Episode 03 - Anti-Maskers and American Individualism
Transcript
Ellie: 0:07
Hi, I'm Ellie Anderson.
David: 0:09
And I'm David Peña-Guzmán. Welcome to Overthink.
Ellie: 0:12
The podcast where two friends,
David: 0:14
who who are also professors,
Ellie: 0:16
put philosophy in dialogue with the everyday.
David: 0:18
Because big ideas are within everyone's reach.
Ellie: 0:21
Welcome to Overthink. I'm Ellie Anderson.
David: 0:24
And I'm David Pea-Guzmn.
Ellie: 0:26
Hey, David.
David: 0:26
Hi, Ellie. How's it going?
Ellie: 0:29
Good. How are you?
David: 0:31
I'm doing pretty well. And welcome to all of our listeners
Ellie: 0:34
David, you and I are both pretty into fashion. What kind of masks are you rocking during COVID?
David: 0:40
Oh, no, the fashion statements have died in the time of COVID for me. Nowadays, I'm rocking the sweatpants and the sweatshirts and just tank tops and a very basic white or blue mask. That's my fashion statement. It's normcore to the max. It's COVID-core.
Ellie: 0:57
COVID-core! Oh my God, that's amazing. I feel like normcore masks are very on trend though. Like here in LA, the hippest people are always wearing just a basic surgical mask or maybe an N-95 if you were lucky enough to find one early in the pandemic.
David: 1:11
I like the ones that have a rubber adjusting little thing on the side, um, because I like to sometimes have it very tight when I'm in, uh, public spaces that are crowded, uh, and then loosen it up at other times. So I like the versatility when it comes to my masks.
Ellie: 1:27
Ooh. I like that. I, in retrospect, made a terrible decision, which was getting a cartilage piercing in my ear in February. And so every time I put on or take on a mask, it like pains my ear. I've had like such a hard time recovering from this goddamn piercing because I'm always having to put on and take off my masks.
David: 1:48
The thing that I really just cannot stand about the masks is that I am constantly aware of my breath. So like I now brush my teeth way more regularly than I normally did, which I, you know, I was doing pretty well, brushing two to three times a day, but now it's this thing where it's like, mmm, I think I need to like, smell good for myself.
Ellie: 2:10
Dude, I'm the opposite, because I like never leave the house during COVID. I will be heading to the grocery store and I'm just smelling my breath and think to myself "Wait, maybe I didn't brush my teeth this morning."
David: 2:24
Yeah, I think I can smell it through the Zoom.
Ellie: 2:29
Thousands of miles away. Okay. So we've established, even if you're not rocking the most fashionable masks, you are wearing masks in Paris, I'm wearing masks in LA. Today, we're going to think about the folks who aren't wearing masks so much,
David: 2:44
The so-called anti-maskers.
Ellie: 2:46
Yeah. The people who are resisting masks at all costs.
David: 2:50
What's the deal with them?
Ellie: 2:52
We will find out. Today, we'll talk about the symbolism of mask-wearing. First, we'll connect it to American ideologies of freedom, comparing and contrasting an individual versus collective conception of freedom.
David: 3:05
Then we'll talk about the rhetoric that surrounds the anti masker movement. we'll also talk about the politics of publicly shaming people who are not wearing a mask.
Ellie: 3:14
Uh, and people who are wearing masks because, as you'll find out, I was publicly shamed for wearing one by an anti-masker who coughed on me at the beach.
David: 3:23
And we'll end by talking a little bit about the ways in which the politics of mask wearing get tangled up in toxic masculinity and questions of gender, sex, and sexuality. I think there is something here about the nature of public health crises, especially COVID-19 that really poses a problem to our traditional concepts of accountability and responsibility. We're dealing with a classical case of what philosophers call a problem of collective action. Climate change is another classic example. And in problems of collective action, part of the problem is that there is no way to really attribute individual responsibility for things that happen. So let's say that I test positive for COVID-19. It really is quite impossible for me to know. Who gave me COVID-19, when exactly I got COVID-19, or where I got COVID-19. And so this question about who is responsible for whom becomes a little bit more tricky, because you really need to think about it through a social lens, rather than through the individualistic lens that we are trained to thinking with when it comes to questions about endangering one another.
