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Academic Activism, Objectivity, and Public Outreach

photograph of teacher presenting to packed classroom

In a previous column, I argued that academics should not — with significant qualifications — be political activists. In his thoughtful and admirably objective reply, Tim Sommers makes two principal arguments highlighting a genuine weak point in my original treatment of this issue, and thus helpfully pushes me to shore up and defend that particular aspect of it. Ultimately, though, neither argument is fully persuasive.

First, Sommers contends that the conception of objectivity that underlies my argument against academic activism is “unhelpful,” since it conflates objectivity with “having no views at all or concealing your views.” But Sommers rightly points out that the “undecided and the waffling” are not necessarily more objective than “the firmly committed.” If this conception of objectivity — call it objectivity as disinterestedness or ambivalence — formed the basis of my case against academic activism, then Sommers’ argument would constitute a serious challenge.

Fortunately, my argument does not rely on a notion of objectivity that identifies it with either disinterestedness or ambivalence. My idea of objectivity is, I hope, uncontroversial: to be objective is to be capable of properly weighing evidence and arguments. My empirical claim is that being passionately committed to a political goal tends to make it more difficult to be objective in this sense because it increases our susceptibility to various well-documented cognitive biases, such as motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. In my view, then, the relation between objectivity and a certain kind of disinterestedness is not definitional, but empirical. That is, “objective” does not mean “disinterested”; rather, there is a contingent psychological link between being objective and being disinterested in a particular way.

Thus, it is far from the case that one cannot possibly be objective about some issue while also being passionately committed to a political goal related to that issue. Nor does objectivity require either suspension of judgment or ambivalence: one can easily be firmly convinced of the correctness of one position in a certain debate, yet not passionately committed to enacting a political goal that flows from that position. In fact, I would go further and say that passionate interest in some issue is often necessary to motivate a person to devote significant time and energy to understanding it. Objectivity, then, does not require or even favor disinterestedness in all respects. However, it seems to be the case that being passionately committed not just to understanding an issue, but to the attainment of a political goal related to the issue, tends to degrade one’s ability to properly weigh evidence and arguments concerning it.

Because my conception of objectivity does not identify it with disinterestedness, and certainly not with having no views or only weakly-held views, confining one’s pedagogy to the “realm of the reasonable” — that is, only teaching “positions and reasons generally recognized by professionals in our fields” — does not represent a departure from objectivity. Nor does good pedagogy require “disguising your own views” to be consistent with this conception. Rather, objectivity requires manifesting the capacity to properly weigh evidence and arguments — and in particular, to take seriously proper evidence and plausible arguments that cut against one’s own political commitments. Being a passionately committed political activist not only makes doing this more difficult; it also makes one appear less able to do it. But in teaching, both objectivity and the appearance of objectivity matter.

There is one more argument against objectivity that Sommers does not make, but which is now so commonplace in some academic quarters that addressing it at this juncture would be worthwhile. It is frequently pointed out that perfect objectivity is unattainable. This is certainly true if by “objectivity” we mean either disinterestedness or ambivalence, or the ability to properly weigh evidence and arguments. But the familiar inference from this true premise to the conclusion that objectivity is not a worthwhile ideal has never been clear to me. Unattainability is arguably inherent in the nature of any ideal — that is, in part, what makes it an ideal. Now, an argument from perfect objectivity’s unattainability might get off the ground if we add either of two claims: that it is impossible to be more or less objective, or that the costs of trying to be more objective outweigh the benefits. But it is possible to be more or less objective — to get closer to or farther away from the ideal of perfect objectivity. And while it is certainly possible that ethical or epistemic imperatives appropriate to non-ideal conditions conflict with our ideals, this does not seem to be the case with respect to objectivity in the context of academic research and teaching.

Next, Sommers argues that the line between public outreach and activism is “meaningless,” or alternatively that drawing this distinction is merely a way of categorizing the same underlying activity according to one’s affinity for the political goals the activity serves. This objection has bite because I had insisted that public outreach allows academics whose activism substantially relates to their research and teaching to share their expertise with the general public while avoiding the pitfalls of activism. If there is no meaningful distinction between public outreach and activism, or it is only a covert way of denigrating activism of which one disapproves, then this argument is in trouble.

This is a more difficult objection to answer, since I myself conceded that the line between public outreach and activism is a blurry one. Moreover, the distinction must ultimately be found in the quality and intensity of the subjective attitudes of a person, with their outward activities — for example, picketing, boycotting, canvassing, writing opinion pieces, giving legislative testimony — only a rough proxy for those attitudes. Thus, it is certainly possible that someone deeply and continuously involved in activities characteristic of political activism has only moderate levels of commitment to the political goals their activism serves. But this will be an unusual case. For this reason, the activities that tend to indicate passionate commitment to a political goal are fairly grouped under the heading of “political activism”; the activities that tend to indicate a desire to improve the quality of public debate are likewise fairly grouped under the heading of “public outreach.” These categories are not mutually exclusive; and ultimately, the distinction turns, at least in part, on what the academic wants to do with their public-facing activity and the strength of their desire.

I must insist, however, that the distinction is not necessarily a disguised way of denigrating political activity with a particular ideological complexion. In my case, just the opposite is true: I tend to worry more about leftwing academic activism despite my own leftist sympathies for the simple reason that a substantial majority of academics are left-leaning. Of course, all arguments may be wielded in bad faith. But this possibility does not warrant dismissing the argument out of hand.

Sommers’ reply to my column exemplifies the sort of engagement with opposing viewpoints that the cultivation of objectivity makes possible. I fear, however, that his advocacy of academic activism would, if successful, make such engagements rarer.

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Why Academics Should Be Activists

photograph of impassioned teacher lecturing

In a recent, engaging Prindle Post piece, Ben Rossi comes down decisively against the idea that academics should be activists. I disagree. Or, at least, I think trying to avoid being labeled an “activist” is a waste of time.

I don’t think this statement is very controversial: “Academics have a right, and sometimes an obligation, to share their knowledge, expertise, and research with the public where it’s relevant – even on controversial and divisive political issues.” Compare that to this (which I take to be Rossi’s position): “Academics should not be activists, particularly in areas directly relevant to their specialty, because it will undermine their objectivity and credibility.” These can’t both be right, can they?

Think about the differences between these academics. Catherine Mackinnon was a professor who pioneered the claim that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination and, as a lawyer, argued cases that led to a lot of new law in that area. Many economists move back and forth between being professors, working at influential think-tanks, and having powerful, agenda-shaping, government positions. Conservative economists, like Ben Bernake, work at conservative think-tanks and for Republican presidents. Liberal economists, like Janet Yellen, work for liberal think-tanks and Democratic presidents. Philosophy professors – from Jeremy Bentham to Jeff McMahan – have been at the forefront of a social movement, Animal Liberation, to use the title of professor Peter Singer’s popular book (with half a million copies in print), bringing attention to the idea that killing and eating animals capable of experiencing pleasure and pain is morally problematic.

Which of these academics are “activists” and which are doing what Rossi endorses and calls “public outreach”? “The line between public outreach and campaigning is admittedly a blurry one,” he says, “but not to the extent of rendering the distinction meaningless.” I disagree. These examples suggest to me that the distinction is, in fact, meaningless. Or, at least, that it means something different from what Rossi implies. “Activists,” it seems to me, are people pursuing goals of which you do not approve, while people pursuing goals you commend are simply doing public outreach. The point of trying to draw this line between activism and outreach, I would argue, is to turn controversial moral and political disputes into (supposedly) less controversial professional or pedagogical ones.

However, pushing the claim that “activists” are not as objective as nonactivists is essentially a way of trying to get “activists” to not take their own side in an argument. Asking them to avoid active engagement and conceal their hard-earned knowledge is not only unfair, it’s unhelpful as a model of objectivity. Objectivity is about aspiring to have defensible views based on reasons and empirical evidence, not on having no views at all or concealing your views. Nor does objectivity have anything to do with how firmly you hold a particular belief. The undecided or waffling are not prima facie more objective than the firmly committed. Look at the evidence on undecided voters: they are the least well-informed and the least-interested part of the electorate.

Consider as another example the charge of judicial “activism.” Conservatives complained for a long time that the judges who made the civil rights revolution happen, by explicitly recognizing rights less enshrined previously, were “activist judges” – that is, bad judges – with insufficient respect for previous legal findings. Now that conservatives have a majority, many liberals argue that conservatives are activists – that is, bad judges with no respect for previous legal findings. I think this suggests that the accusation of judicial “activism” is an empty rhetorical gesture. By labeling others “activists,” we’re really just saying “I am against what they are for.”

What about teaching? In introductory undergraduate courses, it’s certainly important to focus on presenting a balanced approach without excessively privileging your own views. But this only goes so far. First, because, as teachers, we must implicitly operate (for lack of a better phrase) in the realm of the reasonable – within the space of positions and reasons generally recognized by professionals in our fields. So, we are already not “objective” from the get-go about all kinds of things. When teaching political philosophy, for example, I never present slave-holding as a live option worth discussing the pros and cons of – even though there are more slaves in the world today than there were before the Civil War.

Second, in my experiences with both law school courses and less introductory undergraduate philosophy classes, disguising your own views is nearly impossible – and pointless. In any high-level discussion in the fields I know, the views of the participants will emerge if the discussion is detailed enough or goes on long enough. I don’t know what to make of the suggestion that maybe this shouldn’t happen. If someone asks my expert opinion on a topic, why should I only present them with the most prominent positions that other people take and withhold my opinion of which position I believe is correct? That seems like intellectual malpractice to me. And in my experience, as both student and teacher, taking a position is just part of pedagogy. (I once supervised a Master’s thesis the author of which used the following jokey subtitle right up to the final draft: “Why Tim Sommers is so Very, Very Wrong about Communitarianism.”)

Further, I worry that sometimes the suggestion that someone is not objective or credible because of the positions they take, or defend vigorously,  on an issue is just a condescending way of disagreeing with them. There’s no neutral position from which to disagree with someone in a somehow more objective way than how they disagree with you. If you think that someone is too passionate or too loud in support of their positions, well, that’s just your opinion. You can express that opinion by calling them activists if you’d like, but that doesn’t earn the other side of the argument any extra points.

Rossi writes, “The defining purpose of academic institutions is to generate, and then to transmit, knowledge.” But we deprive ourselves of the knowledge and opinions of some of the best-informed people in our society when we insist that academics not advocate too forcefully for the positions they think they are most right about. Rossi thinks that the answer is that there’s a clear, principled line between activism and advocacy that we should avoid crossing. I don’t. I say transmit knowledge. Be active. Act on what you know.

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Why Academics Should Not Be Activists

photograph of lecture with crowd member recording on her phone

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx famously complained that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Today, the prevailing ethos on American, European, and Australian campuses shows the same impatience with mere contemplation. “Engagement” is the academy’s mantra, and it is faintly shameful, particularly for humanities professors, to be unconcerned with politics. Some have even called for “recognizing advocacy as part of the work mandate of academic staff.” While understandable, the push to make academics activists — campaigners for social or political change — is a serious mistake because it threatens to deprive society of the goods that academic institutions, uniquely, provide.

The defining purpose of academic institutions is to generate, and then to transmit, knowledge. They undoubtedly serve other functions, but this function is what makes an institution academic. It is for this reason that institutions that share in that function, though to a lesser extent — e.g., think tanks — are sometimes called “quasi-academic.” And academic institutions exist because that function is, and is thought to be, useful to society.

Within academic institutions, professors are the ones upon whom the primary responsibility for generating and transmitting knowledge falls. Because of this, if they engage in pursuits that degrade their capacity to generate and transmit knowledge, to that extent they are disloyal to their institution and to their institutional role.

Of course, there are higher loyalties, and I’m not arguing that any professor’s highest obligation is to support her institution or fulfill her academic role. Nevertheless, it surely is the case that the bulk of what constitutes a “good” academic is the ability to produce high-quality scholarship, and the ability to convey that scholarship to others — that is, to teach.

Being an activist makes both generating and transmitting knowledge more difficult. It makes generating knowledge more difficult because, as a matter of psychological fact, it is difficult to properly weigh evidence and arguments when one is also emotionally committed — and political commitments are always emotional — to realizing a substantive political goal, if the evidence and arguments bear on, or are connected to, that goal. And being an activist makes transmitting knowledge, or teaching, more difficult because it may undermine the quality of teaching and the teacher’s credibility, at least if what the teacher teaches about is related to their activism. It does this because it raises the real possibility either that the teacher is deliberately teaching the material in a manner that furthers, or is at least consistent with, their political convictions and goals, in the face of reasonable contravening evidence and arguments; or that even if they are attempting to be objective, they are psychologically less able to properly weigh the evidence and arguments than they otherwise would be.

This point about teaching is particularly important, because like it or not, the continuing existence and vitality of the academic vocation depends upon broad-based societal support for academic institutions.

If the latter come to be seen as re-education camps rather than purveyors of a genuinely liberal education, that cannot fail to negatively impact the institutions in the medium and long-term. Of course, there will always be a certain amount of hostility toward academic institutions, because there are plenty of people who do not really like liberal education — they want indoctrination, just not the kind of indoctrination they pillory academic institutions for providing. But that does not mean academics may throw up their hands and disregard the fact that what society thinks about academic institutions is important, and professors are the group within academic institutions most responsible for determining how the public thinks about them. They must be mindful that the relatively high status that academics and academic institutions still enjoy is not a given.

Although I think this argument provides good reasons for academics to be wary of activism, it’s important to note its limits. First, the argument only applies to academics whose subject of study is connected to their activism. For example, it clearly applies to a historian of the modern Middle East who actively campaigns for Palestinian rights. But a historian of the medieval Middle East who actively campaigns for Palestinian rights may not fall within its scope. And a physicist who campaigns against animal cruelty is clearly outside its scope.

It follows, paradoxically, that the academics who are best informed about political issues by reason of their research or teaching should be the most cautious about engaging in activism.

It might therefore be objected that my argument threatens to deprive society of the best-informed voices on particular political issues. But that academics should be wary of engaging in activism does not mean that they should not engage in public outreach of any kind. It is perfectly acceptable for academics to write or speak in public forums about the subjects of their research even if their research is connected to live political debates. They can even make policy recommendations on the basis of their scholarship. What they should be wary of is campaigning for those policies. The line between public outreach and campaigning is admittedly a blurry one, but not to the extent of rendering the distinction meaningless.

