Moral panics around "cancel culture" are failing us all, especially when it comes to talking about sexual violence

on the Internet. It seems like moral panics about cancel culture are everywhere, and partially I kind of get it. It is so much easier to flatten out complex situations into a cancel culture, run them up trend piece that will get tons of quicks and attention, but doesn't actually inform or help us understand things more clearly? So what happens when we rely on lofty buzzwords like cancel culture in lieu of a deeper exploration, especially for a topic

that's really important and sensitive like sexual violence. Recently, the media outlet The Cut published a long read about a teenager who they say was canceled by his classmates after he non consensually shared a nude image of his girlfriend with his friends. Now, there is a lot going on in this piece and you should probably read it to really understand today's conversation. But the main framing device and argument is that the teenager is actually the victim of canceling.

And this feels really unhelpful to me. So I really want to talk about what gets left out of the conversation when this happens. Survivor and independent scholar willgatu Wanjuki says that this cancel culture framing doesn't actually really get us to a more useful understanding of sexual violence or rape culture. So you have a really like long and storied career as an award winning like international anti rape activists and survivor justice advocate, can you tell us about Yeah,

it goes way back. Yeah, I guess now it is way back. And my college wasn't that long ago. Yes, it was that long ago. Um, but I started like I started as an activist. Um, I was assaulted in college and my school didn't handle it really well, and at first I blamed myself, But then the next semester actually met another survivor and we realized that it wasn't just about our stories because we noticed a lot of similarities with the same administrators. So we got together and

we fought for a better sexual small policy. While things were picking up at school, I got expelled. It was under like really shady situation, but you know, it happened, and so I was like, all right, since I'm not in school, I'll guess I'll take it like to the internet and do more. And I would blog about it. And that was really pivotal because other students from other schools saw my blog, they reached out to me. We joined forces and we asked the Obama administration to enforce

Title nine in a better way. We're saying, hey, we're being failed, and they actually listened to us, which was really interesting in a lot of ways. So taking from there just seeing to power social media, but also the power of like traditional media as well as somebody who was like a contributor and did a lot of communications work. So I've always have been working around media, social media, activism, survivor rights, um policy, that sort of stuff is just

very near and dear to me. I would say the phrase, you know, the personals political is definitely a guiding force

for what I do. Yeah, something I really admire about your work is the way that you're continuing to use the Internet and digital media to educate but also sort of entertained and really show people, you know, better ways, better frameworks for how they can understand things like survivor, justice, consent, and the way that those issues are playing out all around us, whether it's on reality TV and our culture

in the news. You're really somebody who I think is excellent at using the internet to cut through what can sometimes be a confusing and chaotic catholic Yeah, I think it's really because I was so misinformed when I started out as an activist, not even just as an activist, but as a survivor, taking a while to even identify what happened to me. And I thought back, and I was thinking, I was, like the media told me it was just about a stranger in the alley way attacking you.

And I was thinking about how being like unprepared and misinformed are so well connected. And I am also like not super a people person, at least not in person. On the internet, it's cool, right, So it was just it seems like just to be a really good combo of sort of saying, Okay, I see where these problems are. I like being on the internet. It's really rapid pace.

Um let's challenge all these assumptions that are there in the media, and like, how can we change our relationship to media even if we can't change it, because I think it's so easy on especially on Twitter, right, and even I would say even a little bit on TikTok, to get really outraged, to pile on people and just say like it sucks. But I noticed there's all these circular things, so sort of like instead of getting mad every single time and not really thinking about the deeper

implications or like how it can be systemic. Um, you know, let's move towards that that lens looking at the systemic stuff. Because it's just for me, I like to ration my outrage. I want to be strategic. I wanted to be effective. You know, it's tough because it's also like the world is on fire. But also then you have your own personal life stuff that you need to deal with. Um. And since a lot of folks are very inflammatory on there on social media and the Internet, I think it's

