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BY GINA MARTIN
Gina is a multi-award winning gender equality activist, writer, facilitator and speaker most well known for introducing anti-upskirting legislation in England and Wales, and running workshops on gender for Tomorrow Woman across Australia. You can follow her on Instagram, TikTok, and subscribe to her newsletter here. |
Loretta J Ross popularised the idea of “calling in” – coined by student Loan Trần in 2018 – as a new way of responding to harm. Instead of calling people out and punishing them either publicly or privately by shutting down conversation, it invites people into a conversation.
In her viral TED Talk she describes it as “a call-out done with love” and passionately speaks to creating a culture of it. But creating a culture where people feel safe enough to grow? That’s a tall order when social media is the antithesis of that; whether it’s two influencers arguing indirectly via TikToks rather than face-to-face, or user accounts spamming comment sections with insults, calling people out is everywhere. And of course it is. Our online landscape is built in the image of capitalism: it’s a numbers game, an attention economy, and if you win there’s social and economic rewards.
The reality is that call out culture isn't only shaping our online interactions, because our offline life is online.
I can’t explain how often adults I work with think online discourse is just “what people think” rather than what people they follow think. More people are developing their political principles on TikTok than they are in rooms with actual people. In my early twenties, I did the same. I’d spend hours reading comments on current news stories and not see how they shaped my conversations with friends offline. I was amped up and ready to win, not understand or listen.
Recently, I headed into a job on gender with powerful men after reading a week of content on misogynistic responses to Roe V Wade being overturned and I could feel, viscerally, that I had less capacity to hold constructive and accountable conversations. Yes, I was emotional and angry about the news, but I also wasn’t feeling grounded in my opinions because I had been marinating in call out culture until I was practically dysregulated.
There’s a myth of safety in calling out. We feel we’ve taken an action that solves the problem. But there’s also catharsis in it.
We process sometimes by punishing, and that makes sense in a society that has taught us the only answer to violence is punishment. It says we need to abandon that person’s humanity in order to punish them but when it comes to creating real change, it’s more complex than that, and Ross knows this feeling well; “until I started doing anti-fascist work, I was motivated by rage at injustices, which led me to have contempt for those who committed them. It didn’t create space for seeing them as complex people. Then Reverend Vivian told me, “When you ask people to give up hate, you need to be there for them when they do.” My first response was, “Oh, shit. I don’t want to hear that.” she says.
Oh shit, indeed. That’s where the real work is.
For marginalized communities rage, fear and anger is warranted, and if we choose to practice calling in — and it is a choice — we must create space for that pain to to be processed. In her book, Ross reminds us the first person to call in is yourself “so that you don’t overreact or walk around looking for a fight because of past harm. As others have said: Don’t let your past sabotage your future.”
The opposite of harming is healing, and to heal from harmful systems a person needs time, relationships and constructive conversation. No one heals alone.
Calling in, as a practice, is not about justifying, allowing or accepting harmful behaviour. It’s about committing to disrupt it in the most effective way: by creating space for someone to grow past it. To start, it could be as simple as a question like:
- “That’s an interesting perspective, tell me more?” or
- “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”
And, look, as always there is light and shade in this: please don't read this and suddenly try to call in an extremist. We don’t always have to be heroes. Safety is always the first consideration when dealing with harm. And there will be moments when calling out is necessary, too. Have I called out Andrew Tate in my work? Absolutely. But do I treat the men and boys I have worked with the same when they parrot his misogyny? Of course not. This isn’t about all or nothing. It’s about trying to live a new dominant culture into reality one practice at a time.
Can we heal and process our rage, and then give people space to grow? My hero bell hooks’ words come to mind at this moment:
It’s in the attempts at answering this question that real change begins. Now, go forth and call yourself in.
