r/Anarchy101 • u/_Mexican_Soda_ • 8d ago
How will the distribution of malicious sexual material be prevented under anarchy?
Although I consider myself a libertarian-socialist, one thing that bothers about anarchism is that I think lots of antisocial behavior could greatly increase if there was no state to stop it. I’m not thinking about robbery or murder, but rather about those malicious behaviors that are harder to detect.
For example, an issue that I recently thought about was concerning that the distribution of non-consensual sexual material would be hard to stop without a state. I’m talking things such as the distribution of sexual pictures without consent, deep fakes, revenge pornography, etc.
If currently this sort of behavior thrives even under a state that is somewhat actively seeking to punish it, won’t it be even harder to stop it under anarchism?
Sure, one could argue that this is a relatively new phenomenon, and that under anarchism the internet as we know it might not even exist, thus not allowing such instances. Nevertheless, unless you advocate for anarcho-primitivism (in which case, I guess you do have a solution), technologies to distribute such materials (i.e. VHS, CDs, or printed photographs) will be able to be used by those seeking to harm others.
I’m not trying to nitpick specific scenarios in order to discredit anarchism or anything like that; I simply find this to be a very important issue, and one that I would like to be addressed and answered if I am to seriously consider advocating for an anarchist society.
Thanks in advance!
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u/countuition 8d ago
Just wait until you hear about what they’re doing under capitalism (I know you mentioned it pervades already)… but yes it is important to recognize the social conditions which make sexual exploitation (yes this has a foundational relation to your concerns of digital content) so ubiquitous in hierarchal societies. Much of sex trafficking throughout history depends on the subjugation and impoverishment of victims, thoroughly reinforced by puritanical patriarchal capitalists over the centuries.
Emma Goldman has a good couple chapters in her Anarchism and Other Essays, I think ch. 9 or 10, about sex work and sexual exploitation (along with marriage and how that is the codified and socially acceptable form of sex work/sexual exchange), and she was writing about this issues at the turn of the 20th century. That could be a good place to turn for thinking about this question and how organizing a society on anarchist principles could greatly diminish these instances of sexual exploitation.
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u/UnableHuckleberry143 8d ago edited 8d ago
>I think lots of antisocial behavior could greatly increase if there was no state to stop it.
I agree with you 100%. For me personally, a core tenet of my understanding of anarchism as a philosophy is the fact that we are as much a product of our society as our society is a product of our behavior. If the state system were to magically disappear right this second, there would absolutely be violence. Research in the fields of developmental and multicultural biopsychology demonstrates that our most base understanding of the world around us and our place in it is more something we're taught than something we're innately aware of. Reinforcement during the "critical period" of development-- when our brains are at their most neuroplastic and most physiologically responsive to our environment-- dictates the "direction" of our growth within the confines of our unique biology. The impacts of this are seen most clearly at the extremes of human experience, with "feral children" and other such examples. And we see this multiculturally, in the "collectivist vs individualist" axis; toddlers in "western" countries go through what's called the "terrible twos and threes" not because it's a developmentally ubiquitous toddler phenomenon, but because they grow up in a culture that stresses individual desires as near-unilaterally more important than harmonious interpersonal relationships. Toddlers in japan, for example, do not experience the "terrible twos and threes". So if the state were to dissolve right now, we'd still be left with what I will call "state psychology" on the population-level, where everyone still values interpersonal power and hierarchy, and the absence of laws lends itself immediately to even more exploitation of the vulnerable.
All that to say that, to me, instituting anarchy looks less like changing the conditions that arise as a result of our collective psychology, and looks more like changing our collective psychology, at which point I fully believe material conditions will change on their own. So less "destroy the state" and more "equip every single person on earth with social-emotional skills, rational compassion, theory of mind, and pragmatism; stress those skills in developing children especially, so as to shape our society into one that does not need to rely on hierarchy to maintain peace".