Second, certain kinds of academics — for example, political philosophers — are a special case because part of their job may be to argue for certain substantive political goals. I see no reason why a philosopher should not publicly advocate for a substantive political goal if they have done so in their scholarly work. Still, even here I think activism poses a danger, since we expect philosophers to take the “other side’s” arguments seriously until they have good reasons for rejecting them. Being an activist may dispose philosophers to dismiss contrary arguments too hastily. So, philosophers should still be wary of activism, even if they may translate their scholarly arguments for a substantive political goal into language fit for general public consumption.

Third, the argument in no way implies that academics should not engage in internal activism — activism aimed at effecting change to their own academic institutions. I see no reason not to classify campaigning for such internal change as a form of activism, and it is both necessary and desirable that all members of the academic community — including academics — should be involved in efforts to better the community. Such activism generally does not raise the same concerns as outside activism, and even when it does, it can be justified with reference to the academic’s role in the institution as necessary to furthering the institution’s primary goal of generating and transmitting knowledge. By the same token, academics may perhaps justifiably participate in outside activism on behalf of academic institutions — for example, campaigning against laws banning the teaching of certain subjects like critical race theory.

However, returning to an earlier point, it may be objected that even if an academic qua academic should avoid activism, academics are not just academics — they are also citizens and members of communities. Moreover, the obligations attached to these identities trump academics’ obligation to be good academics. Again, I have no real dispute with those who feel their civic duties trump their professional or vocational obligations. However, it is plausible to hold that an academic’s scholarship and pedagogy are themselves a means to fulfill her civic or communal obligations. By generating and transmitting knowledge, academic institutions make a fairly unique contribution to society, and for that reason an academic can reasonably believe that her academic work is the primary way in which she contributes to her society’s welfare.

There is a more general point to be made here. Human life is inherently tragic, in that not all values are co-realizable in a single life (or even, perhaps, a single society). Choosing one lifelong vocation invariably involves forsaking other, equally valuable ones; for this reason, all such choices can be reasonably regretted. Both activism and scholarship are valuable pursuits, but by undertaking both at the same time, a person may find that they excel in neither. Thus, while I entirely understand some academics’ belief that their civic and communal obligations require them to engage in activism, even if it negatively affects the quality of their scholarship and teaching, I believe that they sometimes have to make a choice to pursue one thing or the other. As I have already explained, my argument in no way entails that academics should avoid all activism. But when the subject of their scholarship relates to the goals of their activism, academics would be well-advised to tread with extreme caution.

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Woke Capitalism and Moral Commodities

photograph of multi-colored shipping containers loaded on boat

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: “Woke Capitalism.”

Many have started to abandon the usage of the term “woke” since it is more and more used in a pejorative sense by ideological parties – as Charles M. Blow states “‘woke’ is now almost exclusively used by those who seek to deride it, those who chafe at the activism from which it sprang.” What the term refers to has become increasingly ambiguous to the point that it seems useless. As early as 2019, Damon Young was suggesting that “woke floats in the linguistic purgatory of terms coined by us that can no longer be said unironically,” and David Brooks concluded that no small  part of wokeism was simply the intellectual elite showing off with “sophisticated” language.

But when the term rose to popularity in 2016, it was referring to a kind of awareness of public issues, and “became the umbrella purpose for movements like #blacklivesmatter (fighting racism), the #MeToo movement (fighting sexism, and sexual misconduct), and the #NoBanNoWall movement (fighting for immigrants and refugees).” And new fronts are always opening up.

Discussions of “Woke Capitalism” tend to focus on corporate and consumer activism. Tyler Cowen has also pointed out the importance of wokeism as a new, uniquely American cultural export that may fundamentally change the world. And, indeed, despite the post-mortems, “woke” remains in the lexicon of both political parties.

Even though the term “woke” has fallen out of favor, I suspect there is a mostly unaddressed aspect of wokeism that needs reconsideration. There may very well be a new mode of consumption just beginning to dominate the market: commodities as moral entities.

How does this happen? Let’s consider what differentiates Woke Capitalism from more familiar moral considerations about market relations and discuss how products have become moral entities through comparison to non-woke products.

It is not just about moral considerations: In any decision-making process, it is natural for some moral considerations to arise. In the case of market relations, any number of factors – the company’s affiliations, its production methods, the status of workers, the trustworthiness of the company, etc. – may prove decisive. Traditionally, as in the case of moral appeal in marketing – “If you are a good parent, you should buy this shoe!” – there seems to be a necessity to link a moral consideration with a company or a product. With Woke Capitalism, this relation is transformed: an explicit link is no longer necessary. All purchasing is activism – one cannot help but make a statement with what they choose to buy and what they choose to sell.

It is not just corporate or consumer activism: The moral debate about Woke Capitalism mainly revolves around the sincerity of companies and customers in support of social justice causes. And that discussion of corporate responsibility often revisits the Shareholder vs. Stakeholder Capitalism distinction.

Corporate or consumer activism seems to be making use of the market as a way of demonstrating the moral preferences of individuals or a group. It can be seen as a way to support what is essentially important to us. Vote with your dollar. As such, most discussions focus on this positive reinforcement side of Woke Capitalism.

What is lost in this analysis of Woke Capitalism, however, is the production of Woke Products which forces consumers take sides with even the most basic day-to-day purchases.

How should we decide between two similarly-priced products according to this framing: a strong stain remover or a mediocre stain remover that helps sick children; a gender-equality supporting cereal or a racial-equality supporting cereal. Each of these decisions brings some imponderable trade-off with it: What’s more important – the health of children or stain-removing strength? Which problem deserves more attention – gender inequality or racial inequality?

Negation of Non-Woke: The main problem with these questions is not that some of them are unanswerable, absurd, or impossible to decide in a short time. Instead, the problem is the potential polarizing effect of its relational nature. Dan Ariely suggests, in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shapes Our Decisions, that we generally decide by focusing on the relativity – people often decide between options on the basis of how they relate to one another. He gives the example of three houses which have the same cost. Two of them are in the same style. One is a fixer-upper. In such a situation, he claims, we generally decide between the same style houses since they are easier to compare. In this case, the alternatively-styled house will not be considered at all.

In the case of wokeness, the problem is that it is quite probable that non-woke products will be ignored altogether. With our minds so attuned to the moral issue, all other concerns fade away.

Woke Capitalism creates a marketplace populated entirely by woke, counter-woke, and anti-woke products. Market relations continue to be defined by this dynamic more and more. As such, non-woke products are becoming obsolete. Companies must accommodate this trend and present themselves in particular ways, not necessarily because they want to, but because they are forced to. And this state of affairs feels inescapable; there is no breaking the cycle. Even anti-woke and counter-woke marketing feed that struggle. All consumption becomes a moral statement in a never-ending conflict.

To better see what makes Woke Capitalism unique (and uniquely dangerous), consider this comparison:

Classic moral consideration: Jimmy buys Y because Y conforms to his moral commitments.

Consumer activism: Jimmy buys Y because Y best signals his support for a deeply-held cause.

Woke Capitalism: Jimmy buys Y because purchasing products is necessary for his moral identity.

This is not just consumer activism whereby customers seek representation. Instead, commodities turn into fundamentally moral entities – building blocks for people to construct and communicate who they are. As morality becomes increasingly understood in terms of one’s relationship to commodities, a moral existence depends on buying and selling. Consumption becomes identity. “I buy, therefore – morally – I am.”

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Avoiding Complicity & the NFL: Can Piracy Be Moral?

photograph of NFL logo on TV screen

On Thursday, August 18th, the NFL announced that DeShaun Watson, quarterback of the Cleveland Browns, will be suspended for the first 11 games of the upcoming season. In addition, he will be fined $5 million dollars and must enter counseling. The suspension follows an at least 25 women credibly accusing Watson of sexual assault, leading to two grand jury cases in Texas, as well as 24 civil lawsuits.

Watson has repeatedly denied these allegations, stating in a press conference after his suspension was announced that although he believes he did nothing wrong, he is sorry to “everyone that was affected about the situation. There was a lot of people that was triggered.” Both grand juries declined to indict Watson, and at the time of writing all but one civil case have been settled.

As per the collective bargaining agreement with the NFLPA, the NFL Commissioner has sole authority to determine punishment. After Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly stated that the league would pursue a full season suspension and appointed former New Jersey attorney general Peter C. Harvey to hear the appeal. Yet the league, the NFLPA, and Watson’s legal team agreed on this punishment prior to Harvey hearing the appeal.

Setting this particular punishment seems cynical at best. The first game Watson will be eligible to play sees the Houston Texans, Watson’s former team, host Cleveland. This game will likely be promoted as “must-see-TV.”

Further, the NFL previously offered Watson a 12-game suspension and ten million dollar fine, which his camp rejected. Despite having all the bargaining power, the NFL apparently decided it was appropriate to reduce the punishment they initially proposed. Perhaps they sought to avoid a court case which could have drawn further attention to numerous sexual misconduct allegations against team owners.

In response to what they perceive as the NFL’s failure of moral decency, many fans are left unsure of what to do. Some Browns fans have abandoned their fandom. However, since the league is under fire, this may affect fans of any team – admittedly, supporting the NFL through my lifelong Buffalo Bills fandom feels like a source of shame.

Some fans are trying to carve out a space which lets them watch games while avoiding complicity with wrongdoing. Many highly upvoted posts in a Reddit thread discussing the suspension call for, and celebrate, pirating NFL games.

By pirating (and piracy), I mean viewing games over the internet through unlicensed means.

What does piracy accomplish? The NFL gets billions a year in revenue from TV networks. The networks are willing to pay billions because the NFL dominates ratings – in 2021, regular season games averaged over 17 million viewers, NFL games made up the entirety of the top 16 most viewed programs that year, 48 of the top 50, and 91 of the top 100. However, because pirates do not contribute to these ratings – unlicensed viewers are not counted – it’s thought that they do not help the NFL profit.

A formal version of the argument implied by these posters might look like the following. Call it the argument for piracy:

1. The NFL is morally bad.
2. One should not be complicit with morally bad organizations.
3. Pirating NFL games does not financially support the NFL.
4. Financial support is a form of complicity.
// It is not immoral to pirate NFL games.

Proponents of this argument claim that they must avoid helping the NFL profit and will pirate games to fulfill this duty. Call them “principled pirates.” The behavior of principled pirates is somewhat similar to the behavior of people engaged in boycotts – which I have previously analyzed. However, there is an important difference. Unlike the boycotter, the principled pirate still consumes the products of the organization she is condemning. And therefore the two behaviors, and their morality, are distinct.

Before considering whether the argument for piracy succeeds, we should first briefly consider the argument against piracy. Piracy is illegal, which does not immediately imply immorality. Yet piracy is commonly viewed as theft, which is usually immoral (for discussion see Beatrice Harvey’s “Can Shoplifting Be Activism“). This is because the thief takes away something that others deserve, namely, their property. Suppose you stole the cash out of my wallet. I (hopefully) earned that money through my labor or just transactions, and as a result deserve to own it. Thus, your theft violates the moral principle of desert – you take something that I deserve, despite not deserving it yourself.

The argument for piracy undercuts this analysis in two directions. First, pirates do not take something. In the case of pirating sports broadcasts, they merely access something without permission.

So piracy might be more akin to sneaking into an empty movie screening than stealing cash – the theater still has the reel, and no one’s ability to watch the movie is impeded.

Second, the argument for piracy raises questions regarding desert. The NFL, as the Watson case suggests, seems willing to engage in immoral behavior for the sake of profit. So, the money they earn is not justly deserved according to the principled pirate. Thus, we should avoid contributing to the NFL’s profits and instead ensure our money goes toward more scrupulous organizations.

Ultimately, the argument for piracy, if correct, only justifies a particular kind of fandom. Specifically, one that does not contribute financially to the NFL – no attending live games, no watching legal broadcasts of games, and no purchasing officially licensed team apparel. Further, one should avoid buying products from the NFL’s sponsors. But given their sheer number, this is a difficult task.

Yet the argument for piracy faces even greater troubles. Closely considering line 4 – that financial support is a form of complicity – makes this apparent. We might call financial support “material complicity.” This occurs when one materially contributes to a cause, action or organization. If you, say, buy a jersey, a certain amount of that money goes to the NFL. Quantifying the effect of viewership is more complicated, but theoretically operates in a similar way.

There are other forms of complicity. Suppose that I pirate a game. The next day at work, I overhear some co-workers discussing the game and join in the conversation.

By doing so, I send a message to others: despite the league’s faults, their content is worth consuming and discussing with others. In this way, I am promoting their product and contributing to their success.

Call this “social complicity.”

The argument from piracy outright ignores social complicity. Even illegal viewership, despite not benefiting the NFL directly, still promotes their interests in the long run – unless one watches the game and turns it off, never to think about it again, even piracy helps keep the sport front and center in the minds of others. And it is this primacy that makes the NFL perhaps the largest cultural juggernaut in the U.S.

Further, one might question the integrity of the principled pirate. On one hand, the principled pirate points to some moral ideal and condemns those who violate it. Simultaneously, the principled pirate is refusing to take on any burdens to promote that good with her own behavior, aside from the effort of finding streams. What she claims to value, and what her behavior indicates that she values, are at odds.

So, what motivates the argument for piracy – the moral failings of organizations like the NFL – ultimately cause the argument to fail.

Principled pirates demonstrate a lack of integrity at best and are complicit in wrongdoing at worst. If watching legally is immoral, then watching in any capacity seems wrong.

Though perhaps there is some merit to the argument for piracy. One may instead view it as a matter of harm reduction. Principled pirates are not moral saints. But complicity comes in degrees; surely the person who is both materially and socially complicit is doing something worse than someone who is merely socially complicit.

Of course, the principled pirates could do less harm overall by not watching. However, they would likely turn towards consuming other content in place of NFL games. As media ownership becomes increasingly consolidated, it is more and more difficult to find content that is not linked to some morally troubling corporate behavior. Thus, it becomes harder to avoid complicity in wrongdoing via one’s media habits; the only way to have wholly clean hands may be to stop watching, listening, and reading altogether.

