It is insane to me how social media, identity, and prevalent cultures all now seem to revolve around gatekeeping. You signal your identity and form an identity by creating arbitrary rules about who belongs to the in-group, where you attack the out-group. It’s insane how social interactions have devolved into nonstop hostility and constant attacks on people you feel don’t belong to your tribe. Absolutely bonkers!
People are the worst on social media. When people think of consent, it is typically sexual; however, consent applies to beliefs. If a person willfully believes something and willfully does not believe what you do, and you keep trying to persuade them or punish them (suspending, hiding, brigading, etc.) for a belief that objectively does not harm anyone but makes you feel insecure, you’re violating their consent and their autonomy. The issue I am seeing on social media is that people treat anything they disagree with as an existential threat, period. If it does not align with their cultural norms of how things ought to be, they treat it and respond to it as a threat. That’s insane because that tacitly implies the violation of consent is okay because you are right.
How the fuck did we get to the point where not having full access to people and having people comply with our cultural norms is required to feel safe? That is everywhere, including on Mastodon. A moral heuristic is, does what this person believe in or is doing hurt anyone? Keep in mind, if I have to speculate or extrapolate it to justify it, you’re not actually sticking to the case before you. People on the fediverse are literally reacting to the presence of any other social media site as an existential threat. Something as trivial as a social media site and a preference in network topology literally has people treating it as if they will die if they let in anyone who disagrees. I kid you not. Most Mastodon servers are now invite-only. That is insane, and it is insane that it has been normalized.
You will not die because someone disagrees with you about what social media platform they prefer. Good fucking lord!
It is a slippery slope. If someone freely holds a belief, and that belief does not directly harm others. Then repeatedly trying to punish, silence, or coerce them over it violates their autonomy because they did not consent to it. Consent is about what a person will do and what a person will not do. If you conclude that you can disregard what people believe and impose your values on them, expecting others to conform to your notion of right, it leads to disregarding people’s sexual autonomy. It’s disturbing that many haven’t connected the dots between privacy violations due to surveillance and the prevalence of sexual predators and how this often starts with dismissing an individual’s ability to choose for themselves what they believe. It starts small, and then escalates. Normalizing small autonomy violations (like silencing beliefs) leads to larger violations (like sexual coercion).
Coercing people based on their beliefs is thus a non-consensual intrusion. Relentless brigading, punishment, or deplatforming over non-harmful disagreement violates consent. Yet how this is normalized on all social media platforms, especially on Mastodon, is insane. It is the little brother of rape. No, that is not an exaggeration. People don’t start off by raping people. They start off with a bunch of smaller violations of autonomy. Repeatedly ignoring autonomy in small ways can normalize boundary violations in general until it reaches sexual levels.
Why do you think evangelicals have such issues with sexual predators? Well, they have a tacit belief that you can dismiss other people for not believing in their god, where you can keep pushing against the boundaries of what others will not believe in and where they have not consented to being evangelized to. It starts small.
The issue in Western culture is that people just do not like having to consider whether or not a person consents. Period. At all. If one person believes something and another person believes something different, and they both freely hold those beliefs, that means neither of them consents to having their mind changed. They fundamentally disagree. If they explain their reasons to each other and still don’t change their minds, that’s just a disagreement. But if one of them responds with coercion, aggression, or violence, what they’re really saying is that they feel threatened by the other person not consenting and not acquiescing to their view.
That’s the problem with social media interactions. People feel threatened by other people’s autonomy, yet are simultaneously highly defensive about their own. That’s why Western culture is so fucking rapey.
Just as you shouldn’t force someone to have sex without their consent, you shouldn’t force someone to adopt your beliefs. This is a violation of consent, because the other person did not agree to be compelled to believe what you believe. People can freely choose their beliefs—they are choosing their own mental state. If they do not want to believe what you do, you are violating their ability to consent to changes in their mental state. This is similar to how violating a person’s ability to consent to a physical, sexual interaction changes their physical state. If people within a society learn that ignoring consent in one domain is acceptable, it becomes easier to ignore it in other domains.
You are not entitled to other people’s bodies or minds—which includes their beliefs—without their consent. That would be a controversial take in a lot of Western cultures. If you feel yourself getting ready to type up an argument somewhere about why I am wrong, you’re proving why I am right, lol.
Many people instinctively argue that they should convince others because they think they’re “right” or “morally justified.” But your conviction in your rightness does not grant permission to coerce others if what they believe is not harming anyone. The idea of, “But my values are the right and correct ones,” acts as a cover for normalizing boundary violations. They are not honest with their reasons. They do not want the person to submit because it’s the right thing to do. It’s about exerting influence over another person. It’s about domination as a means to feel secure. That is a very dangerous place for our society to be in.
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