Ellie: 4:37
Hmm. Yeah. We want to pin the blame on somebody, right? And we also want to believe that we are in control of our own health, and that is just truly not the case here. Let's think about the way that masks are primarily required for other people and not for yourself. We know scientifically by now that, even though it's important to wear a mask not to get sick yourself, it's actually more important if you don't want make other people sick, because of the way that the aerosols work. And so we are all asked to go around at all times as if we might be carriers of the virus and to protect others by wearing masks. If I'm in a room with somebody and I'm wearing a mask and they aren't, it's very possible that if they are COVID-positive, they're going to give me the disease, even though I'm doing what I can to protect myself. And that puts us really at the mercy of others wearing masks. We are vulnerable to them.
David: 5:32
I think this vulnerability, this collective, shared vulnerability is something that we need to talk about in more detail, because COVID-19 is a virus that spreads primarily through the air. It really highlights our interdependence as human beings, as organic beings that depend on an environment that we share with others. And here I'm reminded of the writings of the German thinker, Peter Sloterdijk, who wrote an interesting little book called Terror from the Air. In this book, he argues that before World War One, war was primarily conducted by targeting the body of one's enemy. So if you want to kill an invader, or if you yourself want to invade a new territory, you essentially have to destroy the body of the targets. However, starting in World War One, the development of new technologies of mass warfare, especially mustard gas, really changed the nature and the logic of war. And so you went from targeting the body of your enemy to suddenly targeting the air that the enemy breathes. And one of the things that I really like about this account that he presents is that it highlights the extent to which we are all vulnerable, but in a collective manner. I am not any more vulnerable to an attack by mustard gas than the person who lives next door to me or the person who lives down the street. We're all implicated in this vulnerability together. And so when we think about something like COVID-19, that moves through the air, it brings to the fore the fact that we all depend on the same air.
Ellie: 7:14
And that we have no choice, but to breathe. I have to breathe in and out, so I can't protect myself from breathing the air in a public space. And so I actually think one thing that's interesting here is that if everybody's wearing masks, then actually everybody is freer than if some people are wearing them and some aren't, because we all have equal access to public space and the pandemic will end sooner.
David: 7:38
There's a video of a woman that this makes me think of, and she is essentially yelling at her cell phone while driving. And she's talking about how these anti-maskers are precisely creating this tragedy of the commons that we all have to endure:
Wear your fucking mask video : 7:55
"There are people dying, there are people in hospitals risking their lives because of motherfuckers like you who won't wear your mask, who don't wear your gloves, who don't want to practice social distancing. We may be spending fucking New Year's in our house because of you fuckers out there who don't wear your mask."
David: 8:10
Now for all practical purposes, it seems like her prediction has turned out to be correct insofar as there is a sense, especially in the United States because of the mismanagement of COVID from the very beginning, that this collective refusal to use the mask in public spaces is going to make the pandemic last a lot longer. And it's going to increase the constraints that we all have to endure as a result of that. And so we are enjoying less freedoms in the long term as a community because of this individualistic mindset that really dominated at the- at the beginning.
Ellie: 8:47
Totally. And listening back to this video now is so interesting cause I remember hearing it a number of months ago and being shocked by the prospect that we would be confined into our homes until Christmas. And now it's like getting close to Christmas and it's very obvious that we're all going to be confined into our homes. And so her prediction has absolutely ended up being true. I'm reminded here of something that Simone de Beauvoir, the French existentialist, talked about when she visited the U.S. in the 1940s. Beauvoir argues that American individualism is a contradiction. The individual is made into a kind of object of abstract worship. Americans say that they're all about the individual, right? We love not being responsible for the actions and choices of other people. But this not only stifles the awakening of collective spirit, but it also makes us think that we have no power over the collective. And if we believe that we have no power over the collective, then we actually are not individualist in a true sense. What we tend to do is actually just accept the status quo rather than trying to change it. If Beauvoir is right, then it's actually the people refusing to wear masks who are asserting their own impotence to change the status quo and to change it beyond their simple, personal choice of wearing a mask or not wearing a mask.