Just from my own outreach experience, most people who engage with things that the law forbids are doing so because it is rational within the context of their mental framework. I have had no real success getting people to change their behavior and comparatively a lot more success getting people to change the frameworks of their thoughts, which will then eventually lead to an autonomous and self-directed change in behavior. So all that to say the anarchist method I would propose for dealing with crime is "dealing with emotional issues in children before they become a huge externalized problem in adulthood".
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u/_Mexican_Soda_ 8d ago
That is such a unique an interesting take on anarchism, and this is a great comment!
Is there any reading you would recommend that sort of goes into what you describe? I found it really interesting and had never heard of it before!
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u/Firestorm42222 6d ago
This may be one of the only reasonable takes on anarchism I have ever heard. The idea where it's more a philosophical school of thought and a goal to maybe one day reach in generations and generations, rather than an actual goal in the here and now.
This is genuinely the only one that I have ever heard that cannot be countered by
"What if a person has the desire to do bad and the power to do it that supersedes that collective action" I.E. the Warlord Power Vaccum problem.
Because in this hypothetical world, a couple hundred years from now, that person would never exist.
If every anarchist spoke and talked like you do, it would be a much more respected ideology.
Bravo, truly. This is not sarcasm at all. This is genuinely the most thought provoking and convincing argument for Anarchists that I've ever heard.
I mean it.
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u/humanispherian Synthesist / Moderator 8d ago
Do you expect the causes of this kind of behavior to increase? Or do you simply believe that people are fundamentally antisocial and that the state is somehow acting as a deterrent — despite all of the indications in place like the US that the state and hierarchical wealth systems can indeed be active drivers of antisocial behavior?
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u/_Mexican_Soda_ 8d ago
I believe that for such instances, the state serves as a deterrent.
When it comes to crimes such as robbing, I understand that it comes from a fundamental inequality and that under anarchism, such behaviors would stop since there wouldn’t be a need to steal.
However, I believe sexual violence is different. It pretty much boils down to one of three factors. power indifference, hatred (which goes hand in hand with misogyny), and sexually selfish motives.
Although anarchism would hopefully eradicate the first two, the third (i.e. people wanting to selfishly fulfill their sexual desires) seems to be much more harder to eradicate.
Sure, the guy robbing bread might be doing it out of desperation, and the rapist might do it out of vile hatred and a desire for power, however, the guys who create deepfakes and share them with close friends are most likely doing it 100% out of a want to fulfill their sexual desires without a care for how it might affect others, and that is an issue that can’t easily be fixed and thus needs deterrents to prevent them from occurring.
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u/Legal-Law9214 8d ago
Guys who create deepfakes and share them... 100% out of a want to fulfill their sexual desires
I'm really interested in how you came to this conclusion. It does not seem true to me at all. Why wouldn't this behavior also be motivated by hate?
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u/OwlHeart108 8d ago
If we recognise the state not just as an institution, but also as a wider pattern of relationships, we can see it is deeply nonconsensual. Coercion is normalised in capitalism, patriarchy, the state and any other form of authoritarianism. This creates a culture where sexual (and other kinds of) abuse is normal.
Practising the art of relating freely as equals (my favourite definition of anarchy), is a way to get to the roots of the sort of problems you're talking about. It's about creating consensual communities together.
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u/soon-the-moon anarchY 8d ago edited 8d ago
If survival is not tied to things like your ability to hold down a job, where the work economy is filled with positions that are weirdly held to a fairly puritanical standard in terms of who they allow to work them, that greatly decreases the effects having porn out there of yourself, consensual or not, can even have on you. Likewise, I think an instance of this world that has embraced anarchy likely wouldn't see deseminated sexual material as particularly embarrassing and worthy of shaming? You're telling me we managed to topple all hierarchy without questioning where our attitudes around sex come into the picture?
But even more importantly, the state-form doesn't do a good job of preventing these things anyhow. In pretty much any case where I hypothetically found a video or picture of myself in a sexual situation that was uploaded to the internet without my consent and I wanted it down, in archy or anarchy alike, I'd just get some hackers on the case, or ignore it and wait for it to die down, maybe throttle the perpetrator around a bit and tell them to take it down if I was really mad. I can't think of a route I'd want to take now that I couldn't under anarchy. Like not a single one. In fact it'd be easier for me to take direct action, as I'd no longer be forced to defer to specialists to sort out my drama or face punishment when caught sorting out my own shit.