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Corporate Responsibilities after Roe v. Wade

photograph of "Abortion Is Healthcare" protest sign

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has raised numerous legal and moral questions. Making access to abortion an issue to be decided by individual states has already become a complicated legal matter, as some state courts have challenged so-called “trigger laws” – laws meant to make abortion illegal the second the Supreme Court decision came into effect. Many states had already made their intentions clear with regard to access to abortions when the draft Supreme Court memo was initially leaked back in May, and many other groups and corporations have weighed in on where they stand on the issue.

There is ample evidence that the Supreme Court’s decision harms American women (e.g., see from this thread alone: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]). Overturning Roe has been derided as massively regressive by many, and is opposed by a significant majority of the American people.

In light of all the immensely important issues at play, the question, “what is the role of corporations in all this?” might seem trivial. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, however, numerous companies have announced recently that they would fully or partially reimburse the expenses of their employees should they require out-of-state travel in order to undergo an abortion. These decisions raise a lot of interesting questions, but I’ll pose just two here.

First, we can ask whether corporations have any moral obligation to provide so-called “abortion travel coverage” for their employees. Second, we can ask what it says about the functioning of a democracy when corporations step-in to help rectify a harmful and unpopular mistake made by the Supreme Court.

Let’s start with the first question first. There are, of course, evergreen questions about whether corporations have moral obligations at all, and if so, to whom and to what extent. Even assuming that they do, one might still think that corporations don’t have any specific obligation to help their employees avoid what they perceive to be unjust state laws, while also recognizing how such actions could result in the prevention of significant harm. In this way, providing abortion travel coverage may be seen as supererogatory – actions that are good but not strictly-speaking required, in that they go above and beyond the call of duty.

Some companies, however, see the provision of abortion travel coverage as being part of their agreement to provide access to health care to their employees. For example, a statement from Gap Inc. notes that part of their “mental health and family planning benefits…include coverage of adoptions, surrogacy, fertility treatments, paid parental leave, contraception, and abortion.” Similarly, a statement from Disney notes that abortion travel coverage is part of coverage that the company provides for other types of medical procedure:

In fact, we have processes in place so that an employee who may be unable to access care in one location has affordable coverage for receiving similar levels of care in another location. This travel benefit covers medical situations related to cancer treatments, transplants, rare disease treatment and family planning (including pregnancy-related decisions).

In these cases, companies may see the obligation to provide abortion travel coverage as nothing beyond the fulfilling of a contract to provide medical coverage that it has made to its employees.

Other companies have taken a different stance. For instance, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote in a recent statement that “[r]emaining silent on the issue of reproductive rights flies in the face of any public pledges professing a desire to create more diverse and inclusive companies” and that what is needed are “more business leaders to use their platform and influence to help ensure that reproductive rights are codified into law, and that the wave of abortion bans and restrictive policies across the country are not allowed to stand.” Stoppelman’s argument thus points toward a moral obligation on the part of companies: as major corporations have power, influence, and the potential to impact policy, they have a responsibility to act in the face of unjust decisions.

We are then led to the second question: what does it mean for the state of a democracy that corporations can (and potentially ought) to take actions that can help citizens side-step unjust laws?

Of course, it is not as if corporations haven’t influenced laws and policy decisions in the past. But this influence is typically lamented as being bad for a well-functioning democracy – i.e., corporate money financing and influencing political policies in ways that are beneficial to shareholders and detrimental to everyone else – not as a potential force for good.

We’ve seen already that the Supreme Court’s decision is not reflective of the view of the majority of Americans, by a large margin. Providing employees with the ability to travel out of state for an abortion can thus help restore a right that has unjustly been taken away, even if such a right is only restored in a practical sense. If the Supreme Court decision represents a failure of democracy, as some critics have argued, perhaps the actions of corporations can help counteract it.

I put forth that consideration while fully admitting that I don’t know what to do with it. It represents an oddly-shaped band-aid to a structural problem of U.S. democracy. But it’s one that might have to do for now, until real change can occur.

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Corporate Activism and Non-Ideal Democracy

photograph of Disney and Mickey with castle in the background

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: “Woke Capitalism.”

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act (PREA). The “Don’t Say Gay” law restricts classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity and empowers parents to sue school districts over teachings they don’t like.

Many are critical of the PREA, including, controversially, the Walt Disney Company. On the day it was signed, Disney released a statement saying that the PREA “should never have been signed into law” and declared that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed” or “struck down.” DeSantis and the state legislature retaliated by canceling some important privileges afforded to Disney. DeSantis described this as a wakeup call, declaring that Disney needs “to get back to the mission” and “back on track.”

The quarrel between DeSantis and Disney is representative of a broader ongoing controversy about the proper role of corporations in politics and public discourse.

Recent developments have propelled this issue into the spotlight. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting corporations from independently advocating for or against political candidates, opening the door to unlimited corporate spending. Moreover, corporations have recently become increasingly active in signaling support for progressive social causes, a trend which has been described as “woke capitalism.”

There are many reasons to be critical of corporate involvement in politics and public discourse. In most cases it’s probably motivated mainly by a cynical desire to curry favor with lawmakers, distract from corporate exploitation, or otherwise advance profits; corporate activism can exacerbate cultural divides and grievances; it’s unclear whether corporations have a moral right to free speech. And, most importantly, a democracy should be governed by the people, not by businesses or the economic elite.

Let’s suppose (as seems plausible) that there are many good objections against corporate activism and that in a well-functioning liberal democracy, corporations have no place in politics or public discourse. It does not follow that corporations should not participate in politics or public discourse in our society. The significance of this supposition for the Disney-PREA case (and the general controversy) depends largely on whether we live in a just and well-functioning liberal democracy. I’d like to suggest that we don’t.

If we live in a society that is only partially democratic and only partially liberal, a society that is characterized by serious systemic injustices, then perhaps we should welcome the efforts of the powerful, including corporations, when they act to redress injustices.

Perhaps corporate activism is less than ideal but nevertheless all-things-considered justified in our non-ideal situation.

To explore this line of thinking, I need to paint an ugly picture. We are told in school that the United States is a beacon of freedom and hope for the world. We are told that the U.S. is a liberal democracy, a state committed to protecting the basic freedom and equality of all its citizens, governed by the will of the people.

There are good reasons for thinking this is a convenient bit of propaganda that is only partially true.

We can look outwards first. The U.S. is an empire of sorts. Old-style empires exerted power over territories by conquering and directly ruling them. Contemporary empires like the U.S. exert imperial power less directly. The U.S. furthers its international interests through soft-power and diplomacy, like when it leverages its considerable power in the UN to influence foreign governments. It also wields unprecedented hard power. For example, the U.S. has about 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries. It uses its economic and military might to overthrow foreign governments, influence foreign political and revolutionary movements, and generally meddle in the affairs of other countries.

Although those who have a grip on the levers of U.S. imperial power are ostensibly accountable to voters, we voters have virtually no de facto control over U.S. foreign affairs.

Consider the presidency. The president has a lot of say over how U.S. military power is deployed in the world. But voters only have two real options in presidential elections. And despite the standard rhetoric to the contrary, presidents from both parties tend to wield military power in more or less continuous ways. The War in Afghanistan is a representative example. This war was started by a Republican (Bush) and expanded by a Democrat (Obama). A Republican (Trump) initiated withdrawal from the region, which was completed by a Democrat (Biden).

Things look about the same looking inwards. The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Yet our laws routinely fail to conform to the will of the people. For example, U.S. federal laws currently fail to reflect that a majority of voters support changing the electoral college (55%), protecting access to abortion (61%), greater action on climate change (65%), decriminalizing marijuana (68%), health insurance public options (68%), universal background checks on gun purchasers (84%), and price limits on lifesaving drugs (89%). Many entrenched factors contribute to this, from the fact that some voters have far more power than others, to the influence of industries and economic elites (especially super-rich private donors) on public policy, the disproportionate wealth of lawmakers, the various demagogues clogging public discourse with inane conspiracy theories, and so on. The undemocratic elements in our society are coupled with illiberal systemic injustices like extreme economic inequality and laws that protect freedoms selectively. For example, in 2021, the top 1% of households held 32.3% of all household wealth, while the bottom 50% held only 2.6%. And at the time of this writing, federal law does not protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment and housing (although 70% of people support such protections).

The picture that is emerging is one of an empire that, despite having democratic and liberal elements, is largely run by elites and routinely fails to protect the basic freedom and equality of its citizens.

Suppose this picture is roughly accurate. Also suppose for the sake of argument that the PREA is seriously unjust. Since it is seriously unjust, we citizens should work to see it repealed. But we do not have as much power to affect legislation as we are encouraged to believe. Wealthy corporations have power, however, and we can solicit assistance from them. Now if the U.S. had legitimate democratic institutions, then corporate meddling in democratic processes would threaten the legitimacy of those institutions. But by supposition that legitimacy is already seriously compromised by entrenched factors. So, arguably we should solicit and welcome assistance from powerful entities like Disney insofar as this increases the likelihood that the PREA will be repealed and the expected side effects are acceptable. And arguably this is compatible with maintaining that corporate activism is ultimately a bad thing.

Here’s an imperfect but suggestive analogy. Imagine we live under a dictatorship. Many people are oppressed by harmful laws. But the dictator’s counselor is sympathetic to the oppressed. It seems to me that we could, without logical inconsistency or hypocrisy, both beseech the counselor to convince the dictator to change the harmful laws and also maintain that neither the dictator nor his counselor should have any power over us.

This suggests that corporate activism can be justified in our non-ideal situation, but only to the extent that it is efficaciously directed at making our society more just.

This marks a difference between corporations and citizens. Citizens have an autonomy-based moral right to participate in collective governance and public discourse, which entitles them to sincerely advocate for positions that are in fact unjust. Corporations have no such right. Their entitlement to advocacy is derived exclusively from the special power they have to improve our society.

It’s sensible to reject this argument if you are less pessimistic than I am about the state of our union. But I don’t think the argument should be rejected because of cynicism about corporate motivations. True, corporations are out to make a profit. Mickey is a rapacious mouse. Nevertheless, from time to time the motive of profit partially aligns with the cause of justice. We should do what we can to remind corporations of this.

Left unaddressed is the difficult practical problem of how we can effectively make use of corporate activism while also advocating for a society that is truly governed by the people, not corporations or elites. I don’t know how this problem can be solved. But I am hopeful that it can be.

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“Woke Capitalism”

distorted photograph of Times Square building stretching into sky

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

Adam Smith’s matter-of-fact account of the moral consideration we should expect in our economic transactions will strike many as the self-evident ideal. The divorce of the social or political from the economic is nothing more than savvy industry. Business-as-usual. The introduction of sentiment to our dealings would only make for bad business and worse politics. This is the position of those condemning the rise of “woke capitalism.”

“Woke capitalism” has become a catch-all term standing in for a hodge-podge of ideas, convictions, and positions. Coined by Ross Douthat in 2015 to describe businesses’ hollow virtue-signalling, the term has been expanded to include even the slightest appearance of corporations “bending a knee” to the cancel culture mob.

Critics characterize woke capitalism as a kind of ill-informed and ill-intentioned boardroom activism solely invested in the construction and maintenance of a PR image. It represents a superficial dedication to sanitizing bad looks and poor optics. It presents as an unwillingness to countenance anything with a whiff of controversy about it. In this, cynics see a poorly disguised feint aimed at getting out in front of political blowback and indicating one’s social justice bona fides before the torch and pitchfork crowd come knocking.

But for many, the problem isn’t so much its falseness as its ambition. Corporations, these voices contend, shouldn’t be in the business of criticizing public policy or shaping public opinion. They shouldn’t be throwing their weight around when it comes to matters of state. It’s corporatism, plain and simple — rule by unelected magnates rather than by the will of the people.

Thus the woke capitalists are either cowards submitting to progressives’ demands in pursuit of the path of least (commercial) resistance, or power-hungry usurpers bent on circumventing Congress in transforming their cultural preferences into social reality. Whether motivated by fear or greed, these elites are beginning to play an outsized and objectionable role in shaping our shared future.

But does this picture reflect reality?

Progressives would be surprised to see CEOs listed as co-conspirators. Woke capitalism will strike many as an oxymoron. Exploitation appears inevitable and its effects are not suffered equally. Our consumer society’s commitment to cheap goods and even cheaper labor seems wholly at odds with the project of social justice dedicated to revealing and combating inequality and discrimination.

While we may have moved on from Milton Friedman’s assertion that a corporation’s sole responsibility is to its shareholders, we’re still struggling to articulate a vision of businesses’ greater obligations that might be as equally concrete and action-guiding. We remain in dire need of defining just what considerations these corporate entities owe us — the people who make these businesses run, as consumers, laborers, voters, and tax-payers. From offshoring to tax evasion to union-busting, we need to know whether a corporation can be an ally.

The ongoing debate over the power and limitations of “woke capitalism” provides ample material, space, and opportunity for sustained examination of the kinds of problems corporations create, the kinds of problems they aggravate, and the kinds of problems they can (and cannot) solve.

-Tucker Sechrest

Kenneth Boyd — “What Is Unwoke Capitalism?”

Daniel Story — “Corporate Activism and Non-Ideal Democracy”

Elizabeth Williams — “The Limits of Consumer Activism”

Giles Howdle — “Rainbow Myopia: A Left-Wing Case Against ‘Woke Capital’“

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What Is Unwoke Capitalism?

close-up photograph of SHOP storefront sign

This piece is part of an Under Discussion series. To read more about this week’s topic and see more pieces from this series visit Under Discussion: “Woke Capitalism.”

It’s Pride Month, which means that many of your favorite or not-so-favorite corporations have likely been changing their social media avatars to their rainbow versions, and perhaps making statements about how they currently/always have/have at least thought about supporting the rights of those in the LGBTQ+ community. Sometimes called “rainbow capitalism,” this yearly trend is one form of so-called “woke capitalism,” in which corporations disingenuously champion social causes with the sole purpose of making more money off of their left-wing consumers.

At least, that’s how it started out when the term was coined way back in 2018.

These days, however, “woke capitalism” is poorly defined.

Sometimes it refers to what critics call a hollow kind of virtue-signalling, either to court new left-leaning consumers or out of a fear of losing existing ones. But it has also taken on another meaning: whenever a corporation is guided by any kind of social values (or, at least, certain kinds of social values – more on this in a bit) and not by increasing value for its shareholders, it is engaging in “woke capitalism.” Interestingly, this new kind of woke capitalism ditches the requirement of being insincere: even, and maybe even especially, companies that have demonstrated a genuine interest in social causes have been placed under the umbrella of woke capitalism.