David: 10:08
Well, and when thinking about Beauvoir, I think it's important to recognize the Marxist influence that shaped her thinking about freedom, and that really motivated her criticism of the American conception of individuality. Because for her, freedom really also means your freedom to change your social and material conditions of existence. But in order to do that, you need to tap into the power of the community, and that's what the American individualist does not recognize. So let's talk a little bit more about freedom and how to think about it in relation to the mask.
Ellie: 10:43
A lot of people who are not wearing masks articulate their choice not to wear masks in terms of freedom. They say, for instance, you don't have the right to infringe on my freedom,
but I'm wondering here: 10:54
what kind of freedom is the freedom to not wear a mask?
David: 11:00
Well, I think the freedom conception that is operative in the rhetoric and in the actions of the anti-masker movement really is a very shallow conception of freedom in which in order to be free, all that is necessary is for me to be released from any kind of external constraints.
Ellie: 11:19
Yeah, I mean, and I think this is a place too where we see that even people who are not familiar with philosophy have somehow imbibed philosophical concepts by virtue of being citizens within a particular society. American ideology is grounded, and this is explicitly the case in our founding fathers, on an idea of freedom that is derived from the philosopher Locke. John Locke is known as one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment, as well as being part of this tradition of philosophy known as social contract theory. The idea of freedom that we get in Locke is the notion that humans are by nature free, and in order to enter into civil society, to play fair with others, we need to permit our freedoms to be constrained to some degree. But in this conception, it's the government's job to try and protect our freedoms. So the government can go only to a certain point and then no further, because essentially, my freedom is personal and it is an inalienable right.
David: 12:26
Yes, and one of the effects of the Lockean conception of freedom that really informs most of our social institutions in the West, broadly speaking, is that it makes us believe that the primary function of government is always to step out of the way, except in those cases in which conflicts between private agents result in something like a conflict for which we need a referee. And so let's say that you, Ellie, break into my house because you want to steal my property.
Ellie: 12:56
I want to sneak into your home and steal your collection of muscle tanks.
David: 13:00
I think they're just tanks in my case. According to that Lockean conception, that's when the government steps in, in order to function as the arbiter of disputes between private citizens. But at all other times, the function of government is to recede into the background, to let individuals pursue their own individual conception of the good life.
Ellie: 13:25
And this conception of the role of government, as you describe it, is so evident in the debates around wearing masks, especially in the U.S. because even though the Trump administration is like wildly different from most other conservative and Republican administrations that we've had in the entire course of American history, there is a fundamentally conservative idea, which is precisely the social contract theory view of freedom that we're describing, David, and that's the idea that the more deregulation there is, the better; that human freedoms should be protected by minimal government interference. In my view, this doesn't work at all in the case of a pandemic because of the way that we've discussed COVID-19 spread having to do with a much more communal and complicated dynamic. Many of the people in the Trump administration, including Trump himself contracted COVID-19 this fall, and it seems like it was the result of the White House Rose Garden event for the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Very interestingly, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie expressed regret at not wearing a mask at the Rose Garden event. This kind of compunction is something that's very rare in the Trump administration, and one thing that was noteworthy for me was that he told the New York Times that he believed he was in a quote, "safe zone" at the White House, but he later discovered that this was wrong. And so there's this way that even the conservative ideology that Christie technically espouses is not actually working for him in his own life. And he admitted that at least part of it is wrong.
David: 15:03
And so Ellie, where can we look for a different way of thinking about freedom that potentially opens up to a more communal or more communitarian spirit?
Ellie: 15:13
We really don't have to look very far. Even within social contract theory, there are thinkers who have a much more collective view of the full expression of freedom than Locke does. People like Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Thomas Hobbes. But I think a more interesting counterexample to Locke here is G.W.F. Hegel, the early 19th century German philosopher. Hegel states that you don't actually have freedom until you enter society. Freedom is not a natural right, but it's rather a collective achievement. So the government doesn't protect others from infringing on your freedom; instead, the government protects you as a sort of natural human being in a way that allows freedom to emerge actually for the first time. So if you think about a kind of everyday choice, like, what are a few choices of food that you might want to eat for lunch?