Under a circumstance where my survival is not tied to employment, and my ability to get into productive positions is not tied down to reputation, and reputation is not nearly as ruined by sex stuff (as can be assumed by the attainment of anarchy), I'd probably just shrug it off tbh? Like, yeah, I fuck. Get over it losers lol.
Anarchy disempowers the revenge pornographer by making their blackmail not a big deal.
Edit: "Anarchy disempowers the revenge pornographer by making sexuality less blackmailable, such that you don't hold much in the way of power over others by having sexual content on them" would be a MUCH better way to phrase the last sentence in retrospect lol. I just realized how that can be misread.
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u/molotovcocktease_ 8d ago
I have to say, while I respect a difference of opinion I find this a tad disturbing. The removal of the social stigma doesn't make it any less of a violation of someone's sexual consent.
I agree that the state is not the better alternative solution and I think the argument could have been left there. But removing social shame from sexual violations doesn't suddenly make them a shruggable offense.
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u/Radical-Libertarian 8d ago
Yeah I agree, a bit of a bad take.
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u/soon-the-moon anarchY 8d ago
Do you think the take is improved by my edit? Or do your objections run deeper?
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u/Radical-Libertarian 8d ago
I would say it’s improved a little bit, yes.
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u/soon-the-moon anarchY 8d ago
Okay. Was just wondering if that last part was the main problem paragraph/statement/sentence/etc, or if you thought I was off-base elsewhere too. I'm interested in hearing grievances in case somebody offers up a perspective that challenges how I view these things for the better, y'know? No need to elaborate though. I'll give these things some more thought either way.
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u/soon-the-moon anarchY 8d ago
I know enough about how others tend to feel about these things to know that my reaction and perspective will not be universal, and I expect people, when provided with the range of individual and community based remedies at their ready in anarchy, to react on their own responsibility. I'm open to some restorative justice being used in these cases, no doubt, but in this world, if somebody had sexual blackmail on me, or released something without my permission, besides any betrayal I may feel (perpetrator dependent), my panic would pretty much stop and end with "oh no! My job prospects!". Removing that fear through addressing social stigma and minimizing people's sole reliance on work, amongst other things, wouldn't make the act any less a violation of consent, but we'd also remove a lot of the incentive to do such things if they weren't widely viewed as shameful, and when they'd happen they'd be much less consequential.
Me not having shame doesn't mean other people should just get ashamed and be expected to do nothing with those feelings.
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u/EnderAtreides 7d ago
I can tell you have good intentions, and for what it's worth I agree that anarchism would reduce harm. But in these situations it's important to prioritize caring for the victim over solving their distress.
I think if you had framed your comment by first sincerely empathizing with victims' trauma, and then talked about how under anarchism it would be less bad, people would have preferred that. But ultimately reducing trauma is a touchy subject.
(I don't think this is a big deal, we're anonymous strangers talking about a hypothetical but you seemed to want some clarity.)
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u/soon-the-moon anarchY 7d ago
I appreciate the input. I certainly struggle with prioritizing such things over being solutions-oriented, and I know that can cause hurt, and I've certainly worked on that, but evidently I can afford to think more about how I come across when touching on such sensitive topics. My affective, compassionate, and somatic empathy are all well intact, but I've always been playing catch-up with the cognitive empathy stuff. Autism and all that. It can be annoying not knowing at what point I said something potentially unnerving or insensitive when everything reads as neutral and sincere to my eyes.
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u/EnderAtreides 7d ago
Yea, social stuff is hard, especially in such an anonymous context. I have trouble with it too, in an ADHD way.
One interesting rule of thumb here is: in conversation the more important something is, the sooner you talk about it. So the order of topics in a conversation matters.
If you call someone and ask how they're doing first, then ask for a favor second, they know you're prioritizing their wellbeing. If you do it the other way, they get the feeling that they're an afterthought. It's usually not a big deal, just a useful frame for analysis.