Depending on who you ask, woke capitalism is the future. Or a force that desperately needs to be fought. This fight is either a bad and regressive thing, or a good and necessary thing. Capitalism is something that the right has become ashamed of, or else it’s businesses that have become ashamed of being woke. When companies do go woke, they’re making good social progress, or not nearly making progress quickly enough. It can be difficult to keep up.

When considered in the broadest sense of merely being guided in some way by a concern for social causes (as opposed to the hollow virtue-signaling kind), a form of capitalism in which companies make at least some effort to address social issues seems better than nothing.

What corporate responsibilities ought to be, exactly, is a matter worth discussing. But with the notion of “woke capitalism” being as nebulous as it is, and with so much discussion about its merits, it’s also worth considering: are there good arguments for an alternative?

There seem to be two options. The most popular is what appears to be a return to shareholder capitalism: the idea that a corporation’s sole responsibility is to make money for its shareholders, and thus any potential decrease in profits in the name of furthering progressive social causes (or, really anything besides profits) is, in some sense, not what a business should be doing.

This seems to be the default position of many of woke capitalism’s critics. The main target is businesses that have expressed concern for environmental, social, and governance issues (ESG, for short). This is bad business, it is argued, since ESG puts causes over profits. For example, Disney’s recent speaking out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has the potential to cost the company money after Florida governor Ron DeSantis vowed to eliminate the special status that the state had given to Disney theme parks. Although not exactly hurting for cash, Disney could have hoarded even more if it had just stayed quiet.

Of course, defenders of woke capitalism will respond that investing in social causes is not antithetical to making profits, either because doing so helps capture certain consumers, or because failing to do so risks alienating them. Others will point out that shareholder capitalism has been challenged long before the rise of woke capitalism.

Indeed, DeSantis’ actions seem much more motivated out of spite rather than a desire to maintain the sanctity of shareholder capitalism. Instead, they are indicative of another way in which one can reject woke capitalism, namely to adopt what we might call unwoke capitalism.

If woke capitalism is that which is driven by a concern for causes that are typically viewed as progressive, then unwoke capitalism is driven by a concern for causes that are typically viewed as conservative.

For example, a recent opinion piece describes Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of Twitter not just as the acquisition of a business, but as “a wider fightback against a hyper-liberal version of global capitalism” as one of Musk’s stated goals in acquiring Twitter is “to correct what he sees as Left-liberal bias.” Unwoke capitalism pops up in smaller places, as well, in businesses such as Black Rifle Coffee – which touts itself as pro-military, pro-law enforcement, and “anti-hipster” – as well as other coffee businesses that feel like Black Rifle wasn’t sufficiently right-wing. Or consider Coign, the self-proclaimed “America’s first credit card for Conservative” which, as part of its fight against wokeness, pledges to donate part of its profits to “Conservative causes” (although said causes have yet to be determined). Other examples are easy to find.

Here, then, we can see three different ways to understand the backlash to woke capitalism. One predicates itself on a concern for capitalist values (specifically that of maximizing profits); a second is based on a rejection of a specific set of progressive values (specifically ESG); and a third not only rejects those values but replaces them with conservative ones. While these positions are distinct, opinions and other think-pieces on woke capitalism often run them together.

For example, in the opinion piece on Musk’s attempt to acquire Twitter, the move was initially portrayed as one in which the historically unprofitable Twitter could finally be made profitable under Musk’s tutelage. The author also claims that woke capitalism is responsible for “soaring inflation, flat-lining growth, and massive debt mountains.” If any of this were true, it would constitute financial reasons for rejecting woke capitalist business models. However, the motive to “open debate that includes the Right as well as the Left” on Twitter is clearly based on values beyond pure profit-maximization.

Criticisms of woke capitalism thus tend to conflate two arguments.

The first is that businesses being concerned with social values is bad business; the second is that many businesses are concerned with the wrong values. But accepting the one doesn’t require accepting the other: for instance, one could argue that businesses that are concerned with advocating for conservative values also violate capitalist norms, as doing so risks putting values ahead of profits, they just happen to be different values from the woke capitalist crowd. In this way, woke capitalism and unwoke capitalism would share the same flaw.

Whether woke capitalism is bad for business is an empirical question. While there is no real indication that it is, rejecting it does not mean needing to replace progressive values with conservative ones.

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On Anxiety and Activism

"The End Is Nigh" poster featuring a COVID spore and gasmask

The Plough Quarterly recently released a new essay collection called Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year. In a contribution by Joseph Keegin, “Be Not Afraid,” he details some of his memories of his father’s final days, and the looming role that “outrage media” played in their interactions. He writes,

My dad had neither a firearm to his name, nor a college degree. What he did have, however, was a deep, foundation-rattling anxiety about the world ubiquitous among boomers that made him—and countless others like him—easily exploitable by media conglomerates whose business model relies on sowing hysteria and reaping the reward of advertising revenue.

Keegin’s essay is aimed at a predominantly religious audience. He ends his essay by arguing that Christians bear a specifically religious obligation to fight off the fear and anxiety that makes humans easy prey to outrage media and other forms of news-centered absorption. He argues this partly on Christian theological grounds — namely, that God’s historical communications with humans is almost always preceded by the command to “be not afraid,” as a lack of anxiety is necessary for recognizing and following truth.

But if Keegin is right about the effects of this “deep, foundation-rattling anxiety” on our epistemic agency, then it is not unreasonable to wonder if everyone has, and should recognize, some kind of obligation to avoid such anxiety, and to avoid causing it in others. And it seems as though he is right. Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between feeling dangerously out-of-control and the tendency to believe conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to COVID-19 conspiracies (here, here, here). The more frightening media we consume, the more anxious we become. The more anxious we become, the more media we consume. And as this cycle repeats, the media we are consuming tends to become more frightening, and less veridical.

Of course, nobody wants to be the proverbial “sucker,” lining the pocket books of every website owner who knows how to write a sensational headline. We are all aware of the technological tactics used to manipulate our personal insecurities for the sake of selling products and, for the most part, I would imagine we strive to avoid this kind of vulnerability. But there is a tension here. While avoiding this kind of epistemically-damaging anxiety sounds important in the abstract, this idea does not line up neatly with the ways we often talk about, and seek to advance, social change.

Each era has been beset by its own set of deep anxieties: the Great Depression, the Red Scare, the Satanic Panic, and election fears (on both sides of the aisle) are all examples of relatively recent social anxieties that lead to identifiable epistemic vulnerabilities. Conspiracies about Russian spies, gripping terror over nuclear war, and unending grassroots ballot recount movements are just a few of the signs of the epistemic vulnerability that resulted from these anxieties. The solution may at first seem obvious: be clear-headed and resist getting caught up in baseless media-driven fear-mongering. But, importantly, not all of these anxieties are baseless or the result of purposeless fear-mongering.

People who grew up during the depression often worked hard to instill an attitude of rationing in their own children, prompted by their concern for their kids’ well-being; if another economic downturn hit, they wanted their offspring to be prepared. Likewise, the very real threat of nuclear war loomed large throughout the 1950s-1980s, and many people understandably feared that the Cold War would soon turn hot. Even elementary schools held atom bomb drills, for any potential benefit to the students in the case of an attack. One can be sure that journalists took advantage of this anxiety as a way to increase readership, but concerned citizens and social activists also tried to drum up worry because worry motivates. If we think something merits concern, we often try to make others feel this same concern, both for their own sake and for the sake of those they may have influence over. But if such deep-seated cultural anxieties make it easier for others to take advantage of us through outrage media, conspiracy theories, and other forms of anxiety-confirming narratives, is such an approach to social activism worth the future consequences?

To take a more contemporary example, let’s look at the issue of climate change. According to a recent study, out of 10,000 “young people” (between the ages of 16 and 25) surveyed, almost 60% claimed to be “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change affected their daily life and functioning in negative ways. If these findings are representative, surely this counts as the Generation Z version of the kind of “foundation-rattling anxiety” that Keegin observed in his late father.

There is little doubt where this anxiety comes from: news stories and articles routinely point out record-breaking temperatures, numbers of species that go extinct year to year, and the climate-based causes of extreme weather patterns. Pop culture has embraced the theme, with movies like “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Snowpiercer,” and “Reminiscent,” among many others, painting a bleak picture of what human life might look like once we pass the point of no return. Unlike any other time in U.S. history, politicians are proposing extremely radical, lifestyle-altering policies in order to combat the growing climate disaster. If such anxieties leave people epistemically vulnerable to the kinds of outrage media and conspiracy theory rabbit holes that Keegin worries about, are these fear-inducing tactics to combat climate change worth it?

On the surface, it seems very plausible that the answer here is “yes!” After all, if the planet is not habitable for human life-forms, it makes very little difference whether or not the humans that would have inhabited the planet would have been more prone to being consumed by the mid-day news. If inducing public anxiety over the climate crisis (or any other high stakes social challenge or danger) is effective, then likely the good would outweigh the bad. And surely genuine fear does cause such behavioral effects. Right?

But again, the data is unclear. While people are more likely to change their behavior or engage in activism when they believe some issue is actually a concern, too much concern, anxiety, or dread seems to soon produce the opposite (sometimes tragic) effect. For example, while public belief in, and concern over, climate change is higher than ever, actual climate change legislation has not been adapted in decades, and more and more elected officials deny or downplay the issue. Additionally, the latest surge of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has renewed the social phenomenon of pandemic fatigue, the condition of giving up on health and safety measures due to exhaustion and hopelessness regarding their efficacy.

In an essay discussing the pandemic, climate change, and the threat of the end of humanity, the philosopher Agnes Callard analyzes this phenomenon as follows:

Just as the thought that other people might be about to stockpile food leads to food shortages, so too the prospect of a depressed, disaffected and de-energized distant future deprives that future of its capacity to give meaning to the less distant future, and so on, in a kind of reverse-snowball effect, until we arrive at a depressed, disaffected and de-energized present.

So, if cultural anxieties increase epistemic vulnerability, in addition to, very plausibly, leading to a kind of hopelessness-induced apathy toward the urgent issues, should we abandon the culture of panic? Should we learn how to rally interest for social change while simultaneously urging others to “be not afraid”? It seems so. But doing this well will involve a significant shift from our current strategies and an openness to adopting entirely new ones. What might these new strategies look like? I have no idea.

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Do Hashtags Make Political Discourse Worse?

image of hashtags on sticky note

Are hashtags ruining political discourse? On Twitter, the hashtag now serves little technical purpose following upgrades to the site’s search function, yet the use of hashtags in the political sphere are incredibly popular as a means of bringing attention to, or giving one’s thoughts on, a subject of significant public interest. While some suggest that hashtags facilitate better public debate, there is good reason to believe that they also make political discussion less rational and more polarized. If the means of expressing political ideas through a hashtag makes political discourse worse off, then their continued use poses a morally significant decision for anyone choosing to use them.

Let’s begin by considering a hashtag like #defundthepolice. The past year has drawn more attention to the idea of police reform. While much of this attention centered on reduction of police violence following the death of George Floyd, greater focus has also been attached to reconsidering the institutions and meaning of policing. For example, questions have been raised whether police should be responding to mental health crises. In the case of Daniel Prude, for instance, police responded to someone in a state of delirium and it resulted in Prude’s death. Walter Wallace Jr. suffered from bipolar disorder until a domestic disturbance also led to his death by the police. 13-year-old Linden Cameron is now paralyzed after being shot by police responding to a call that a juvenile was having a “violent psychological issue.”

These cases remind us that police are called to handle a wide variety of social disturbances and that the best way to handle such cases might vary, which can render traditional policing a bad fit. It is worth noting that the concept of policing and the means by which public order has been maintained has changed over time. For example, not that long ago, it was a novel idea to have a police force that went out and actively investigated crimes, or to have uniformed officers use military-style training and tactics. And yet, many concepts of policing and their institutions come from a time before any significant advances were made in understanding and treating mental health, and before contemporary methods for social work were devised. The question, therefore, is whether the concept of policing, and the means employed, still best suit the problems for which they were created as we understand those problems today?

In terms of the debate about reform, it is important to note that this isn’t an issue of big or small government. Police already respond to these calls anyway; taxpayers already pay for these services (and the lawsuits that follow from them). Deciding what kinds of problems we think police should respond to, whether social workers should be involved, and how to assess effectiveness are all matters for careful community debate, evidence-gathering, and experimentation. But does a slogan like “#defundthepolice” actually make this deliberative process worse?

Part of the problem with a phrase like “defund the police” is that it is incredibly vague: Does defund mean to reduce in budget? Does it mean elimination of police? Does it mean reform to traditional policing? But the problem is even more complicated. The broader question facing the public is about redefining what “policing” even is (and should be) given our current understanding of the contemporary problems it is meant to address. Given this, we may choose to redefine social work and policing such that they may blur. Police officers do not have to be the only people involved in ensuring safety and preventing disorder. So, what does “the police” mean? Are we talking about a specific police institution, such as in the case of Minneapolis where the police department itself may be eliminated? Or does “the police” refer to the entire concept of civil protection in general?

Part of the problem with the popularization of a phrase like #defundthepolice is that it not only makes political discourse more ambiguous, but that it also has the potential to limit our thinking. We do a disservice to ourselves and our concepts by presuming a narrow definition of things like “policing” in our shared vocabulary and collective imagination. And the ambiguity introduced with such slogans may make it more difficult to achieve political consensus.

In a recent study by Eugenia Ha Rim Rho and Melissa Mazmanian of the University of California comparing the difference between people who read news which includes hashtags compared to news which does not. They found that when people were exposed to a politically charged hashtag like #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo, these people were more likely to use partisan language to discuss the news, and more likely to focus on assumed political biases rather than the social issue discussed in the news content. The study notes, “those shown news posts with hashtags exhibited more black-and-white and less emotionally temperate rhetorical patterns compared to the control group” and found that nuanced understandings of content get drowned out by the hashtag. Such findings reinforce the idea that hashtags are potentially harmful to political discourse.

On the other hand, researchers have assumed that political hashtags facilitate better and more meaningful conversations. Such hashtags are known to increase narrative agency by allowing for personal and communal storytelling. For example, the ability to share personal stories using the #MeToo hashtag contributes to political discourse on the issue of sexual harassment by offering perspective and by making the nature of the problem clearer. Hashtags can also make it easier to draw attention to important issues that might not receive attention otherwise, and allow for more opportunity for contribution by each participant in the discussion. As a recent paper argues, Twitter does offer the potential for the emergence of non-elite actors to engage in content creation and framing in communities that form in response to an event or issue.