David: 16:06
Well, typically I have to choose either between the pizza place down the street or from the burrito place around the corner or from whatever store-bought salad I have in my fridge.
Ellie: 16:20
Awesome. So we've got pizza,
David: 16:22
burritos,
Ellie: 16:23
and salad.
David: 16:24
Sometimes all three.
Ellie: 16:28
So when you're choosing between these three different options, you might feel like you have a free choice in relation to them. But actually you're being driven by your hunger to choose one of them. Let's say you ultimately end up going with the salad because you want the salad. Maybe you want the salad because you're craving it the most, or maybe you want the salad because it's the healthiest option, and so it's going to allow you to look extra good in your muscle tanks.
David: 16:54
Or just tanks.
Ellie: 16:58
But Hegel is going to say that this is actually not a free choice because you are being driven by your desires, by your cravings, by your bodily instincts. Rather, freedom comes in my ability to affirm my choice as mine, as actually not driven by anything external, but as reflexively, willingly chosen by me. Later in the 19th century, Nietzsche will say freedom involves the ability to hold myself responsible for my choice and to have others hold me responsible for my choice. So freedom only exists when I am able to actively take up a choice as mine and recognize it in relation to my broader social context.
David: 17:44
Well, and then there's that very famous passage by Hegel known as the master-servant dialectic, sometimes also translated as master-slave dialectic: he tells a story about intersubjective recognition in which he says, If I am a lone agent, a lone actor, and I recognize myself as free, let's say in a social vacuum, my own recognition of my freedom doesn't amount to anything really. It means nothing. And so there is something that is missing about being a free person on an island. Yes, in a very technical reductive minimalist sense, I could be said to be free on my own independently of all else and everybody else, but if I find myself in a situation in which I alone am free, I don't really have the kind of freedom that human beings need. His claim is that in order for me to be free, I need to be recognized by another person as free. And more importantly, that that other person who grants me recognition needs to herself be free in order for her recognition of my freedom to mean anything to either of us, because to be recognized as free by somebody who is not free, there is something missing there. And that's why he calls it a master servant dialectic, because a master who is lauded and recognized by a servant doesn't really get the kind of recognition that he or she ultimately wants.
Ellie: 19:19
Yeah. And in that sense, a master is dependent on the servant because the master is only a master by being recognized as a master by a servant. Not to mention the fact that it's the servant who's going out and doing all of the things that the master needs to sustain themselves. So there's an overlooking of interdependence, but the master tends to undertake and Hegel wants to point out, "Hey, look, you are actually totally dependent on the servant. And so maybe you should recognize that there is a mutuality in this relationship. There is a symbiosis.
David: 19:50
And I think you're tapping into a very important point, which is that for Hegel, the master and the servant are both a master and servant of one another because of this mutual dependence. And so the problem with the master is that he or she doesn't recognize that, and that's their failure. Freedom is not something that we have, it's something that we achieve. And what I find really interesting about the Hegelian understanding of freedom is that he pushes it all the way to the level of the state. We are only really free as individuals when we recognize one another as free, and we do this by building social institutions, such as schools, government, courts of law, et cetera, that reflect our own freedom back to us in an intersubjective way.
Ellie: 20:41
Yeah. And freedom is concretized through these institutions. So freedom doesn't just exist in our own personal whims. In fact, it doesn't exist properly at all in our own personal whims. It rather exists within these broader social structures, some of which are actually physical material things. My freedom in a democratic society is visible to me through the court of law that I see downtown, through city hall, through my ballot. My freedom is not limited to mere self-expression at a given time.
David: 21:18
I think one of the issues here is that a lot of anti-maskers are not communitarian in their way of thinking. And their worldview ultimately boils down to a combination of individualism, white nationalism, and religious conservatism.