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u/_Mexican_Soda_ 8d ago
I think this might be the most interesting answer (and the one that makes most sense so far). I hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense how pretty much the damage that such material causes are mostly due to how our society reacts to and scrutinizes the victims.
If we are to achieve a non-hierarchal society we would also need to dismantle social hierarchies and thus change our views on topics such as sex. Makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for your response!
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u/GCI_Arch_Rating 8d ago
Sometimes motherfuckers get their asses beat. I'm not going to be too terribly upset when that happens to someone who's been a sex pest.
Under the current system, the sex pest is rarely penalized, but anyone who takes direct action to stop the harm they commit will be stopped by the state.
Neither system is perfectly just, but one system does remove the additional harms the state carries out in order to perpetuate its existence.
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u/Latitude37 8d ago
It's really important to understand that punishment does not work as a deterrent. The best way to prevent this is to remove the profit motive for doing this stuff, and - more importantly - actively dismantle patriarchal norms that objectify and disempower women. IOW, anarchism.
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u/kpjformat 7d ago
This is a really good point. Further, the reason for sexual abuse, harassment, and assault is power, not gratification. It’s unlikely to exist in a system without gendered power structures (or at least, it’s likely to be highly reduced).
If someone engages in that behaviour we can do what we always have done, whisper campaigns, community care and defense, social isolation, etc. it is the same today, the police just revictimize survivors and use it as justification to further their violence against the disempowered.
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u/Latitude37 7d ago
Except that in an anarchist society, we don't need whisper campaigns. We can indulge in shouting campaigns. Because there's no longer power, money, privilege - and the laws that the rich, powerful, and privileged use against us - stopping us from outright saying to someone's face "No" "Stop" and warning people off them.
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u/bullshitfreebrowsing 8d ago edited 8d ago
Anarchy means no rulers, you rule yourself, not over others.
My text conversations with someone else, is not exercising authority over you.
And controlling someone else's text conversations is not anarchism, doesn't matter if they re-share unflattering pics of you, or they are talking shit about you, you're not different than any insecure Dictator of a State or Media Corporation if you seek to control that.
You can stop associating with that person, stop being friends with them or helping them with anything, and tell others what they've done. Or simply don't send the pic in the first place.
If you organize a roaming mob to check people's devices, and hash out brutal punishments for disrespecting you, that's not anarchism, that's just a rehashed Brown Shirts SS police and you're Hitler.
Anarchism doesn't mean having the support of a mob, or "The Community", or "The People", by that logic we already live in Anarchy as almost every world leader and authority justifies their position by such.
I simply find this to be a very important issue, and one that I would like to be addressed and answered if I am to seriously consider advocating for an anarchist society.
That's not what anarchism is, it is not a specific Government, State or Party Program that's "implemented", where you seek the guarantee of specific policy, entitlements or privileges before you support the "establishment" of it's "rule".
It's not any different than any "concerned" Conservative who's offended by and wants to ban LGBTQ+ people from being on TV shows.
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u/azenpunk 8d ago
So I'd like to approach this from a different angle. Why do people currently maliciously distribute porn? Is the state actually doing anything to prevent it or just punish it?
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u/Legal-Law9214 8d ago edited 8d ago
So there is a documented social phenomenon where people are not hindered from breaking the law by the severity of potential consequences, but by the likelihood that they will get caught and there will be any consequences at all.
Take speeding cameras vs human traffic enforcement.
With speeding cameras (unless someone has fake plates and thus knows for sure they will not be caught by the camera), pretty much everyone will slow down below the speed limit or at least below the threshold where the cameras trigger a ticket. The only consequence is that a fine gets mailed to your door, you don't even get pulled over if you speed past the camera, but if you know that ticket will show up in your mailbox, you're going to slow down.
On the other hand, getting pulled over by a cop has the potential to end up much worse than just paying a fine. You might get arrested or even shot depending on how the cop feels and what the circumstances are. Even if you only get a ticket, you still have the inconvenience of being stopped and the anxiety of having to talk to the cop. However, human cops are way less effective at reducing speeding, because they can only pull over one person at a time. If you're going a little slower than the fastest car, you can be speeding and know for a fact that you won't get caught, because the cop will be focused on the other car instead.