really important to show a different way. How can you be authentic? How can you be sincere? But also just like how can you still be rooted in reality? Right? And like I try to like maintain my values and as much as I can, you know, in terms of just how I interact with information and try to be I try to be useful. I want to empower people. I don't want to just tell people how to feel. I want to be like, this is how I feel, and this is why you Here's what you can take

from it. Late last month, The Cut published an article called Canceled at seventeen about a high school or they called Diego, who, while drunk at a party, shared a nude image of his then girlfriend Fiona with his friends without consent. Now, to be frank, what he did is a crime in many jurisdictions, but the article goes on to talk about how the students at his school ostracized him for what the Peace states was just a quote stupid,

drunken mistake on his part. The Peace spent a lot of time on what this all feels like for Diego emotionally, who the article goes out of their way to describe as a sweet, goofy kid who was being shunned by his classmates. We're also told that the climate of the

school really fueled all of this behavior. The student body back in in person schooling after lockdowns were now reflecting on incidents of sexual harassment and assault from years prior, with new eyes and feeling new anger about the ways the school handled them. Feeling fed up by administrators, the students take matters into their own hands. They organize a walkout to protest the schools and action. They circulate a

list of kids to watch out for it. So, I actually think there is a lot going on in this piece that is useful to unpack, Like what happens when adults fail to create a safe and supportive learning environment for young people so much so that those young people take matters into their own hands. And what are the racial dynamics at play behind the fact that the majority of the young men on the people to watch out for a list are boys of color? Or what are

the institutional factors that play here? For instance, in the Trump administration, Secretary of Education Betsy Divas completely overhauled Title nine, the federal civil rights law that governs how schools must handle sexual assault in schools. But this piece doesn't really get into any of that. Instead, it tells us that Diego is the victim of cancel culture, run them up, that young people, fueled by social media wokesm have come together to ruin the life of a sweet kid over

one tiny transgression. That piece from last month in the cut. When I saw that piece, I thought, Wow, this intersect with so many of the issues that I know that you care about. Um. And so you were the first person and I was like, I really want to know her take. What were your initial thoughts on that? Man? I feel like there's so many waves of it. But first I was rolling my eyes because it starts off canceled at seventeen. I'm like, oh my god, not canceled, right,

because it goes back the whole cancel culture stuff. And I was thinking, how that's already inherently anti black. And I remember the cover was a clown. It was a clown, like a sad clown on a skateboard. So it's already like framing it as this, like this child, and then you read it and quote unquote he was canceled. Was just that he was ostracized after sharing nudes of his girlfriend non consensually, right, and then there's also little hints

about him potentially being abusive in other ways. Um, And so it was just it was it was a perfect example of hympathy, right. The framing. It was a very um, I think it's a worthwhile topic, and I think she touched upon things that other people should have covered. Basically, um, the way that it was from his point of view, like if you if you read it sort of like he's the victim. There was a lot of UM. She

spent a lot of time. I'm talking about how badly he felt, how badly his parents felt, how you know, all these sort of things, how bad the administrators felt. It was always about everyone but the victims, how badly they felt. Very little spent on the victim, what she thought, any of those sort of things. So that was just

very um that stood out to me. And also the timing stood out because it technically was a Title nine story, even though they made it seem like it's about this boy being victimized, and they did this on the week of the fiftieth anniversary of Title nine. I think it was a week up or the week after. So it was just very much like a part of this backlash

against Title nine, which is a civil rights law. I feel like folks don't say that enough, like this is about civil rights and education, um, and also just part

of a larger part of the backlash to me too. Yeah, I mean that's something else that I really like how you framed that, because one of the things that stuck out right away for me for that piece was the way that Diego is framed as this, you know, good kid, blah blah blah and his ex girlfriend, the person that he you know, non non consensually shared new images of the writer goes out of her way to talk about how beautiful she was in this way that just feels

a little suset, almost feels like the implication is that Diego was so proud of her beauty that showing these images even without her consent, she really should have almost been like complimented or flattered. And something about the way it was framed just made me think that the writer was trying to get us the reader to think, like, well, is what he did really so bad? It was essentially another way of saying she was asking for it by being so beautiful, and that was really and and that

was a way to make him seem less responsible. And it was really creepy because these are children. Why are you talking about how attractive it um child is? And especially we're gonna be talking about sexual violence right sharing someone's nudes non consensually is a form of sexual violence.

