Earlier this year I took a friend of mine to Harry Potter World for his birthday. While waiting to start our tour and innocently listing off the set and prop pieces which we were excited to see, I distinctly remember us exchanging much less innocent words as well, which we probably felt obliged to caveat to each other before we proceeded: ‘It’s such a disappointment that J.K. Rowling is transphobic.’ 

Though this statement holds so much weight, not much else was said and I didn’t feel the need for us to expand on it. I knew where the Left stood: J.K. Rowling was transphobic and a TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist); She was bad. As I am on the left and support trans rights, I had decided way back in 2020 when Rowling detonated her Twitter bomb that I therefore agreed. She was bad: A human manifestation of the darkness she herself had written about throughout my childhood, and which represented hateful ideas that threatened all that was good, equal, inclusive and progressive. No further investigation needed.

Well, I still don’t agree with J.K.’s primary concerns or the way she voiced them on Twitter. However, I do wish to correct the mindset I had (and that many of us have) that people are always simply ‘good’ or ‘bad’, depending on their views on certain topics. When it comes to culture war issues – including those as important and as highly implicated as the trans debate – this binary reductiveness builds an impenetrable wall between the issues we face and our way forward.*

*To be clear, this is not an article which in any way contests trans rights or denies the discrimination they are facing, but rather one which challenges the psychology behind and implications of cancel culture. I stand with the LGBTQI+ community and I believe my argument is compatible with that.

The compulsion we seem to have with categorising each other as being on the side of goodness or badness is known in relational psychology as ‘splitting’. Also known as ‘black and white thinking’, it refers to a failure in a person’s cognition to unify dichotomous, negative and positive attributes, into one realistic whole. In other words (and when applied to the appraisal of a person) it refers to one’s inability to see another person as realistically comprising a complex mixture of positive and negative qualities, beliefs or actions. Rather than appreciate the shades of grey, it leads us to think in extremes and more simply determine that all of a person’s actions or beliefs are ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’, and so are they. 

In the case of J.K. Rowling, this manifests into her being touted as ‘bad’ and transphobic due to her views on self-identification. This comes despite her self-proclaiming to fully believe in the psychological trauma of gender-dysphoria and saying she wants trans women to be safe to live out the lives they want. I do not mention this to defend J.K. Rowling, but to highlight the potential reductiveness of calling her transphobic, given at least her partial support of trans experiences.

It is important to note here that there is a threshold in which certain individuals have crossed throughout history, and in the present day, which make it practically impossible to not view them in a negative light. For these people (whom I don’t think need to be named), I’d guess that few psychologists would classify our disapproval of them to be reductive in thinking (but rather, rational). Furthermore, for certain individuals, it must be acknowledged that personal experiences and trauma will change the placement of that threshold, meaning that J.K. Rowling’s opinions may undoubtedly be a step too far for their cognition to unemotionally process.

One theory for the psychological motivation behind splitting or using this kind of all-encompassing rhetoric is that it is an instinctive defence mechanism, designed to protect us from the overwhelming and contradictory emotions attached to nuance. Though indeed surprising, recent and groundbreaking research has shown that the ambivalent relationships in our lives (i.e. “frenemies”) cause us more distress than the obviously negative ones (i.e. that colleague at work who always criticises you). It suggests to me that the degree of stability or self-worth gleaned from the positive interactions in an ambivalent relationship are threatened as soon as we experience the negative ones, due to the fact that there is an existing sense of trust in that relationship. By contrast, it is much easier to retain a positive sense of self when appraising someone as simply (and clearly) negative, as we have no trust or belief in their judgement to begin with.

It therefore becomes clearer how we easily come to determine each other as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – especially in the context of culture war debates which not only threaten our self-worth but also certain rights and liberties of ourselves or groups we care deeply about. However, this doesn’t mean it serves us or these groups/issues.

For starters, dismissing certain views as simply ‘bad’ or unworthy of debate seriously undermines any sense of obligation we should feel to ask questions and learn more about the topics they’re attached to. At a basic level, the ‘cancelling’ of certain people or ideas around culture war issues can lead to individuals feeling as though they should automatically understand why, meaning they are likely to hesitate to ask their peers questions for fear of inadvertently displaying a lack of conviction in the “correct” moral stance. The reality is though that this leaves us more ignorant and with less ideological conviction than we could have.

Additionally, dismissing certain views blocks us from understanding where they come from and how their views could be meaningfully challenged. Among self-aware voters and political commentators – and especially here at NOUS – we are constantly referring to the need to not just be informed but to read other perspectives, listen to other voices and observe other media outlets than simply our own. If your opinions are informed enough then you shouldn’t feel threatened to learn more or hear from the ‘other side’. But more importantly, can you really say your opinion is properly informed if you haven’t? 

This leads into the fraught discussion of freedom of speech. No matter how difficult certain perspectives may be for us to comprehend, proclaiming certain people or ideas to be ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ can lead to the concurrent assumption that we should disassemble all speaking platforms available to them. But this is dangerous. While I may personally feel afraid of validating potentially harmful ideas by agreeing they should be openly debated, there is an uncomfortable reality in challenging oneself with the question: ‘Why do I think I should get to decide what is harmful?’ To me, this means ideas which undermine the rights and dignities of certain groups, but to others it might represent attitudes which threaten long-standing traditions or their religion. There is always the risk that if ‘we’ silence ‘them’, then they can silence us. So, despite how hard it can be, we have to get better at listening, understanding and debating (with sensitivity), no matter how much we might disagree or wish that the rights of certain people in our society weren’t up for debate at all.

In doing this, there is at least hope of coming together which otherwise just cannot exist if we remain so fervently in our seats on the jury. In his book, ‘Together’, the US General Surgeon, Dr. Vivek Murthy describes how we must try to empathise and connect with each other again before we can have any hope of convincing each other. He cites the well-known story of Derek Black, the former white supremacist and grandson of a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, who renounced his white nationalism after being welcomed and befriended by Jewish students at his university. The young men attribute their connection to empathy and finding other ideological topics to relate to each other about, before delving into race over a year after meeting. While undoubtedly an extreme example, it shows us what is possible despite our psychological instincts to ‘split’ and spit. 

To go back to the example I have cited throughout this piece, the cancelling of J.K. Rowling has done nothing to further the rights of trans women. While I firmly believe we should continue to call out and challenge regressive or potentially harmful ideas, I also believe that ‘splitting’ and reductive rhetoric stands in the way of our goals. Since the Twitter fire in 2020, have the number of hate crimes reduced in the UK? No. Has trans rights progressed in the UK? No. Do more Britons understand trans rights than they did before 2020? No. In fact, fewer people support trans rights now than they did in 2018. 

Something’s got to give. We need to remember that views that run counter to ours often represent a significant plurality of the population, and simplifying their perspectives as ‘bad’ or unworthy of validation stops the conversation not only across the divide, but among our own ideological peers too. We must be braver and more empathetic if we ever hope to move towards more progressive, safe and unified societies.