Hashtags can also be used as part of heuristic processing, making it easier to understand topics and events. This can facilitate communication, organization, and cooperation in response to social issues. As a form of “hashtag activism,” the use of hashtags may make people more likely to be engaged. According to a 2014 study almost 60% of Americans felt that tweeting or posting about something is an effective form of advocacy. As Bev Gooden, a creator of the hashtag #whyIstayed, notes, “I think the beauty of hashtag activism is that it creates an opportunity for sustained engagement.”

So while there is a lot of potential promise to the idea of hashtags as a tool to rally and inform, hashtags also have the potential to rally to the point of obstinacy and to misinform. Of course, it is unlikely that all hashtags will always have the same effects on political discourse and so the choice of when to use them, and how, ultimately becomes an important individual moral question about how to best contribute to a public democratic discourse, demanding of us the need to carefully consider nuance and context.

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“Tenet” and Intergenerational Environmental Justice

image of Tenet movie poster

[SPOILER WARNING: This article discusses a number of plot points of Christopher Nolan’s latest film.]

Earlier this month, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated new movie, “Tenet,” released on virtual platforms. Tenet includes time travel, weapons of mass destruction, and a stereotypical Russian bad guy. The film follows the story of an ex-CIA agent living in the present who must prevent the destruction of all of human history by future generations. The protagonist’s main mission is to obtain and hide an algorithm created in the future which will enable future generations to reverse cause and effect through a process called entropy inversion. Though the plot tackles many complex concepts, it leaves one relatively unexplored: the motive of future generations to completely annihilate their ancestors in order to reverse the uninhabitability of earth.

Is time travel ethical? If possible, would it be unethical for future generations to interfere with the actions of their ancestors? How should we interpret Tenet’s intergenerational environmental justice?

“Tenet” is by no means the first film to examine moral quandaries of time travel. From “The Terminator” to “Groundhog Day,” time-travel movies, often drawing inspiration from novels, have been steadily present since the 1980’s. These films often give the protagonist the ability to time-travel in order to save the world, re-examine their decisions, or even to remedy their past mistakes. The ethical questions posed by these films often focus on the protagonist’s decision to time travel, rather than the morality of time travel more generally. And usually, those who time travel face potentially grave consequences on their present and their future, depending on the decisions they make. As time travel is currently impossible, and there lie many logical paradoxes within the concept, this question has not been heavily debated. However, for the sake of argument, assuming that time travel is possible and that it is possible to change the past and impact the future, when might doing so be ethical, and when might it not?

If one believes the best moral outcomes from time-travel are positive impacts on the future, time-traveling would be considered morally positive when one time-travels in order to maximize social good for the most people. Though time travel is in many ways, linked to cause and effect and therefore consequences, it could also be considered morally positive if it is a way for society to gain knowledge. Such knowledge could be based on our distant past and ancestors to more accurately understand history. Time travel could also be used, if not to interfere, to solve mysteries, either on an individual or collective basis.

“Tenet” applies time travel to flip the normative narrative of intergenerational justice on its head by asking the question: what if future generations could fight back? Intergenerational justice appeals dominate ethos marketing of the modern environmental movement, especially concerning climate change. At the core of these appeals is the central moral tenant that it is wrong to predestine harm, in the form of environmental destruction, for those who have no agency in this decision. While many see our obstinance to curb climate change and environmental destruction as a deep irrefutable moral harm to our descendants, whether or not future generations have a moral license to retaliate is a different question entirely. Such a question though, is not dissimilar from many ethical questions we currently face in regards to self-defense, retribution, and sacrifice.

“Tenet’”s choice to interplay climate change as the reason for the future’s desire to destroy the past makes the question of its morality far more complex, as it is a reaction to a ruined world rather than an offensive aggression. Future generations fighting back might even appeal to those who view environmental destruction as the defining moral issue of the current age. If viewed in this manner, the “war” occurring in “Tenet” is less between the past and the future, and more between environmental destructors and the victims of this destruction. Those familiar with environmental justice and its modern movements, might see the antagonists as fighting for environmental justice, and see the protagonists as the true wrong-doers.

Of course, “Tenet”’s time travel plot comes with the caveat that future generations are incorrect about “The Grandfather Paradox” and in reality, will cause humans to go extinct if they succeed in obtaining the Algorithm. However, assuming that future generations were not incorrect, and the environment could be “reset” by wiping out the human ancestors, is doing so unethical?

The answer to this question might rely on knowing the full consequences of doing so. Inability to predict consequences is often the dilemma inherently posed by time travel. However, if wiping out human history leads to even greater future human stability and success, those with consequentialist leanings would likely believe future generations’ desire to obtain the Algorithm is moral. However, the unknown consequences of using the Algorithm might be enough for many to argue that destroying human history is not justified. Even in a scenario where humans faced inescapable extinction, wiping out the humans of the past with no guarantee of survival in the future might be too large of a risk to take.

From a retributive standpoint, wiping out the humans of the past might be justified even if it did not necessarily lead to better consequences in the future. If one views the antagonist future generations as activists fighting for environmental justice, one could argue that such extreme actions are justified, as past humans deserve to be wiped out. Some radical environmentalists, such as those in The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, suggest that one day, humans should initiate their own extinction in order to restore environmental stability. Though many disagree with this stance, the antagonists in “Tenet” are not trying to end human existence, but rather, to further it, by erasing the past. In a way, the core issue at the heart of the film is whether or not our past is worth sacrificing for a better future. The attempt to erase the future envelops many of the same moral wrongs that climate activists take with our current destruction of the environment: robbing individuals of the ability to survive. The actions of the antagonists might also be viewed as self-defense rather than retribution, as they are fighting back in order to undo the wrongs which have occurred.

Lastly, the question of the antagonist future generations decision to wipe out the past, rather than to convince past generations to change their actions, or to focus on wiping out the biggest contributors to environmental destruction, might be viewed as immoral. “Tenet” takes place in modern day, with the future antagonists set many generations in the future. Countless environmental organizations, individuals, and nations have joined forces in the past few decades to combat climate change and environmental destruction in general. Some of us are trying, despite the pushback. In addition to this effort, the question should also be asked: who is truly responsible for the environmental destruction of which future generations now suffer?

It is rather easy to subscribe to narratives which purport that we are all equally responsible for climate change and environmental destruction, but this way of approaching responsibility in environmental collectives fails to recognize both the quantitative differences in our impacts, as well as the existence of economic power and political structures which give individuals relatively little control over their impact on the environment. This is not only problematic in wiping out all individuals in the current era, but also those in the past, who had no knowledge of nuclear arms, climate change, or pollution. The lengths to which the antagonist future generations are willing to go, by wiping out all of their ancestors, punishes pre-industrial humans for the actions of their descendants. Though humans have been committing large-scale environmental destruction arguably since the dawn of agriculture, both the invention of nuclear fission and the rapid release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere really kicked off the type of long-term environmental destruction which will likely be responsible for the majority of future generations’ grievances.

Should future generations fight back to preserve humans from extinction? If so, who and what should they sacrifice to do so? Though time-travel is not yet possible, it need not be for us to ponder such ethical questions. The best approach to answering these questions can likely be found in turning to the modern environmental justice movement, and the activist ethics employed in fighting for a healthy environment for those in the modern era, as environmental destruction has consequences now as well as the future.

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The Politics of Depression

blurred photograph of crowd on busy street at night

In contrast to the exuberant energy of the 2016 presidential election (for better or for worse), the 2020 election has been characterized by fatigue, anxiety, and even depression. Regardless of which candidate triumphs in the presidential election, many voters on both sides can’t help feeling daunted by the government’s inability to meet the needs of its citizens.

The language of illness has always been a useful lexicon for politics; the metaphor of the “body politic” informed statecraft in Europe for centuries, and enemies of the state have always been described as a disease eating away at that body. But for those members of the body politic struggling with mental illness, the question is how to remain politically active while battling depression, especially when the stakes are so high.

Depression may be the mental illness par excellence for political discourse under capitalism. While capitalism has been linked to schizophrenia (we are expected to be sober workers by day and hedonists by night, as sociologist Daniel Bell points out, which ultimately creates a fractured psyche), Mark Fisher draws comparisons between his experiences with depression and the mindset induced by capitalism. In his 2009 book Capitalist Realism, he writes that “while sadness apprehends itself as a contingent and temporary state of affairs, depression presents itself as necessary and interminable: the glacial surfaces of the depressive’s world extend to every conceivable horizon.” He sees a parallel between the “the seeming ‘realism’ of the depressive, with its radically lowered expectations, and capitalist realism.” As Fisher understands, enacting political change and fighting depression are struggles against a similar opponent.

Depression itself is becoming increasingly political, both in terms of how we conceptualize it and how we attempt to cure it. Danish literary critic Mikkel Krause Frantzen proclaims in an incendiary essay for the LA Review of Books that “any cure to the problem of depression must take a collective, political form; instead of individualizing the problem of mental illness, it is imperative to start problematizing the individualization of mental illness.” He asserts that “Dealing with depression—and other forms of psychopathology—is not only part of, but a condition of possibility for an emancipatory project today. Before we can throw bricks through windows, we need to be able to get out of bed.” This political approach to illness is rooted in a wider politicization of illness. For example, Anne Boyer writes in her recently published memoir about cancer, The Undying, that “Disease is never neutral. Treatment never not ideological. Mortality never without its politics.” Boyer rejects apolitical cancer treatment, noting that “Our genes are tested, our drinking water is not. Our body is scanned, but not our air . . . The news of cancer comes to us on the same sort of screens as the news about elections.” Like cancer, depression is often viewed as purely somatic, not as a condition with a basis in the material reality of the afflicted.

When we acknowledge that material reality, we create the potential to radicalize those with mental illness. However, the fatalistic mindset of depression often discourages political engagement. One study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, which argues that “that depression is a political phenomenon insofar as it has political sources and consequences,” found that mental illness “consistently and negatively affects voting and political participation.” Furthermore, “depression also has developmental consequences for political behavior. Adolescent depression has the potential to set individuals on a trajectory of political disengagement in adulthood.” The study paints this as a vicious cycle; without adequate mental health care, we become depressed, and then depression inhibits political engagement, which prevents healthcare policies from ever changing. The study concludes that though research into the neurological aspect of depression is extremely important, it is also,

“worthwhile to theorize about depression in terms of the social model, especially because the experience of a mood disorder such as depression is largely rooted in social circumstances. Depression is socially-situated in so far as it is not something that simply ‘happens’ to someone but arises out of the circumstances of life. This is compounded by the fact that traditionally disadvantaged groups disproportionately experience depression.”

So how can the mentally ill break out of that vicious cycle? There is no easy solution to this dilemma. Even recognizing that major changes that need to be enacted in order to create a liveable world isn’t always enough. As Frantzen says, “there is no reason to believe that abolishing private property ownership, or realizing a global and absolute cancellation of private debt, will relieve the suffering of depressed people with a single stroke, as if by magic.” For voters experiencing a sense of hopelessness at the polls, and who fear plunging to an even greater depth of hopelessness on election night, a radical kind of self-care is needed. Many have already pointed out the often vacant politics of “self-care,” which does not always promote social change as much as we’d like it to. But when self-care is able to foster “not competition among the sick, but alliances of care that will make people feel less alone and less morally responsible for their illness,” in Frantzen’s words, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

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Can Shoplifting Be Activism?

photograph of women shoplifting makeup

Our culture is both fascinated with and repelled by shoplifting. On the one hand, we scoff at the cast of archetypal shoplifters; the materialistic teenage girl, the shifty hoodie-wearing teenager, the bored housewife looking for a thrill. In whatever form they take, shoplifters are considered defectors from the American Dream, which loudly proclaims the value of honest backbreaking labor (though it doesn’t necessarily decry the obsession with material wealth that purportedly rewards such work). At the same time, theft is glamorized on the big screen. Movies like The Bling Ring, Ocean’s 8, and Hustlers plumb the moral implications of theft while wrapping it up in a glamour veneer.

Our cultural fascination has bled into a scientific quest to unmask the motivations of shoplifters. What kind of person would do something as seemingly irrational (in that it goes against the logic of working hard for material wealth) and potentially dangerous as shoplift, we want to know, and why? Women are generally thought to shoplift more than men, because women are thought to shop more in general, but a 2008 study conducted by The American Journal of Psychiatry demonstrated that men actually are more likely to shoplift than women. A recent paper, “The Psychology of Shoplifting: Development of a New Typology for Repeated Shoplifting,” which was published in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology in 2019, makes a more rigorous effort at pinning this elusive figure down.

The researchers conducted a survey of around two hundred self-professed kleptomaniacs, which measured their shoplifting behavior (the strategies they use to avoid detection and the objects they gravitate towards), the emotions they experienced before and after shoplifting, their mental health, level of impulsiveness, and history of trauma. From this data, the researchers determined that there are six kinds of shoplifters, each with a specific personality profile and motivation for theft. The most common type, making up around 25% of the participants, is the Lost-Reactive type, who are “characterized by generally law-abiding behavior, stability in mental health, and the preponderance of lifetime loss and trauma.” These types may be shoplifting out of a subconsciously desire to compensate for a past loss or trauma, the researchers suggest. The Impulsive type is generally financially well-off, and tends to steal only when the opportunity presents itself. They were found to feel the least shameful about their actions. The Depressed type shoplifts to alleviate the pain or numbness of mental illness, possessing both the highest amount of shame and the strongest moral compass of the six types. In a sharp contrast to that, the Hobbyist, views theft as not only a fun activity but a component of their identity. According to the study, “These individuals had a high orientation to traditional ethics and yet did not experience distress, guilt, or shame, indicating that they may see themselves as above, outside, or exempt from the law,” and also receive the highest enjoyment from stealing of the six types. The last two types, Addictive-Compulsive (the thrill-seekers) and the Economically Disadvantaged (those who steal to survive, and almost always stole on a more regular basis than any of the other types), tended to feel low shame.