So why are we talking about attractiveness? Because now you're blurring the lines between sexual violence and sex and I think that is a big part of rape culture, and that's something that the media loves to do, is just sort of saying, well, how did the victim ask for it? How is the perpetrator not that responsible? Let's take a

quick break back. At this point, it seems almost impossible to have not encountered at least one piece about cancel culture about a mock friend of the show Michael Hobbs, has a great episode of his podcast You're Wrong About All about how most of the time, these pieces making puffed up our guments about the threat that cancel culture plays in our workplaces and college campuses are usually just cherry picked anecdotes that totally fall apart under any scrutiny.

Yet media outlets, even pretty mainstream ones like The Atlantic, keep churning them out, lending credibility to this idea that people are routinely losing their entire livelihoods for saying or doing one small, off color thing. It's yet another way that our digital media ecosystem has incentivized these divisive but ultimately kind of meaningless buzzwords to describe situations in ways that make us all less informed and more divided. You hit on something earlier where you said that it's it

was a story. It was like ostensibly a Title nine story. But then they use this framing of you know, cancel culture, run amuck. Why do you think that's the framing that they chose. It feels so unhelpful. I think because they wanted to be unhelpful. Um. I think we also have to understand the role of media and um around issues like this, that it's form of social control in the sense that it is basically reflecting the values of the

people in charge. Right, so it's going to align with the values of the systems of oppression that we have in force, like heado patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism. Um, they hate rights. So the media is going to use language, the medias is gonna use language that is going to be very, um vague. I think that's very much something that is common amongst reactionaries in general. They'll use very vague language so they can twist it right because they

started off as canceled. You have to open it up to see what it's about. Then you're like, oh, this kid did something really bad, and not only that, the language you used before she even told us what he did. I was like, please don't judge him, blah blah blah. I was like, whoa, they're like very heavy handed. Like I mean, I've read a lot of bad things about sexual by Lens, but that was really shocking where she was just explicitly like, don't judge this boy who did

something objectively wrong. Um, So yeah, I think it's just about it was it was able to use this umbrella where it's like either you're an assailant or you said something racist. Then she also just like stopped saying what different kids did and then giving us their opinion as if it's truth. Right, So it's just it's just it's a manipulation tool. Is the Is the the short of it.

I see time after time after time after time, all of these pieces where it's like cancel culture run amuck, and it's like, actually, this seems like a couple like a couple of anecdotes that you've really cherry picked and and and really blown up or it just it just feels like a lot of breathless writing about something, but there does also seem to be like an actual story worth telling in the piece, I would argue, because when I read that piece, all I could think was like, Wow,

these young people have been so clearly failed by the adults in their lives that they feel like and the institutions in their lives that they feel like the only way that they can get any kind of justice is taking matters into their own hands, and no ship turns out. A bunch of teenagers acting on their own without any kind of like meaningful guidance or institutional support might not handle things in the in the most productive way. And I'm wondering, like what, like, why not tell that story

because it's a story worth telling? You know. I think part of it is that, you know, part of the backlash. It's a way to sort of recalibrate power. So I would see this as a way to sort of like, Okay, um, too many people were supportive of Title nine and sexual

self survivors, so let's sort of shift the script. I think council culture in a book is just a lot easier to write, and it's a lot you can do a lot of innuendo, a lot of implying this is just part of again, we're very much in this re actionary culture we're trying to like, so we're seeing people using the media to sort of reclaim um, hegemonic masculinity

or toxic masculinity. I would say they they're like excusing the toxic part to reinforce hegemonic masculinity, because with hegemonic masculinity, you know, a lot of theorists will talk about how it's about how there's power in the legal sense then also like in the public sphere and then also in the private sphere. So it's a way to sort of reassert that power by um, not looking at the real problem.