Ellie: 21:33
Yeah, absolutely. Where do you see religion fitting in here?
David: 21:37
Well, I don't know if you've seen this video that went viral of a number of women speaking, I think at a city council meeting somewhere in Florida. And I want us to take a minute to listen to what these women had to say because I think it's extremely revealing about the way in which
Florida anti-maskers: 21:56
"In the beginning, God formed man out of the earth and breathed his breath in him, and he became a living soul. Where do you derive the authority to regulate human breathing? What you say is the political dogma that they're trying to shove down our throats on every commercial and every store and it's disgusting." "You, Doctor, are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity."
Ellie: 22:28
What are you thinking after listening to this, David?
David: 22:31
So for me, one of the things that really stands out about the discourse that especially the first woman uses to talk about why she doesn't want to wear a mask is her appeal to divine power.
Ellie: 22:41
Can you say more about that?
David: 22:43
it seems like she's motivated by this belief that breathing is a human function, it's a biological function, but it's also a function that is ultimately made in the image of God, presumably because in the book of Genesis in the Judeo Christian Bible, God breathes life and spirit into Adam, who was previously just a heap of clay. And so it is an act of breathing on the part of Yahweh that animates this piece of clay, creating a fully developed and souled human being, the first human being that exists.
Ellie: 23:19
Yeah, that's so interesting in relation to the Judeo-Christian tradition, because for that tradition, breath stands at the threshold of the soul and the body. It's one way of thinking about what unites them, one way of thinking about spirit. Breath in the sense is not only the expression of spirit, but is the spirit itself. And hence it's an inalienable right. I think the ideology being expressed here is that breath is the most fundamental right a human being has, and constraining that in any way is infringing on somebody's freedom. David, you mentioned that God breathes life into Adam, and as we know from the Bible, another crucial feature of Adam and of his partner, Eve who's created from Adam, is that these two people, the first humans, are given dominion over the Earth. They're given the power to rule over nature, including non-human animals. you work a lot on philosophies of humanism. What are your thoughts on this in relation to breath?
David: 24:20
So operating under a Judeo-Christian framework, I think we have to think about the significance of breath, which here is associated specifically with the possibility of language, what differentiates ultimately humans from animals. It's not that we breathe and they don't, since animals also have breath, but their breath is not divine. And this is why the woman in this video will appeal to human, quintessentially human, breathing as that which cannot be regulated by the state. That's
Ellie: 24:56
such an interesting point here, that breath is outside the domain of public regulation, right? Following what you said, David, that's great, that breath is something private. The woman in the segment says, "Who has the authority to regulate my breath?" This gives me the idea that she's suggesting that breath is outside of the domain of public regulation, because it's something private, existing in this personal sphere of freedom. . David: Well, the tragic thing is that the with this religious standpoint and refuse to mandate or even promote mask wearing. And this left people wondering really what they could do to protect themselves, and it seems like the answer for most people was we have no choice, but to exercise social pressure on other people, because that's all that there is. Yeah. It's like we have to do as individuals, what the government
refuses to do: 25:49
enter public shaming.
David: 25:53
Exactly. Because we live in an individualistic society, it means that the only avenue that most of us have had for really trying to take control of our social surroundings, to ensure that other people are wearing masks, is to rely on social pressures.
Ellie: 26:15
And this has been so tough, too. I mean, it causes all kinds of interpersonal issues in friendships, in families, in the broader community at large. It's been really effing awkward a lot of the time when people have different conceptions of what social distancing and mask wearing looks like.
David: 26:28
And it's emotionally taxing, especially when it happens really close to home, right? With friends, as you say, or with family members, we start having to negotiate boundaries that we're not used to negotiating in the context of those relationships.
Ellie: 26:42
This has been a huge feature of my life during the pandemic so far. These micro social dynamics, whether they're happening with friends and family members, or whether they're happening in the grocery store and other public places where we're all sort of trying to see whether we're friends or enemies. And a lot of that boils down to feeling solidarity. If we're mask-wearers with other mask-wearers, or feeling solidarity with other anti-maskers, if we're anti-maskers.