But there is a seventh type of shoplifter, unmentioned in the study and yet present in the spaces between each profile. This type professes a unique motivation for shoplifting; political activism. The activist borrows elements from nearly all the categories, never fitting fully into any single group. They are hobbyists, in that they view stealing as fun and commiserate with other shoplifters in an online community, much in the same way that a hobbyist who builds miniature trains might do. Many claim to enjoy the thrill of the steal, but many more cite economic disadvantage as their key motivation. But the characteristic that most sharply distinguishes them from the other categories is that their shoplifting is rooted in feminist and anti-capitalist theory, which could perhaps point to a strong rather than weak ethical compass.

These political shoplifters are surprisingly visible online. Journalist Tasbeeh Herwees interviewed teenage girls who participated in “Liftblr,” an online community of shoplifters who swap tips and share pictures of their hauls on Tumblr. A study on the Liftblr community conducted by Northumbria University, identified a cluster of three themes that made up the entire body of shoplifting blogs; tips and advice (how to find the blind spots of security cameras, what kind of purses can hide items the most inconspicuously), resistance and activism (which includes social justice, feminist theory, and anticapitalist theory), and storytelling/community building (personal stories about shoplifting that reify a sense of a shared identity between members, as well as jokes about the Liftblr community and general humor related to shoplifting).

Not all members of Liftblr are explicitly political, but the Northumbria study found that social justice was a central focus on the blogs of of the most vocal members of the community. One girl, who went by the handle PrincessKlepto, wrote to Herwees that,

“Being a teen girl is hard—you have to be skinny, attractive, put together, well dressed, etc. Society teaches girls through media and the beauty industry that they need to be perfect. I’m sick of handing my money over to corporations that profit on this bullshit…so if i have to put up with this kind of stuff, i’m [sic] certainly not going to pay for it.”

Like the Lost-Reactive type, these teens cite trauma (the broad trauma of living in a capitalist society, the more specific trauma of being a teenage girl) as a motivation for theft, though the trauma described in the Lost-Reactive profile seems more of an unconscious than conscious motivator. Another lifter, pretty-little-lift, wrote, “I 100% support women stealing beauty products instead of throwing every spare penny she has away chasing after an impossible pipedream sold to her since the moment she was born.” Some users take it farther than just makeup. Tumblr user ptsdhamlet posted in 2016,

“I’m not going to get too deep into the Shoplifting Discourse but I will say that ‘stealing for survival’ encompasses a lot more than just food. You could be stealing makeup (which is already always absurdly expensive) so strangers read you as a woman, or stealing a toy so your kid doesn’t feel like she’s a bad person because Santa didn’t bring her anything, or stealing tampons or toilet paper because everybody deserves basic hygiene, or stealing nice clothes for a job interview, or stealing school supplies so you can study, or stealing any other number of things that are truly necessary but you won’t immediately die if you don’t get them.”

So is it possible for shoplifting to be activism, and if so, how effective a form of protest is it? In her 2012 book The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, Rachel Shteir describes the work of journalist James Trimarco, who researches the subject of shoplifting as activism. His work isn’t focused on determining the moral implications of stealing, but the metric by which we should judge the validity of shoplifting as political activism. He asks, “Does [shoplifting] keep a sense of direct action alive? Does it develop skills that can come in handy in other forms of political work? Does it provide a kind of ‘euphoria of disobedience’ against private property that’s not easily found elsewhere?”

David Graeber, a cultural anthropologist who teaches at the London School of Economics, was also interviewed by Shteir for her book. He told her than when shoplifting,

“One doesn’t destroy (or steal) people’s personal property, in the sense of things they own to use themselves. One doesn’t deprive people of their means of livelihood. Almost all anarchists I know don’t feel it’s morally wrong to steal from a large corporate store, but wouldn’t think of stealing from a mom and pop grocer […] It’s really hard to imagine a scenario where we can overcome capitalism without breaking or taking anything that the law says doesn’t belong to us. So then it comes down to a question of tactics: When is it helpful and when isn’t it? […] Who gets to say? Is there some central authority that can dictate what are appropriate revolutionary tactics?”

Both Triamarco and Graeber bring up interesting points. Shoplifting is arguably the most accessible form of civil disobedience. As superstores proliferate, it becomes easier and easier to swipe items from big businesses. But when we consider whether or not it provides the euphoria of disobedience or develops the tools needed for protest, the issue becomes more complicated. As demonstrated in the 2019 study, shoplifters are still a heterogeneous group, whatever their professed motivations. They may not even consider their actions political at all. Furthermore, not everyone who shoplifts actively develops a revolutionary toolkit or participates in community-building, as the Impulsive type attests to.

There are few forms of protest that are as difficult to interpret as protest, that don’t explicitly make themselves known as civil disobedience. Shoplifting, uniquely, is inherently silent rather than overtly loud and disruptive. Does that mean it only becomes protest when we think of it as protest, and the action itself is inherently neutral? Or do such actions carry political significance regardless of intent? The Economically Disadvantaged shoplifter, for example, might not think about their actions as political, but one could argue that their need to shoplift arises from and is a direct response to political or economic marginalization, so the action is political whether or not they think of it that way or not.

At the same time, some researchers have argued that the act of shoplifting is inherently harmful, regardless of professed motivation. A 2008 study conducted on over 43,000 people demonstrated that those who shoplifted were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness, and tended to score lower on social, mental, and emotional health surveys. The same study showed that high school students who admitted to shoplifted had lower grades, higher drug and alcohol use, and more feelings of sadness and hopelessness when compared with those who hadn’t shoplifted. However, one could argue that all of this data doesn’t necessarily reveal a cause and effect relationship. In other words, it doesn’t tell us if shoplifting is a cause or symptom of emotional and mental problems, and how factors like economic disadvantage shape these lived experiences. A much smaller 2012 study conducted on over 100 teenagers found that nearly 25% of those diagnosed with kleptomania reported attempting suicide at least once. 93% of those cases reported that the attempt was “directly or indirectly due to their kleptomania symptoms (e.g., shame over the behavior; legal or personal problems resulting from shoplifting).” This study comes much closer to establishing that link, but the sample size is relatively small, and once again, the study doesn’t address the social and economic forces at the root of many shoplifters’ trauma.

Thinkers like Graebar bring up the difficulty in labeling an act like shoplifting, which may spring from any number of motivations, as inherently anticapitalist or revolutionary. It’s worthwhile to reconsider the various forms civil disobedience can take, and what stereotypes about shoplifting impact our cultural response to it.

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Pia Klemp and The Ethics of Migrant Taxiing

photograph of seawatch3

Pia Klemp made waves over the summer for rejecting the Grand Vermeil Medal. Paris had intended to award the German boat captain for her bravery, having rescued thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, but Klemp refused to accept the award stating that, “We do not need authorities deciding about who is a ‘hero’ and who is ‘illegal’.” (Klemp is currently awaiting trial in Italy and could face up to 20 years in prison for aiding the illegal immigration of African migrants across the Mediterranean to Italy.)

The case of Pia Klemp is the culmination of several geopolitical factors. The European migrant crisis began in 2015 when refugees fleeing political instability and violence in the Middle East and Northern African countries began arriving on European soil. In particular, many migrants hailing from sub-Saharan Africa have recently undertaken journeys to the coast of Libya in an attempt to board a raft and cross the Mediterranean in search of safety and the promise of a better life in Europe.

Over the past few years, Pia Klemp has allegedly aided over 6,000 migrants in their crossing of the turbulent Mediterranean Sea by locating their ill-equipped and overcrowded rafts off the coast of Libya, helping them aboard one of the various search-and-rescue ships she has captained, and taxiing them to the shores of southern Italy.

Klemp and her supporters contend that the migrants are legitimate asylum-seekers who are willing to risk their lives in attempting to cross the Mediterranean on what are often inflatable pontoon boats. Some migrants have been quoted as saying that they would rather die than go back. Klemp argues that the migrants have compelling reasons to flee their home countries, but that they are being forced to come to Europe via the Mediterranean because European countries have closed their borders and there is no other legal way of getting there.

Another relevant concern stems from the principle of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of international law that states that no one should be returned to a country where they face persecution or danger. The Libyan Coastguard is currently under orders to return migrant-carrying vessels to Libya for processing. Recent investigations have shown that in some cases, the Libyan Coastguard has brought rescued migrants back to the Tripoli Detention Center where they experienced a lack of food and water, and beatings by armed guards with pipes and ropes. It was also reported that while some people were released to their country of origin, others were sold to a captor who tortured them and attempted to extract ransom from their families.

Klemp claims that the Italian government is wrongfully putting on a “show trial” and that “the worst has already come to pass […] Sea rescue missions have been criminalized.” However, there is another side to the story. Detractors of Klemp’s actions argue that engaging in migrant taxiing is wrong for two main reasons.

First, migrant taxiing does nothing to solve the root cause of the problem – political instability in sub-Saharan African countries. In fact, it may even contribute to increased rates of flight from these countries. Additionally, increased emigration could, in turn, lead to harsher penalties imposed on citizens who are caught attempting to leave their home nation.

Second, detractors of Klemp argue that although her actions may be driven by altruism, they have resulted in dire consequences in reality. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that the death rate of refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean has risen sharply from 0.3% in 2015 to 1.95% in 2018. Some contend that this rising death rate is a byproduct of the increased presence of rescue vessels, such as Klemp’s Iuventa, present in the Mediterranean. The argument operates on the assumption that the greater the number of rescue vessels present (or believed to be present), the greater the chance migrants believe they have of being rescued at sea, and therefore, the greater the number of migrants willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean. It also may be true that the presence of NGO rescue boats can encourage migrants to board vessels that are incapable of crossing the Mediterranean on their own and if they are not spotted, will be doomed to drown.

Evidently, several ethical concerns loom large in the case of Pia Klemp and migrant taxiing. Klemp and her supporters are firmly rooted in their belief that they have a moral obligation to rescue migrants at sea, while critics contend that migrant taxiing fails to address the root cause of the problem and may be a contributing factor in the higher rates of deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

While Klemp’s heart may be in the right place, her actions in taxiing refugees across the Mediterranean could actually have adverse consequences of increasing the number of migrants and their deaths at sea. Perhaps a better, albeit more challenging, long-term solution would be to redirect and increase aid to the troubled regions of Africa from which refugees are fleeing. Such an approach would address the root cause of the problem by aiming to stabilize their political systems and reduce the number of desperate migrants seeking to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean.

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The Ethics of Climate Change Protest: Should Protest Be Funny?

climeme protest sign

The Global Climate Strike, which took place last September and involved over 150 countries, counted nearly 4 million young people among its numbers. This admirable show of support perhaps seems less shocking given the increasing prominence of young people in climate change activism. Greta Thunberg is perhaps the most famous of these, but others like Autumn Peltier and Xiye Bastida have also become important advocates for the fight to save the planet.

Because political protest itself has become increasingly visible online, signs from the climate strike inevitably went viral. The vast majority of signs spoke to the unblunted rage and helplessness inspired by political ineptitude (a perfect example, seen in the header of a Vox article on the climate strikes, simply reads “DON’T FUCKING KILL US”). However, many other drew on the language of memes and online humor to articulate frustration. In one example, a teenage girl holds up a sign with the words “THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID…DIE LIT” floating above a planet half-engulfed in flame. Another sign reads, “Winter is Not Coming,” a distortion of a Game of Thrones quote that has become a meme in itself. These signs, and many others like them, require fluency in the language and culture of social media. Almost all young people are equipped with this form of literacy. As Bridget Read notes in an article for The Cut, “Gen Z has a knack for incorporating its politics into its internet-inflected, ironic, and earnest self-expression so uncannily, so it’s to be expected that its IRL signs would be as funny, charming, and devastating as the best ‘climemes’.”

Read coins a startling new word in that last sentence, though climate change memes were hardly invented by the protests of last September. While “climemes” is a useful way of describing the ever-growing phenomenon of climate change memes, it should prompt us to ask what the moral ramifications of “memeifying” political protest are. Does humor have a place in our collective reckoning with the environmental catastrophe, or does it impede active and sustained engagement in social change?

On the one hand, memes are more likely to be seen by younger people who aren’t already actively engaged in environmental activism. Because they are made to be shared, memes certainly increase the visibility of issues like climate change for a diverse audience. If many people didn’t read lengthy articles about the climate protests, most at least saw images of funny protest signs on their Twitter feeds. However, memes inherently have an expiration date, and it eventually becomes blasé to share older memes. Given that climate change will have long-lasting ramifications, is such a short-lived format really best for fostering long-term engagement?

This leads into another question, of whether or not memes encourage those who share them to physically participate in activism. The idea of “armchair activism,” or activism that involves nothing more than sharing information with others online, has become controversial in recent years, but one could argue that sharing memes falls under this category. However, it should be clear that the protestors who make such signs are by no means working against their own cause, or that encouraging engagement is even the goal of climemes. A bitter sense of humor may be all we have in the face of looming catastrophe, a way for us to vent frustration and grief.

This issue is rooted in a much older debate about the overall purpose of humor. Aristotle, for example, was skeptical about the purpose of humor, and separated it sharply from tragedy. In Chapter 5 of The Poetics, he states that,

“The tragic and the comic are the same, in so far as both are based on contradiction; but the tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical, the painless contradiction […] the comic apprehension evokes the contradiction or makes it manifest by having in mind the way out, which is why the contradiction is painless. The tragic apprehension sees the contradiction and despairs of a way out.”

His argument is that both tragedy and comedy are rooted in contradiction. This could be the contradiction between appearance and truth on which much of comedy hinges, or the contradiction between desire and reality which is often at the center of tragedy. Contradiction is just one thing climate change protests are pushing back against; namely, the contradiction between grim reality and the insulated world in which many politicians are living it, the contradiction between the urgency of the situation and the lack of response to it.

Aristotle’s definition of humor vehemently excludes pain. However, the kind of humor utilized by protestors has a painful edge. As Aristotle said, tragedy and humor are closely linked, but as climate change alters every aspect of life on earth, the lines between tragedy and comedy become indistinguishable. This is evident in all climemes, and whether or not circulating them is fully ethical, their existence speaks volumes about the modern day tragedy of environmental destruction.