The media loves. Episodic framing when it comes to sexual violence is something that's been studied and they also studies also show that when you have an episodic framing, when you sort of like say it's this kid being victimized, um, people are less likely to be supportive of survivors because they're not going to really know that this is part of a cultural problem. And when people realize that this is a cultural problem that hasn't gone away, people are

gonna start thinking, wait, who's benefiting from this? Weight who's not changing things. So I think it's a way to maintain the status quo. And essentially, because how many adults are going to write about themselves being like failing a bunch of kids, very few people are going to be willing to admit that. So what do you do? You kind of like shove it under the rug. All right, it's the cats out of the bag. We couldn't control

the activists, right, like you're welcome, y'all right? Like as I feel like my friends and I were activists and were like, whoah, we got we gotta fix that. And so instead of validating it as a real thing, they go to this other angle that's just very um yeah, it's manipulative, it's dishonest, and they know what they're doing. Do you feel that the media just consistently fails survivors in the way that it frames and tells your story? Absolutely? Absolutely. Um.

So it's really interesting. I've been reading about just media and campus sexual assault in the different connections between it, and there's been a long legacy of specifically white women coming out to um doubt sexual violence and education. So it was more so about campus sexual assaults specifically starting around in the nineteen eighties nineteen nineties, and it was about like this was before there was a lot of

research out. So first it was sort of like do we really know, we need we need data, we don't really trust just a bunch of women lying. Then the data came out there like the data is wrong, this is just it doesn't make any sense, blah blah blah. So now the argument here is that cancel culture has gone wrong. And then when you use cancel culture, you can blame low key black people, right, you can blame

the internet. Couldn't quote Twitter, uh, you know, you can just blame a bunch of minoritized groups and sort of like it's a way to funnel that resentment against people who have been getting um more visibility. One thing is about the racism in the piece. I mean, it's it's so interesting because she they do mention that like the boys, like most of the boys who were like sort of singled out, we're all voice of color. Yeah, so that is something that's been used increasingly in the past couple.

Actually they started using that um line the reactionaries, the anti title nine people when my friends and I sort of came on the scene and so they're trying to make it as sort of like freeing it, as these white girls are trying to ruin these black boys lives. And that is really awful in a sense because all right, I know, as me, as a black survivor and someone who was assaulted by a black person, um, I hesitated to come forward for a while because I did not

want to reinforce that representation. I think it's really harmful and media only talks about men and boys of color as potentially perpetrators, are only as the accused because you're racing them as victims, and then you're also silencing the

people that they do victimize. Because the thing is is most sexual violence is within the race, but they don't talk about that, and so it's really messed up of how they tried to emphasize that while erasing the victims, because like maybe most of the victims are are girls of color or people of color, but we we don't

really hear that. She talks about the activists being mostly women of color, but then she labels them as tribalistic, you know, and exorcistic, you know, like really trying to be like these are these irrational like like primal thing and It was really interesting how she kind of frames it as like it's a primal thing when you're supporting survivors and being an activist. But god forbid um but everyone else, right, the users, they're enablers, they're all the

rational people. And there was also like a little bit of a dog whistle where she talked about privilege in ways it just sort of show that like, if you believe in privilege, then you're going to be somebody who will be a counselor like someone who cancels, and that's bad. There's a lot of like little like nitpicky things. Oh and then when she talked about him going on a trip learning about the civil rights movement and then she was like that's where he learned. Oh, that's right, that's

