But cancellation can feel like an execution. It should be saved for the worst offenders, those who wilfully and knowingly seek to cause harm. Not everyone deserves the death penalty on the Internet.

We all have our blind spots and biases. We tire of explaining them, of the responsibility of educating other people how to think of and speak about us. Discrimination can feel like a whip on an already scarred back.

Racist terminology has become a kind of shorthand so that people don't have to explain what they mean when they notice someone's other-ness. It takes a while to become aware of this, even when you are not white. When you see it, you can't unsee it.

Did the publishers of Some Kids have anyone non-white even read the book so they could pick up on things that would not occur to Kate as offensive? I read how the editors/PR folks she met with hadn't even read her book.

Perhaps the writers that called her out for her cluelessness assigned a malice to her that was born out of their own anger at being discriminated against, in culture and in society. Twitter in those days gave power to people who couldn't raise their voices against a powerful industry.

I'm glad to meet you. Somehow doctors and medicine keep showing up in my work. I'm interested in the field of narrative medicine as well, and in how doctors and medical professionals are portrayed in fiction.