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Jay-Z and Colin Kaepernick: Is It Business or Personal?

photograph of flag ceremony at NFL football game

In 2016, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling on the sidelines at games during the national anthem as a way to protest against racial injustice against African Americans. Kaep’s demonstration ignited a stream of racial dissent in the country, drawing support and criticism alike. Activists and other athletes voiced their support for Kaepernick, while he received criticism from individuals such as President Trump for being disrespectful to our troops, unpatriotic, and anti-American. Amidst the controversy, Kaep opted out of his contract with his then-team the San Francisco 49ers looking for a new start in the free-agency market–he never found one. Kapernick’s protests had created a rift between him and the NFL, and he has remained black-balled from the league for the past three years. Recently, the NFL announced a partnership with hip-hop businessman mogul Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label, where the two organizations will collaborate on entertainment as well as social justice initiatives. Amidst the many reactions to the partnership, questions arose about Colin Kaepernick’s lack of involvement in the initiative, as Jay-Z was one of the many who voiced support for Kaepernick. With the NFL season about to begin, two persisting questions that hang is: should Jay-Z have done this partnership with the NFL and should he have included Colin Kaepernick?

First of all, Jay-Z is a businessman. Or just “a business, man” as he says in Kanye West’s song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone.” Either way you put it, Hova has transcended the world of hip-hop and parlayed his knowledge of the music world into a commerce role that touts a serious business portfolio. For instance, Jay-Z co-founded Roca Wear, a clothing line that at its peak had annual sales of $700 million dollars. He co-owns the 40/40 Club, a high end sports bar chain that opened in New York City, co-owns a champagne brand, co-owns the streaming service Tidal, and has hands in a variety of other business ventures. Hova is an opportunist, so it would only make sense that when one of the most popular and most viewed organizations comes to him with an opportunity, he seizes it. That’s what businessmen do.

But as different components of the NFL-Roc Nation deal are pieced together, the phrase “it’s nothing personal, it’s business” comes to mind. Why should Jay-Z pass on a lucrative opportunity? One could argue that his partnership with the NFL is a bit hypocritical. Amidst the Kaepernick controversy, Hova showed support for the former NFL quarterback on multiple occasions, dedicating a a performance of his song “The Story of O.J,” a song about black bodies and the impact of money, to Kaep. Hova even went on SNL with a blacked out Kaepernick jersey on. So if Jay-Z supports Kaep, then how could he align himself with the very organization that kept him out of a job for so long? The hip-hop mogul answered this question himself, stating that “Colin’s whole thing was to bring attention to social injustice so in that case this is a success — this is the next thing.” Hova went on to explain that “There’s two parts of protest: the protest, and then there’s a company or individual saying, ‘I hear you, what do we do next?’”

On one hand Jay-Z’s words make sense. Protests can only get protesters so far. When the protesting is over, what’s next? More protests or reform? Hova’s response to critics and a lack of Kaep involvement seem reminiscent of the idea of a seat at the table. Once you’re in a position to enact change, you make use of that opportunity. The NFL-Roc Nation partnership heavily focuses on the league’s “Inspire Change” program, an initiative for social justice. Roc Nation is expected to boost the program through using music and entertainment as a platform. Jay-Z is now in a position to make an impact in whatever way and sees fit and make change for the better. Also, who’s to say that Kaep won’t be brought in later? Just as Nike stunned the country by featuring Kaep in their campaign commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of their “Just Do It” slogan, Roc Nation could bring Kaep back into the league in a different way. But on the other hand, Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL could be seen as him just cashing a big check for an organization that needs him, hoping that his presence will boost the ratings that they lost to the Kapenernick controversy. After all, Hova is a businessman, and nothing is personal.

Already, the NFL and Roc Nation have announced a free concert in Chicago to kickoff the league’s season opener, featuring Meek Mill, Rapsody, and Meghan Trainor. The concert is free, and proceeds will go to social justice organizations. It’s still not clear whether the partnership will be lucrative for social justice, or just for Jay-Z and the NFL. But if Colin Kaepernick didn’t kneel during the national anthem, there’s a chance that no change would be happening at all.

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Jay-Z and the NFL: Hypocrisy or Suite Participation?

photograph of Jay-Z mural

Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter) made headlines recently when he announced a new partnership with the NFL to “work with the league on social justice initiatives and entertainment programming,” including the Super Bowl halftime show. The move came as a surprise to many, as in the past Carter has vocally expressed his opposition to the behavior of the NFL, especially with regards to their treatment of Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem protests. He has even included such criticisms in his lyrics: for example in “Apeshit” he raps,

I said no to the Superbowl, you need me, I don’t need you
Every night we in the endzone, tell the NFL we in stadiums too

Here he refers to an incident in which he turned down an offer from the NFL to perform at the Super Bowl, again, out of solidarity with Kaepernick.

In response to this new deal, then, many have called Carter a hypocrite, charging him with abandoning his principles simply to make a buck. How should we think of Carter’s actions here? There certainly does seem to be something unsavory about this seemingly abrupt about-face, but should we think that he has crossed a moral line?

The charge of hypocrisy is not lost on Carter. In response to concerns that in making a deal with the NFL he is essentially abandoning Kaepernick, Carter defended his actions, albeit in a way that some have found troubling. For instance, when asked how he could join forces with the NFL with a good conscious, he responded that he thought that “we’ve moved past kneeling” and that he could do more good working from within:

Let me bring attention to injustice. Everyone’s saying “How are you going forward if Kaep doesn’t have a job?” This wasn’t about him having a job. That became a part of the discussion. He was kneeling to bring attention to injustice. We know what it is. Now how do we address the injustice?

If this is what Carter genuinely thinks that he’s doing – that he really is putting himself in a position to do more good working from within – does this mean that he should not be charged with being a hypocrite?

First things first, it’s far from clear whether we really have moved passed kneeling. The fact that kneeling during the national anthem garnered so much initial attention indicates that such protests are at least somewhat effective, and the cause that the demonstrations were initially meant to draw attention to – namely the disproportionate violence of police officers against African Americans – is still one that very much requires attention. There is certainly a reading of Carter’s statements, then, that makes it seem as though he is merely trying to justify selling out, rather than actually being interested in genuine activism.

But perhaps this is too harsh. Socialist and writer Michael Eric Dyson, for instance, argues that:

Jay’s deal with the NFL represents a valid and potentially viable attempt to raise awareness of injustice to black folk, and to inspire the league to embrace just action for the black masses. It may fail — and it certainly should not be used to diminish Kaepernick’s noble, iconic battle — but the effort is not a repudiation of justice.

According to Dyson, putting someone like Carter in a position of power within the NFL is indeed something that could effect change in a way that mere protesting could not, a move that Dyson refers to shifting from “street protests to suite participation.” If partnering with the NFL could, in fact, give Carter more power to effect the kinds of changes Kapernick and others want to see within the league and elsewhere, then Carter’s deal would not represent an abandoning of Kaepernick or his causes.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Writing at the Washington Post, Kevin Blackistone argues that Jay-Z’s support for Kaepernick is fundamentally at odds with his deal with the NFL, stating that:

Jay-Z can’t stand up for Kaepernick while tucking himself into bed with the NFL. It is disingenuous. It is hypocritical. It is fake. It’s like a rapper growing up in tony suburbs rappin’ about trappin’.

Blackistone also notes that this would not be the first instance of hypocritical behavior in Carter’s business career, referring to his involvement with the development of the Barclays Center which saw the displacement of many working-class residents in Brooklyn. With this history in mind it is tempting to interpret Carter’s actions as ones motivated by a good business sense, and not by a good moral sense.

While many have speculated on Jay-Z’s intentions and hypothesized about what will or will not happen once his deal with the NFL officially begins, we will of course have to watch and wait to see whether anything good actually comes out of this partnership. There is one reason to be pessimistic, however, which is that it’s difficult to imagine that the NFL is actually concerned about improving social justice initiatives and not just trying to make it seem like it cares by aligning itself with Jay-Z. For instance, Michael Harriot writes:

The NFL has no interest in social justice. As long as they can keep their new-millennium Mandingos mute until the players’ repeatedly concussed brains and cartilage-less knees render them disposable, the NFL couldn’t care less about black lives. 

Similarly, Billy Haisley writes that:

It’s perfectly reasonable to believe that, at heart, both Kaepernick and Jay-Z are serious, compassionate, well-meaning men who are deeply invested in addressing the plight of marginalized communities, and who seek to use their considerable platforms to do so in the best way they know how. It’s also accurate to say that lending themselves and the things they stand for to mega-corps that do not and cannot care about the admirable convictions they wish to support is a lamentable, counterproductive plan of action.

Of course, even if the NFL is motivated much more by having the appearance of caring about social justice rather than actually caring about it, that does not mean that someone like Carter would not still be able to effect change within the organization. It might just make it more difficult for actual change to take place (for discussion see Cole Martin’s “Commodifying Activism“).

So what should we take away from all this? Again, there is a sense in which time will have to tell as to whether the partnership between Jay-Z and the NFL is a beneficial one. Of course, we can still ask the questions of whether siding with the enemy is acceptable if one genuinely thinks that one can better effect change from within, or whether doing so makes one a hypocrite regardless of good intentions.

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The Gillette Controversy: The Best an Ad Can Be?

An ad reading "Shave Yourself!" and a picture of a man pointing

Editor’s note: This article is the first of a brief series on Gillette’s “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” ad that aired on January 13, 2019. 

In January 2019, the razor company Gillette released an ad that turned out to be very controversial.  The ad, titled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” left some viewers applauding a message encouraging major steps in the right direction and left others seeking out different razor brand loyalty.

The main message of the ad discourages “toxic masculinity” and suggests that communities and parents should do more for their male children and for their communities at large.  We should not encourage the type of male aggression that leads to bullying, cruelty, and violence. We should encourage boys and young men to engage women differently—sexuality can be expressed without disrespect.  The ad features examples of fathers modeling respectful behavior for their sons and discouraging behavior that many view as excessively aggressive. The ad promotes the conclusion that our traditional caveman conception of masculinity is in desperate need of refinement.  It isn’t that maleness itself is inherently problematic.  Instead, we should be applauding and supporting more honorable traits frequently found in men.

Some critics of the ad disapproved of the messenger.  Arguments on this point took many different forms. First, some offered the general objection that companies should not be in the business of making political statements.  The proper goal of a business should be to make a profit by creating and producing quality products for consumers. There is no reason to believe that companies or advertising executives are experts on social, political, or moral issues.  Advertising is difficult to escape, so the message a company puts out is seen and heard by many people. Some argue that messaging of this type should be reserved for other forums.

To this point, some argue that businesses never have pure motives.  Their motivation is always primarily to make a profit. If ethical behavior requires that the right kind of motivation or intention gives rise to an action, the motivations of businesses are simply never going to pass the test.  Companies, so the argument goes, will always pander to the interest groups that they think will be the most reliable customers and consumers of their products. Consumers don’t, therefore, have much reason to believe that the message being advanced by companies is anything more than pure manipulative rhetoric.

There are a handful of responses to these arguments.  It is true that in our increasingly globalized communities, businesses have a tremendous amount of power, arguably more power than institutions of any other type.  It is also true that profit is the primary motivation of most businesses. It does not follow, however, that profit, from a descriptive standpoint, is their only motivation.  It also does not follow, from a normative standpoint, that it ought to be their only motivation.  

Descriptively, in one sense, to even talk about the “motivations” of a business is to make a category mistake.  Despite the fact that businesses are treated as legal persons in the eyes of the law, they are not the kinds of entities that can form mental states and, as a result, are not the kinds of things that can form intentions.  The individuals who make crucial decisions for the business form intentions, not the business itself. There is no reason to think that individual business executives, just like any other people, can’t have complex motivations.  Indeed, the explicit business plan of many businesses is to deal with a social problem or injustice, with profit as a secondary but subordinate motivation.

Normatively, there are some pretty compelling arguments against the idea that profit ought to be the only motivation of a business or corporation.  If businesses have more reach than most other institutions, don’t we want them spreading positive messages?  One critical example in which corporate leadership is necessary concerns environmental issues.  As it is, people tend to view the natural world as an endless pit of resources to exploit for capitalist gain.  This is unsustainable. Don’t we want corporations to take the lead, providing examples of responsible production and consumption?  One might think that bringing an end to, or at least stemming the tide of, acts of harassment and senseless violence is an equally laudable goal.  Why shouldn’t corporations be doing what they can to bring about these kinds of consequences, given the scope and volume of their respective voices?

Some, and, arguably, the most vocal objections to the Gillette ad are objections not to the messenger but to the message.  At the moment of this writing, the YouTube link for the recent Gillette ad has 643 thousand upvotes and 1.1 million downvotes.  Objections to the ad clearly go beyond theoretical attitudes about best business practices. Some people think that men as a group are getting an unfair reputation because of the admittedly horrible behavior of a select few.  By casting men as a group as angry, aggressive bullies who prey on the weak, sexually harass women, and commit acts of mass violence, are we not engaging in hasty generalization? When companies like Gillette suggest to consumers that maleness is “toxic,” what kind of message are we sending to young boys about their innate nature? What’s more, this ad was released into the cultural context of the rising tide of the #MeToo movement. Many critics of the movement are concerned that good men are being swept up with the bad—adrift in a sea of righteous rage and vindictive resentment. Others argue that the traits that are criticized in the ad have positive effects as well as negative ones.  The same traits that might be described as “aggressive” in some contexts might be described as “assertive” in others.  Assertive traits are traits we want our children to have.  Do we really want powerful corporations encouraging our male children to dial back their assertiveness?  Does this message in some ways render men and boys impotent?

Producers and admirers of the ad might argue that, despite the appearance of serious conflict here, there is no real disagreement.  The ad was not suggesting that all men exert their aggression in problematic ways.  It was not attempting to leave people with the impression that all maleness is toxic.  Rather, it was suggesting that certain practices, certain social customs and parenting behaviors need to change.  Fathers need to model respect for women and they need to keep eyes on their sons to make sure they are demonstrating respect for women.  Gillette is not suggesting that our new conception of maleness should cast them as ineffectual or otherwise weak. Instead, they are suggesting that real male strength is demonstrated in honorable behavior.

The right message is likely to be the winning message in the long run—even if they face backlash now, they will be remembered as coming down on the right side of history.

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Commodifying Activism

"Nike" by Miguel Vaca licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Via Flickr).

