced some consequences for this. The comedian Louis lost ties with Netflix and was dropped by his agency. As for actor Kevin Spacey, he was kicked out of House of Cards, even though he was the protagonist of the series.

However, those penalties don’t seem to have long-term impacts for either of them. Last year, Louis sold out five shows in Toronto. Spacey follows a similar path: he pleaded not guilty to multiple charges and never faced severe consequences. Spacey shows no sign of regret. After leaving House of Cards, he posted a controversial video.

You may argue that it’s unfair to compare these men with Jenna because their mistakes were way worse.

So let’s find another example that is on the same scale. Another YouTube personality, Shane Dawson, also made racist videos a few years ago. He started making videos at around the same time as Jenna, and they have roughly the same amount of subscribers on their channels.

Just like Jenna, Shane posted an apology video for doing blackface in his early career on YouTube. However, there is no sign that he’ll face other types of penalties for this. Unlike Jenna, he’s still planning on keeping his YouTube channel. So, even though the choice to quit the channel was not forced on Jenna, it feels like both YouTubers made very similar mistakes, but she faced more consequences than him.

Let’s look at another female celebrity who was the center of multiple controversies: Taylor Swift.

Throughout her career, Taylor has always shown clear values. And she does it very consistently through posts on social media, her songs, and her actions. Taylor supports feminism and LGBT causes and displays this in multiple videos, such as The Man and You Need to Calm Down. In the latter, she invited some contestants of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the cast of Queer Eye for the video. Taylor didn’t stop there: she also introduced a petition supporting the Equality Act to fight against discrimination.

However, none of this has saved her from the cancel culture. The singer had had a complicated relationship with Kanye West since the fiasco at the MTV Video Music Awards back in 2009. In 2016, a new unfolding of events - involving many tweets and Kim Kardashian - led to a trending #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled.

In this case, we have two important characters. The first is a woman who consistently fights for a cause, has strong values, and takes action to support them. The second is Kanye West, who was later involved in serious controversy when he made absurd statements regarding slavery and publicly supported President Donald Trump, who is commonly known for not respecting equality in feminist and LGBT causes.

And yet, the person who was canceled on social media was Taylor and not Kanye. Once again, it feels like cancel culture is more severe on women than men.

Studies on how men and women deal with mistakes support this phenomenon. This article from the Harvard Business Review implies that, when it comes to mistakes, genders differ tremendously. The authors say:

“Several studies have found that because women operate under a higher-resolution microscope than their male counterparts do, their mistakes and failures are scrutinized more carefully and punished more severely.” - Catherine H. Tinsley and Robin J. Ely

Another study, conducted by Patricia Bryans, reached complementary conclusions. By analyzing how men and women handle mistakes in the workplace, she concluded that men remember their mistakes as learning opportunities and sometimes even remember them in a better light. On the other hand, women are more critical of their own mistakes and carry the blame for longer.

These findings seem to illustrate almost perfectly Jenna’s case. She held herself accountable to the extent that she decided to quit YouTube. It feels like she is facing criticism not only from the cancel culture but also from herself.

Final Thoughts

Even though cancel culture has the good intentions of holding people accountable for their errors, it has a dark side. Yes, celebrities must understand that they cannot simply get away with anything they do. But it seems that gender inequality plays a role in how much someone is canceled and how severe the consequences will be. It’s childish to believe that men and women are held to the same standards when being canceled on social media.

Jenna Marbles took responsibility for her actions in the past. However, she shows clear signs of growth. In her video, she seems open to learn and grow even more. It takes maturity to assume a mistake publicly the way she did. Her male counterparts can benefit tremendously from learning with her.

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