Debate about cancel culture and metoo movement.

Callout culture allows marginalized people to seek accountability where the justice system fails.
The #metoo movement gave innumerable women (and some men) the ability to call out their countless abusers in a forum where the accusations might be heard and matter.

Olivia Goldhill, Quartz science reporter, explained, “Men have sexually assaulted and harassed women with impunity for millennia. Incredibly, ever since the allegations against Hollywood impresario Harvey Weinstein stopped being an ‘open secret,’ a few famous men have finally faced repercussions for their actions. Where inept courts and HR departments have failed, a new tactic has succeeded: Women talking publicly about harassment on social media, fueling the public condemnation that’s forced men from their jobs and destroyed their reputations.” [6]

Constance Grady, Staff Writer at Vox, stated, “Historically, we as a culture don’t do much to the rich and famous and powerful men of the world when women say that those men have hurt them. We give them Oscars and a seat on the Supreme Court and in the White House, and we call their accusers liars or hysterical or unreliable. We treat the men and their power as sacrosanct and the women and their pain as disposable.” [7]

By Oct. 2018, the end of the first year of #metoo, 429 people faced 1,700 allegations of sexual misconduct. That cohort included Harvey Weinstein, now convicted of third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act. [8] [9] [10] The allegations against Weinstein date to the late 1980s, and had long been an “open secret” in Hollywood. [11] Without callout culture, Weinstein may still be in a position of power.

Weinstein is the outlier in terms of criminal justice. Few powerful men are convicted of sexual misconduct. As of July 3, 2020, #metoo allegations have resulted in only 7 convictions and 5 other people charged with sexual misconduct. [10] However, 201 men in positions of power lost their jobs in the first year of #metoo due to sexual misconduct allegations that were posted on social media. [9]

As Jill Filipovic, JD, lawyer and writer, explained, “for the powerful, criminal convictions are rare, in part because these people have better tools to work the justice system and rarely fit the stereotype of a convict. So the court of public opinion ends up being where accusations–and just as often, accusers–are tried.” [12]

Beyond #metoo, other movements are able to demand justice. Black Lives Matter has repeatedly called out the killing of black men in particular by police officers. The result was perhaps the biggest global civil rights movement in history when 15 to 26 million people marched globally for black rights in June 2020. [13] [14]

"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.