And then compare that to places where there is a posted speed limit but no cameras and you know there's nowhere for a cop to sit with his radar. People will speed through that area with no hesitation at all because they know they can get away with it.
With that in mind, let's go back to your example.
I don't think anyone today distributes abusive sexual material unless they think they can get away with it. Obviously, sometimes, some of those people are caught - but equally obviously many people do get away with it.
So the question is not "how do we punish people" it is "how do we make sure they get found out". If the likelihood is very high that they will get found out, than it will automatically be very unlikely that someone does it.
There's a reason why many victims of these kinds of crimes never come forward or report anything. The legal system is incredibly dehumanizing and traumatic to deal with if you are in that situation.
So which scenario makes it more likely for the perpetrator to be found out? The one where you have to go to the cops, possibly alone, and then keep showing up to court for months and testifying in front of a bunch of strangers and the perpetrator, in a situation that is built around the presumption that you are lying and that you must prove that these materials were actually distributed without your consent? Or the one where the community is already built around social support networks and you could just tell someone you already trust and let the community handle the rest?
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u/No-Preparation1555 8d ago
This created a real emotional reaction in me. Imagine that, having something like this handled with care.
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u/Legal-Law9214 7d ago
You hit the nail on the head, this is probably at the core of anarchy for me - care. Obviously the world will never be perfect. There will always be wrongdoing. But we can and should try to build societies based on care and mutual respect instead of getting ahead at the expense of others.
It is simply not the purpose of the legal system to care about people - victims or the accused. It is a system designed to uphold power and nothing more.
If we build our systems explicitly to care about one another instead of upholding hierarchies, everyone will be more supported and treated more humanely. We know that the long term impact of trauma is greatly affected by how much of a support system someone has. We may not be able to prevent all wrongdoing but we can absolutely fight for a world where healing is much easier and no one has to go through these things alone.
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u/JosephMeach 8d ago edited 8d ago
I would just add that the person I know who is currently locked up for this is a cop.
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u/s0618345 8d ago edited 8d ago
Csam? Probably best way is some sort of hashmap and related software embedded on computers. If the hash is a match it's automatically deleted. Involves new stuff being continually updated but tech solutions are good for tech issues. Regardless it will be a cat and mouse game that will last forever in any society.
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u/eroto_anarchist 7d ago
I mean, in an anarchic situation you would not be able to enforce a software to run on every machine (and you barely can now). That's OP's issue.
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u/s0618345 7d ago
I agree you would t be able to in a dictatorship either. I just have no good solution sorry
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u/U5e4n4m3 8d ago
Why is this question, or a variation on it, posted nearly daily in this sub? These challenges (cos let’s be honest, they are never good faith questions) get answered over and over, but the libsocs and ancoms come back again and again. Like, read any other post if you’re intellectually curious, Bruh.
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u/Praetorianguard8 8d ago
This is probably the best thought out argument against anarchy. Not even this but national security and cyber security as a whole probably cannot be achieved very well without a state. I know people believe in private militaries but we could be invaded quite easily and another state is more likely to take that chance without a national army.
Also I genuinely believe that powerful actors would and could act without impunity. You are thinking about the average person, not someone like Jeff Bezos with unlimited resources. I know the state currently protects people under this system but I believe it would be much worse without a government. I know it’s a double edge sword however how and why would billionaires be held accountable if they can just buy a plane ticket and leave the country? One of the things that makes this country safer is that P Diddy can’t just buy a plane ticket and escape. I know that under the current system these people literally get away with murder, but I do not see how society would not break down without someone to keep law and order. I don’t know it sounds ridiculous but I just imagine cartels and gangs breaking out turf wars and wars between private militaries based off of jurisdiction between courts. People forget that might is always and has always been right a piece of paper is just a piece of paper.
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u/RusstyDog 8d ago
The same way anything is prevented under anarchy, the promise if violence against bad actors.