where he learned about negative power. I was like, it was like, you did not just use the civil rights movement to like equated with a boy committing sexual violence against his exchol friend. What are you doing? So you know the way that they like really like to like move us away from true power, conscious analysis, right and try and flatten it to like anyone can be a victim. And when you mean anyone, it's the people with the

most power. Yeah, the people with the most power who happened to be facing some consequences for their Here, he's still got to go to four proms. So first of all, you still have friends. Number two, you're not poor because proms are not cheap. But anyway, yeah, if you're going to four proms, I don't know. I mean, it's a little it's a little hard for me to be like, oh, you're being socially ostrious. Has four proms as hell? What

there's another thing. I was like, Yeah, it's just like these white ladies, you know, and you know that it just hits at that white liberal racism. Was like, oh no, I don't want to support something that accuses black boys of rape. But then they don't talk about how basically, with anything in regards to schools code of conduct, students of color disproportionately disciplined. So if you're only doing it

around rape, you're just being racist. And you're using rape culture to do it, because that's really messed up to only care about it when you're trying to undermine survivors

who are often survivors of color. Absolutely, and I think the piece does at at once is sort of concern trolling around like oh, I don't want to be you know, criminalizing boys of color, but then also blames people of color for this like cancel culture, abound a monk, Like it's like, well, geez, which is exactly definitely playing both sides and hoping that you don't catch up on it, right, And I think unfortunately, I'm sure most white people would not be able to pick up on that because it's

just sort of those things that you can read in between the lines. But it's, um, it's really weird how they're using race in this really manipulative way. More after a quick break, let's get right back into it. I feel like it is part of the course for the way that we are using we're seeing like issues like race and gender like just become these issues that are just used to inflame instead of having like thoughtful conversations, they're just be They're just being used to like stoke tensions,

like further stoke tensions. Yeah. I think education has always been a site of like inciting tensions and trying to spread moral panics. So I think this is just another way that they're manifesting that. Yeah, I see that so

often echoed on the Internet. I think that it's I mean, this is just my personal pet theory, but I think it's like why Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter in part because it's like minoritized groups and groups who historically have been marginalized and had power taken from us are able to use these tools to build power, to build a voice, to build moments, to build culture, and to

push back. And I think that that is really threatening to a certain type of person, really really committed and uh you know, really committed to having power and making sure that people like us don't really have. It's a lot of the cancel culture rhetoric is about like who has control over the public square right, who can control

the discourse, who can influence it? And so since um, yeah, minoritized people are have had like, you know, just unprecedented reach, now they are going to use traditional media where white people, where the you know, the rich white men have control, and they're going to commission these sort of things to

to legitimize a sense of canceling. And then also in sense you legitimize people who dare to speak up as a survivor, people who dared to be in solidarity with survivors, it's just very much about condemning, um, everyone who dares challenge his status quo. Yeah, are there ways that you like, in a perfect world, how would the internet and media and our digital ecosystem, like, how could those institutions actually show up for survivors? Is there is there a world

where that could exist? Oh, it definitely could exist. It's not going to exist with the way things are now, just because I think something that's, um, something that's happened that a lot of people don't talk about that is that, um, you know, so much media has closed, right, there's just lost less competition. There's been a lot of mergers and stuff like that, and there's some theory about how when

that happens. When there's less competition, there's more incentive to cater to the narrative of the people in charge of hegemonic narratives and the hegemonic discourses, which is why you'll get more like grape culture, more racism. Why you know, fascists will get platforms more easily than like victims of

police of violence. What we have to do is essentially have media organizations that are trauma informed and also their values are not about making money or catering to power, but rather challenging power, because it's this is something that you need to have an expertise, you need to be educated about. It's really complicated to talk about sexual violence because very often I read things and I can read in between the lines. But I know most people would

not be able to do that. They wouldn't know that. Um. You know, when I was reading the article, it was kind of like best hits of all the different reactionary things that I've seen when they're talking about title nine. Um,

