A single tweet landed a lecturer at Baylor University in rhetorical hot water, which is yet another example of the widespread toxicity of cancel culture. Cancel culture is the Left’s anti-free speech tactic to publicly shame, ridicule, or isolate people for various actions or words.
English lecturer Dr. Christina Crenshaw tweeted her thoughts about President Joe Biden’s policies on transgender rights, “But what if I don’t want my biological sons in the bathroom with my biological daughters? Do the 99% of us who do not wrestle with gender dysphoria have a voice? No? What if I told you Title IX was never meant to apply to >1% of the students over the 99%? Doesn’t matter? OK. Cool.”
Crenshaw’s tweet was in response to a Christian pastor’s opinion on Biden’s policies, seemingly agreeing with the pastor’s point. The pastor, Daniel Darling, wrote that Biden’s executive order on transgender issues and the expected overturning of the Mexico City policy on abortion “both anti-science and bad for human flourishing.”
She has since deleted the tweet, but that did not stop the cancel culture mob from expressing its rage.
Students saw her tweet and they reported her to Baylor’s Title IX office and other entities. The university said that Crenshaw will not be teaching this spring semester and did not elaborate beyond that.
The student newspaper, the Baylor Lariat, initially called Crenshaw’s tweet “transphobic” and offensive. The newspaper later issued a lengthy apology and correction to admit that it should have called her tweet “offensive” and the staff should not have published their opinions as facts. The paper claimed that “It was irresponsible to publish the story as was originally posted. We should have simply reported on the facts of the situation, and we would like to apologize to Dr. Crenshaw for this lapse in our publication’s journalistic standards and for unfairly labeling her tweets.”
It is disconcerting to see that a single tweet led to an out-of-control, social media-driven controversy, when an open conversation would have sufficed.
The Left has tried to cancel ancient Western texts, such as Homer and his work, “The Odyssey,” as well as notable authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dr. Suess, and William Shakespeare. Left-wing radicals tried to pressure a pro-Trump board regent in Michigan to resign and attempted to ban former Trump administration officials from speaking on Harvard University’s campus, to name a couple of examples of the cancel culture in action.
