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Another thing about the anti kink waves that keep happening is that their entire premise of shaming people out of deviant behaviour under threat of ostracism relies on a panopticon of community policing where the functions of the state are appropriated and absorbed into the community itself.
I mean that’s true of the entire phenomenon of the call-out; it’s a demand for other people to police the behaviour of those individuals the instigator has deemed undesirable and remove them from the community. This is sooo obvious when these people will flat out make shit up, message everyone their target interacts with (anonymously, of course) to dob them in regardless of whether they could be considered a stakeholder in the matter, and then turn their attention to those who refused to participate in their witch-hunt with the same ferocity as the initial wrongdoer if not more.
Like I don’t want to minimise the fact that they literally make shit up because that is what happens the vast majority of the time, but even on the rare occasions where something is actually amiss, you have to decide if you want to take on the role of cop among your own friends and if that approach is actually going to reduce harm (hint: it won’t).
The fact that people who refuse to participate are harassed, lied about, gossiped about etc especially highlights what’s really going on here: the point is to remove the option to refuse entirely. So it’s not even so much as a call to engage in policing but a threat.
Whatever the damn issue may be, is that how you want your community, your friends, to treat each other? Do you think people who behave this way have any commitment to radical politics, and to police abolition in particular?
If that seems like an exaggeration, consider how necessary community is to meet the material needs of the most marginalised people, and how being cut off from that community can be the difference between a warm bed and sleeping on the street. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these mobs target people who are either economically precarious or who make most of their income online
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