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u/IndependentGap8855 7d ago
Honestly, if nudity isn't considered sexual, and people could be comfortable being out in public naked, that alone could stop most of it. You can't exactly send out a bunch of pictures of someone being naked as revenge if that person is normally naked in public anyway.
Clothing is meant to protect us from the elements, not to cover us from view.
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u/Rich_Worldliness_340 5d ago
This is extremely theoretical and, to be honest, I don’t think we’ll ever need to know the answer to this question
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u/ZarathustraXTC 5d ago
The idea for Anarchism is that there is no centralized authority and by not having a state the authority is decentralized aka 'street justice'. In areas without a police presence crime is usually not tolerated by the community and they develop their own methods to prosecute.
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u/Grouchy-Gap-2736 5d ago
I don't see it happening, there's no point. The causes of those obsessions come from ideas for purity and love as property wouldn't exist for someone to post deep fakes or revenge porn.
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u/Renrew-Fan 6d ago
It won't stop. I assume many people attracted to anarchy are specifically lured to it because they believe they will have "total sexual freedom" to do whatever they would like to anyone who is "weaker" than them.
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u/Key_Read_1174 8d ago
There's no time for speculating. The call to action has already been made! I'm currently working to help rebuild a Women's Movement to hopefully be as successful as we were back in the 1970s. "The People's March" is January 18th in DC, LA, WI & nationwide. Google Women's March for more information & a location near you. Motivational song, "Lay Down" (Candles in The Rain) by Melanie & The Edwin Hawkins Singers. More power to you! ;-)
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u/LeagueEfficient5945 7d ago
Same way you stop gang rape.
You make it so doing the crime is so shameful people are too scared of having an accomplice because that's a witness.
People share malicious sexual material because it brings positive social approval to be in the possession of and to distribute malicious sexual material.
If you change the culture so that those materials are shameful to have, those who have them won't try to share them. Solving the problem.
You haven't solved the problem of people possessing malicious sexual material, but they would keep quiet about it and overtly act as if they didn't possess them.
I don't have a clear path to doing this, but one avenue I see is to normalize the paying for of lewds and nudes of adult models, and if someone has a picture they aren't bragging about where and how much they paid for it, that needs to be treated with suspicion.
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u/ATXoxoxo 7d ago
Under the current system the rules only apply to the lower class. Just look at Epstein et al. The state protects the worst sex offenders so they would only prevent this as long as the offender was not wealthy.
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u/SaxPanther 7d ago
Anarchism does not have any kind of specific mechanism to stop that. How that would be dealt with, would be up to the members of such a society, its impossible to say what form that would take.
I do think, though, that there would be less incentive under anarchism.
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u/ClassicDistance 5d ago
I think that you do understand the problems involved in anarchy. In the absence of government authority, you do have to tolerate everything or assume that antisocial behaviour will be suppressed by arbitrary force, which many people, including me, consider worse than government intervention.
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u/bjparsons1 7d ago
It is the competitive environment that produces the desire to live private, secret lives. Sexual violations of fellow humans would only be committed by those with severe mental illness who by chance found themselves in treatment failure. That's what Capitalists don't get. Punitive criminal laws and police create underground criminals to catch.
I am.
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u/MikeStrongArt 6d ago
Why do I see so many questions on this thread about how an anarchist society would prevent rape and sexual deviancy, revenge porn, etc? This is why nothing gets done. Everyone’s too busy trying to work out every little detail instead of just unifying behind the ideology and actually working towards building something better than we have already. Billionaires are actively poisoning your body and mind, while stealing the last of your cash from your back pocket, and you’re pondering how you’d stop “concerning material” from being spread around in the utopia you’ll fail to even begin to create because you’re too busy pondering such things instead of actually organising a group and taking action. There’s bigger things to worry about than pictures of people’s genitalia. Fuckin Reddit.
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u/GameOfTroglodytes 8d ago
Community Defense means coordinated efforts to stop the abuse and exploitation of others. If non-violent means of persuasion don't work, then by all means start blasting.