so it's just about incentives, changing the incentives. Who gets funding, who gets to lead newsrooms, right, who gets disseminated, and how it's really um, when you think about it, we're very much in the domain where, yes, social media has been great and we have chipped way a little bit at that power, but we still have to acknowledge that the power in the media has is just disproportionately in favor of you know, a few old, rich, white dudes,

and that's by design. Yeah, I mean I think so often when I think about, like, what will it take to get to a better future one, you know, one where survivors are supported, it's capitalism. It's like it's like it is tearing down systems and institutions, and it seems so you know, lofty, far off, but it seems to always come back to that. It was actually realizing the connections between rape culture and the media that made me realize. I was like, oh, capitalism has to go because there's

literally no financial incentive to be against rape culture. There's only so many financial incentives, and if every single business is existing to stay in business to make as much money as possible, that's a huge disadvantage for survivors and for the entire society because mere exposure to rape myths and headlines actually influences people. They're more victim blaming, they accept more rape myths, and then people who are inclined

to commit sexual violence are actually more emboldened. So this is these are all messages that we are all living with the implications of that we don't really talk about. That's just really um upsetting. But yeah, capitalism is we have to think about how basically capitalism as we know it in the United States um was built on sexual violence. Right. It's the sexual violence against indigenous people too as form of colonialism, and then sexual violence against enslaved Africans where

raping people could literally create more capital. And so when we think about that legacy, if we think about this economic system that we're in, that it um has been run to normalize sexual violence because it is profitable. We

have to we have to throw it away. We're not going to be able to really dig out there, Like obviously I'm gonna do what I can, but yeah, capitalism and um hetero patriarchy, Right, we just have a lot of sexist people, a lot of sis sexist people because we're seeing the rise of transphobia and the way that the idea of groomers, right, people are able to use those labels, those like your predator, you're this, you're that strategically because we're so ignorant about rape. Why are we

so ignorant about rape? In a large part because of the media. Why because capitalism makes the media incentivized for us to be ignorant about it. Yeah, I guess I it's difficult to not see the ways that these things are all connected. And like, once you start pulling that thread, you're like, oh shit, it's the whole ball of apertly,

it's like throw it all away. It's just it's all it's this is why intersectionality got so popular, right, because people were really drawn to the idea of like this is all connected in some way at some point, you know, to go back to that piece. Something that really I kind of Scott stuck on after reading it is that the idea that it's it was the perpetrator who was like ostracized when I was young, when I was in high school. I you know how like every high school

has like that thing that happened in your school. Well, the thing that happened in our school was that female classmate of ours um her boyfriend showed a video of her to our entire school into like neighboring schools. And when I tell you, like like she was completely ostracized. I don't even remember the guy's name. And she was the one who had to Like I think they left. I think they moved away. Like it was like it

was like the biggest thing of our school. And so, you know, we were all in high school, and so certainly, I mean I think back and I'm like, wow, we really fucked up and failed that that young woman. But today part of me was so surprised that the party that was ostracized was the perpetrator, not the victims, because that certainly wasn't what the vibe was and what I was saying. I mean, I think that was something a lot of people were saying on Twitter, like, whoa, they

actually ostracized the perpetrator for what. Yeah, I was really surprised because it makes me think about slut walk. In a Toronto police officer suggested that women should avoid dressing like sluts to avoid sexual violence. In response, anti rape activists started the slut Walk movement to protest rape culture, victim blaming and slut shaming. Slut Walk was about like

twenty eleven something like that. It was that sounds right, yeah, but made me think about how, um, you know, feminists are trying to reclaim the word slut, even though depending on your identity, it's not exactly like as achievable. But that's like another conversation. However, it was about how slut. We used to talk a lot about how the word slut was used against victims of sexual violence because they would be the ones who were bullied, they would be

the ones whould be ostracized. It was basically showing how slut shaming was an umbrella term to sort of hide what actually is being done to whom who has the power, who's the real victim? Um? So this is really surprising. And I think because it is so more common for the victim to be ostracized, it made this decision even more interesting because it's sort of like, oh, my gosh,

if it starts, this is going to be bad. And it really frames it as like it's normal and good for the victims, who are usually girls right to carry that shame and the consequences of the actions of um, their perpetrators. Yeah, you just I mean, it's normal and good for the victims who are usually girls to carry that shame. That's I guess, especially today when we're all having this conversation about a ten year old child who is a rape survivor of rape who was pregnant and pregnated.

