Good morning honorable members of the jury and my worthy oponents,

“Call out culture” as that term is currently used is a relatively new

phenomenon, arising from use of electronic social media like Twitter,
Facebook, etc., in which a self-identified “social justice” advocate will “call
out” — that is, identify publicly — some person known to the other members
of their social network, whose behavior falls short of the “ideal” preached by
the political movement they all profess to support, in some particular way.
And, because of the instant and often viral nature of social networking these
days, such an accusation can spread far and wide and run all the way around
the world before the truth (as understood by more sober minds) has a chance
to put its pants on. This can do irreparable harm to individuals’ reputations,
justified or not — and because it happens instantly, without due process,
without a chance to respond before social judgment is passed and that person
is ostracized from the network, in practice it more resembles a good old-
fashioned lynching, or kangaroo-court proceeding.
I believe it’s vitally important to properly “call perpetrators to account” for
injustices when we see them, and not to brush them under the rug and allow
them to fester. That includes everything from instances of personal bullying
and abuse (including sexual abuse and assault), on up through institutional
racism and sexism and economic exploitation of underprivileged classes, right
on through incipient authoritarian tendencies in government and other
institutions which limit human rights, all the way to crimes against humanity
such as wars of conquest and genocide. That’s why we needed, and got, such
healing-sunshine forms of transparency and restoration as the Nuremberg
Trials, the South African and Argentine truth-and-reconciliation
commissions, and so on.
But that is vastly different from pointing the finger at one, particular,
individual person on social media and “outing” his or her beliefs and actions
to an intimate, personal circle of friends and acquaintances who will
thereafter ostracize the target individual. That’s just bullying, by another
name. And bullying an alleged bully does not solve the problem of
bullying; it just perpetuates it.