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

Recently, Nike aired an advertisement that sparked a lot of cultural and political buzz. This ad contained professional football player, Colin Kaepernick, a man who has become a household name in political discourse through his protest to police brutality, delivering a simple message: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Since the airing of this ad, there has been a considerable backlash with a variety of Twitter hashtags like #justburnit or #BoycottNike becoming increasingly popular. Despite this response to Nike’s use of Kaepernick’s controversial figure, the value of Nike’s stock has only risen and sales have increased. Nike’s promotion has helped spread awareness and increase support for Colin Kaepernick, but what right do companies with a history like Nike’s have to be champions of social justice? Nike has a notorious history of utilizing sweatshops and child labor and not only that, but they just signed a new contract with the same league that has collectively barred Kaepernick from playing. This amalgam of good and bad aspects of Nike’s support for social justice begs the question: is it ethical for companies to commodify social and political activism? And what are its effects on our societal norms? In the following paragraphs, I will explore how similar ad campaigns have informed their respective social justice movements and if there is an ethical way to market these movements within a consumerist economy.

Activism within consumerism can play many valuable roles: the increased awareness that marketing campaigns offer represents one of the most powerful ways for a social justice movement to take flight. One prominent example is the #LikeAGirl movement in 2015. In a commercial that was popularized after its airing during Super Bowl XLIX, children were asked to perform actions “like a girl.” According to Alana Vagionos of the Huffington Post, when the young boys acted out these things, “Instead of simply doing these actions, each person weakly reenacted them, by accidentally dropping the ball or slapping instead of punching,” making it clear that in American culture femininity is often synonymous with weakness. As Vagionos notes, the phrase “like a girl” is similar to saying something is “gay” — both are used in a derogatory manner. But when little girls were asked to complete the same actions “like a girl,” they did so with vigor, strength, and confidence.

Efforts like this, while ultimately designed to generate more profit, can be very productive in shifting public opinion on social issues. According to a case study done by D&AD, almost 100 million people viewed the commercial on YouTube alone and prior to watching the clip, just 19% of 16-24 year-olds had a positive association toward the phrase “like a girl.” After watching, however, 76% said they no longer saw the phrase negatively. So, from the standpoint of publicity and raising awareness of the larger issues at play, this type of activism seems fruitful.

However, there are many who object to commodifying activism. While there is potential for positive change, there is also the possibility of further reinforcing inequality and exacerbating damaging societal norms. Using movements like #BlackLivesMatter to promote a new product line or a special offer dilutes the meaning and value of these symbols and covers over systemic power inequalities.

One campaign that demonstrates many of the faults in retail activism is the “NIKE(RED)” campaign put on during the 2010 World Cup. This movement sought to increase awareness and funding for programs that combat the AIDS epidemic through a new line of merchandise emphasizing the color red. But Spring-Serenity Duvall and Matthew C. Guschwan believe that this “retail activism” reinforces colonial norms, asserting in Communication, Culture and Critique that this campaign simplifies an extremely complex global health predicament.

They claim that it further reinforces the way that Western consumers view the people in need of aid. It exacerbates the perceived divide between the aid recipients and the consumers and does nothing to increase solidarity between them. Ultimately, the “NIKE(RED)” movement,

“perpetuat[es] images of hierarchies that privilege Western consumers and marginaliz[es] African peoples whom the organization seeks to aid […] The ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy positions Western consumers as a powerful force and Third World peoples as passively in need of aid. So, a major contradiction within (RED) is that while consumer-based campaigns use rhetorics of unity, they ultimately rely on the individual, private, and personal expenditure of money that does not promote substantial social solidarity.”

Additionally, the simplified view that these campaigns perpetuate merely pacifies consumer bases rather than helping to resolve the issue. It breeds ignorance about the power structures in play and distorts the fact that these powerful brands are often contributors to the problem. Guil Louis of the Lawrentian says that “it seems as if social consciousness has become something that not just these celebrities can commodify, but so too can their sponsors.” The truth of the matter is that when it comes to retail activism, there is always an ulterior motive: the profit-making potential of the issue brought about in the advertisement. When meaningful change is a positive externality instead of the primary goal, Louis says that it will “pacify us and make it even more difficult to identify oppressive structures or conditions.”

It is clear that there are both benefits and detriments to this type of approach to activism, but it is important to be aware of the effects that this commercialization has on the movements themselves. Ultimately this approach to activism, while beneficial in some ways, is not enough if it is the only approach to activism. There are a variety of meaningful and effective ways to sway positive social change, and ultimately awareness, especially if diluted by a profit-making incentive, can only go so far without action.

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Telling Stories, Seeking Justice: The #MeToo Movement

"Women's March Austin-1" by Lauren Harnett liscensed under CC BY 2.0 (via Flickr)

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

When Tarana Burke served as a youth worker, she heard her “share of heartbreaking stories from broken homes to abusive or neglectful parents.” A little girl, Heaven, reached out to Burke to talk in private, relaying stories of “her mother’s boyfriend who was doing all sorts of monstrous things to her developing body.” Unable to handle the horror, Burke interrupted and directed the girl to a different counselor. Haunted by her response, Burked reflected, “as I cared about that child, I could not find the courage that she had found. I could not muster the energy to tell her that I understood, that I connected, that I could feel her pain.” Shocked and hurt by the rejection, Heaven walked away, and Burke remembers the moment: “I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone and I couldn’t even bring myself to whisper…me too.”

The first “#MeToo,” Burke started the movement and also founded JustBe Inc., “a youth organization focused on the health, well-being and wholeness of young women of color.” Last weekend, Actress Alyssa Milano posted on Twitter, rekindling the movement: “Me too. Suggested by a friend: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” The movement resurfaced as the cascading allegations of Harvey Weinstein’s perpetrations of sexual assault flooded in by the dozens. Spreading rapidly across social media platforms, the movement quickly came to life: “On Facebook, there were more than 12 million posts, comments and reactions in less than 24 hours, by 4.7 million users around the world, according to the company. In the U.S., Facebook said 45 percent of users have had friends who posted ‘me too.’”

Anna Walsh, writer for The Washington Post, notes that there have been many hashtag movements like this one, listing #YesAllWomen in 2014 and #NotOkay in 2016, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump dismissed his conduct in a video that emerged — in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women — as “locker room talk.” When “Trump’s surrogates attempted to discredit the women who said Trump had assaulted them,” people responded with a new hashtag, #WhyWomenDontReport. Yet many people, like Walsh, are frustrated by the lack of a male response. Despite the surges of female activism and expressions of pain, culminated in the national #NotOkay and #WhyWomenDontReport, Donald Trump still became the president of the United States, defeating a woman. We still have need for hashtags like #MeToo.

Ann Friedman, writer for the LA Times, expresses her disappointment with the lack of a male response to the #MeToo movement in her powerful article, titled “Want to be a male ally to harassed women? Stop ranting about Harvey Weinstein and put your friends in check.” Weinstein’s extensive and horrific history of sexual assault is terrible. But to only acknowledge his crimes within his industry is an oversight. With millions of women posting #MeToo, sexual harassment and assault is far from only Hollywood’s problem. Friedman supports the men who have come forward on social media, admitting to be a part of the problem: one male actor posted, “Used to be, when I got drunk, I’d get HANDSY” with an apology. According to CNN Entertainment, Quentin Tarantino regretfully expressed his inaction for not speaking up about Weinstein’s abuse, “I knew enough to do more than I did.”

Yet overall, mostly female voices have carried the #MeToo movement. Men cannot treat assault like it is none of their business. Why are many men hesitant to deem themselves feminists? Why is sexual assault a women’s issue?

Taking a look at where we receive our information and social cues — news outlets, movies, political leaders, and books — can help breakdown why certain issues become gendered. Who has the power? Or more importantly: who is telling the stories?

Media

On average, a 2013 survey reported that — among reporters, copy editors, layout editors, online producers, photographers, and videographers — “[m]en have 63.7 percent of the gigs, while women have 36.3 percent.” Determining what stories to report to the public, the media has the potential to greatly influence public perceptions. With the gender imbalance, male and female concerns may not be equally represented.

In Hollywood, the industry currently in the spotlight, “Women comprised just seven percent of all directors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2016. That figure represents a decline of two percentage points from 2015’s nine percent.” Men dominated the important positions in the film industry: “Women accounted for 13 percent of writers, 17 percent of executive producers, 24 percent of producers, 17 percent of editors and nine percent of cinematographers.”

Weinstein perpetrated violent crimes of power. Yet other men in the industry benefit from the same power that silenced the survivors of Weinstein’s sexual assaults. Not only do the executive men in Hollywood gain wealth, social status, and the ability to shape art and popular culture from their positions, but they also have the power of an audience — a listening audience that women posting #MeToo are desperate to reach.

Politics

In her article about women’s representation in politics, Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter for NPR, provided a useful visualization that compares professions based on the rates of employed women within a job: preschool and kindergarten teachers being the most popular at 96.8 percent, to carpenters being the least, at 1.8 percent. Female state legislators (24.5 percent) are roughly equivalent to the rates of female farmers and ranchers; female congress members (19.4 percent) practically align with female clergy; female governors (12 percent) fall 1.4 percent short of female sheriff’s patrol officers; while female president remains unparalleled at zero. Kurtzleben comments that “Several large American religious denominations . . . for the most part do not allow women to be ordained. Lawmaking of course has no such restrictions, but Congress’ women’s share is still stuck where it is among clergy.”

Women have to be activists for their issues, because in a male-dominated Congress, they do not have the seats to make the changes themselves. For so long, feminism has been considered a controversial term, a sort of taboo. Defined as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” feminism may indeed be a dangerous term for the people who benefit from political, economic, and social inequality.

Novels

Usually introduced to children earlier than the news and politics, books can have a great effect on young Americans. From children’s books to classic novels, stories have the power to construct gender roles and shape people’s perceptions of society. What they include or what they leave out can be as equally harmful. In her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Adichie, a novelist from Nigeria, shares that she grew up reading British and American children’s books. As she began to write at the age of seven, she realized, “All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.” Adichie’s characters did not look, eat, or talk like her. Though she was very fond of those books and they sparked her imagination, Adichie claimed, “I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify” until discovering African writers.

In the United States, this lack of representation in the literary world is apparent in schools’ reading lists. Under “Popular High School Reading List Books,” Goodreads lists predictable books that high school graduates have most likely read, including The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Catcher in the Rye. Out of the top fifty suggestions, only nine authors were female, with only one woman of color. 

Assigning only “the classics” of a patriarchal literary history teaches high school girls and boys to sympathize with only male characters and see through a male-centric view of the world. We need to teach girls and women that they have a place in our society and the right to vocalizes their stories; they have the right to say #MeToo; and they have the right to be heard. We need to teach young girls of color that they make up more than just 2 percent of our country’s voices, history, pain, potential, and value; and thus they deserve much more than a dismal 2 percent of our literature. Women should not be forced to aspire to limiting role of supporting characters, plot necessities, and conflict drivers. We need to teach women that they can be the protagonists, strong-willed characters, and authors.

Feminism Transcends Gender

In another one of Adichie’s TED Talks, We should all be feminists, she contemplates societal perceptions of gender. Adichie reflects on her initial encounter with the word “feminist” — her young male friend directed the term toward her derogatorily — and culminates her talk with her own definition — “feminist : a man or a woman who says, ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.’” Though she delivered her TED Talk five years ago, her talk readily applies to the male response — or lack thereof — to the #MeToo movement. Discussing how challenging of a conversation gender can be, Adichie prompts her audience to consider: “Some of the men here might be thinking, ‘Okay, all of this is interesting, but I don’t think like that.’ And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender, is part of the problem of gender.” Understanding, acknowledging, and discussing the gender imbalances in the media, politics, novels, and certain professions is a place to start.

Friedman, the LA Times journalist, also challenges the fact that sexual assault has societally become a women’s issue like feminism, claiming that “survivors should be supported by everyone in their community. For men, that means doing what women have been doing privately for a long time: reaching out, offering support, and taking women’s words to heart.” She asserts that men “have to want to know the truth”: “It haunts me to think that I have given social approval to serial harassers or worse because of what I didn’t know. Men should feel the same way.”

Tracing gender to its roots, Adichie acknowledges the fact that physical strength once made men more natural leaders for survival purposes “a thousand years ago,” but the world has changed: “The person more likely to lead is not the physically stronger person, it is the more creative person, the more intelligent person, the more innovative person, and there are no hormones for those attributes. Stuck in a societal stasis, “We have evolved, but it seems to me that our ideas of gender have not evolved.”

Reflecting on how even though sex requires more than one person, it is masculinized whereas virginity is feminized, Adichie comments on how female sexuality is globally repressed: “And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.” Referring to the public’s response to a gang rape in her home country, Nigeria, Adichie comments about how people “have been raised to think of women as inherently guilty,” and thus they may instinctively blame the woman by questioning “what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?” Instead of focusing on the men’s horrific violent crime of power, people wonder what the woman did to provoke them until she believes it to be true: “We teach girls shame. ‘Close your legs. Cover yourself.’ We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something.”

We cannot keep blaming women, repressing their ambitions and sexuality, and promoting men’s careers, art, and futures while excusing their behaviors at the cost of women’s respect and safety.

Looking Ahead

Courageous women will keep pouring out their pain again and again with new hashtags until men listen. If survivors of assault are brave enough to speak up, everyone else cannot remain silent while people dismiss rape culture as hookup culture, share their damaging attitudes toward women, and boast about sexual assault. We cannot ignore the problem with half of our population sharing a fear. We must speak up since an American is assaulted every 98 seconds —roughly nine times since you began reading this article.

The #MeToo movement will not end here.

It cannot end until a high school boy says, “I see myself in these books,” and the girl next to him can reply, “me too.”

Until a man confronts his social circle and says, “This is my business. I will not let you treat, touch, or talk about a woman like that.” And the others nod their heads, “me too.”

Until a woman can say, “I have been president,” and other women can raise their hands, signaling “me too.”

I am hopeful for the moment in which we can reclaim the phrase. But for now, all I can say is

#MeToo.

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More Than Just a Game: A Follow-Up

A photo of football players taking a knee during the National Anthem.

At an Alabama rally on September 22, President Donald Trump criticized the NFL and NFL team owners for not taking harsher action against players who protest during the playing of the national anthem at games. He is quoted referring to players who protest as “sons of bitches,” and claimed NFL owners should fire them for protesting. Trump also called out NFL fans, adding that if they would “leave the stadium” in the event of a protest, then “things would stop.”

Continue reading “More Than Just a Game: A Follow-Up”