This idea of like what we ask women and girls, what shame we asked them to absorb, to keep, to keep these societal things running, to make to make sure that this power and balance doesn't shift back. And I guess that's just really weighing heavy on my my heart right now. The way that you put that really stung a little. Like I remember I was reading something and I realized that. I was like, oh shit. I was like, Oh, they're okay with this. Oh they think we deserve this.

Oh Like it's just sort of like a damn it. This is why I don't believe in giving gory details. I don't believe that showing the violence will convince people because there are a lot of people who think that's just how the world is supposed to be UM, And I think that's something that we need to reckon with because I think it'll make us more effective in our strategy and how we respond. But especially we're thinking about UM. How you know, Christianity very much has shaped our sense

of what victimhood is. And when you take that into consideration, you have to think about Jesus Christ, who's like the ultimate victim. And they use Jesus Christ as a way to sort of show that suffering is good in a sense, right, and it's kind of twisted in a way to be like, this is just all a part of God's plan. Your suffering is a part of God's plan. It brings you closer to Godliness. And when you're in a society where the marginalized people are seen as inherently bad, right, women

are the original sinners. You know, trans people and queer people are you know, they're they're deviant. Then it's sort of like this weird concept of like, if you're suffering, we're kind of helping you. Mm hmm, Like um, it reminds me so much of that Orneal Herson quote if you're silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it, like teaching us that we should find empowerment through our suffering or that should be like, you know,

a badge of honor. Like I'm just I'm just so done with anything that tells me that something that is negative for me that I but I should be happy about it. I'm so done with that. And I feel

like that that isn't our culture everywhere definitely is. It's definitely a way to sort of maintain not sort of, it's one of the many ways that they maintain the status quot because it's a sort of gas lighting as well, right, because if it's if suffering is normal, then we don't need to think about systems of oppression, we don't need to think about rape culture because like that's just how

the world is. And so it's like it was it's sort of like an anti call to action if you think about the article it has said's right, because it's like don't change no, no, no, Like just if you blame the victim, if you coddle abusers, that's okay, that's cool, you know, it's it's it's low key that like, don't get too worried about all the hubbub on Twitter and college campuses, like it'll be okay. It's a call to

inaction exactly. So, given where we're at, everything that's happened in our culture when it comes to survivors and how how we fail them, don't support them tell their stories. Are what do you think about what's on the horizon? Are you hopeful in this moment today? Like how are you feeling about what it means to be a survivor

and to have survivor stories be told? Um, you know, I'm hopeful in a sense where I have seen from my time on college campuses, which was really hard for people to talk about rape, to now we're having that ass high schoolers doing rallies and like getting administrators to resign. That's amazing, Like I see so much progress where students are really stepping up their occupying frat houses, they're occupying administrators offices. Like people are catching on and I'm seeing it,

and that gives me hope. I think it's easy to fall into despair when you're on social media doom scrolling, especially since I feel like I just, you know, I follow a lot of news. I follow out of anxious people, follow a lot of vulnerable people, you know. But there is progress. They if there wasn't, they wouldn't be fighting back against us so hard. They're cheating. They're cheating, and we're still beating their asses. So I got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to

say hi. You can be just at hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Brigittad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer, and sound engineer. Michael Amato

is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget DoD. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for more podcasts from iHeart Radio check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.