David: 27:11
I've actually found myself in an interesting position here because I spent most of COVID not in the United States, but in France. And so I had what you could call a European experience of confinement where the government intervened aggressively and early. People, in general, because of the communitarian, socialist spirit that really rules Europe, people were cooperative and you didn't have this large sector of the population actively undermining public health efforts.
Ellie: 27:42
I want to share with our listeners an experience I had that- Oh God, David, I have complained to you about this already. It was an experience I had this summer going to the beach. I drove down from Los Angeles to Orange County to meet one of my friends for a socially distant beach day. Orange County is the most conservative county in California, and it's been kind of notorious during the pandemic for being really anti-mask. There was a viral video at Huntington beach, for instance, where people are trying to give others masks. And these people are like, "No, fuck you! God protects me!" But I went into the belly of the beast because there's a fantastic beach down there that I really missed. And I wanted to go with my friend. So we're walking down to the beach and we're both wearing our masks and planning to take them off once we actually settled down on the beach, and set our beach blankets six feet apart, but in order to get down to the beach, you have to walk down this narrow staircase. When we're at the top of this staircase, we see a large family walking up, none of whom is wearing a mask. And it's just like, you know, when you get that vibe, there's some sort of brazen arrogance there, like I could tell it wasn't just that they'd forgotten their masks or they didn't really think about it. It was like, "This is our statement."
David: 28:52
Yeah. Like somehow the assholeness is just in the air.
Ellie: 28:56
Exactly, the assholeness was palpable, along with the COVID particles they may or may not have been spewing at every possible moment.
David: 29:03
Yeah. They're like molecules of assholeness.
Ellie: 29:08
So I sort of scurry away from the staircase with my friend and lo and behold, as we start walking down the staircase, the family waits at the top. And this guy, white baseball cap, probably twenties, thirties, deliberately coughs on us and makes a whole show of it to his family. He's like, *coughing noises* and it was one of those things that just has you thinking all day. The beach day was clouded by the molecules of assholeness that had entered my atmosphere. And I was just wondering, like, what is this guy's deal? There's a form of social pressure being exerted here, somehow his anti-masking value is something he feels a need to make a performance of. What the heck?
David: 29:54
Yeah, well, and I think we can think about this in terms of just basic groupthink, where part of being a member of a community, in this case the anti-maskers, requires you to act in particular ways, even when that means exploiting or taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of other people. They sometimes take pride in being openly anti-communitarian in their ideals and in their commitments. They sort of just get off on their individualism, and for many of these people, their identity, their very sense of who they are, appears to be tied up in not giving a shit about other people.
Ellie: 30:32
Yeah, it's almost like they're proud of not giving a shit about other people. And one thing I really want to pick up on later in the episode are the gender dynamics around this, but for now, I think it's worth just thinking about this extreme affective investment, a charge of emotion behind a lot of the anti-mask rhetoric. And any time we have a really strong emotional charge for or against something, it's a signal that it has something to do with our values, with our identities, and with our ideals.
David: 31:04
Yes. And when thinking about this kind of identity investment, not only do they not give a shit about other people, but they love not giving a shit about other people. And more importantly, they want everybody around them to know that they are the people who don't give a shit about other people.
Ellie: 31:22
There's such a palpable fear here about the individualism we are so used to falling away, a fear about social norms changing at a more rapid pace than we could ever have imagined in our lifetime. And it's interesting to me that this fear sometimes constellates around the anti-mask movement, which, in theory. is about trying to not live in fear. A lot of the anti-maskers accuse people who go around wearing masks of living in fear, but I actually think it's the opposite. I think they're, in many cases, the ones who are living in fear by fearing this absence of individualism.
David: 31:58
Yeah. It's always the snowflakes that accuse other people of being snowflakes.
Ellie: 32:04
Oh a hundred percent. I can't wear a mask because I'm going to breathe in carbon dioxide.
David: 32:11
Yes, because literally every surgeon that's ever worn a mask has died. It's clear that for this guy, this performance, and I think you're right in using that term, was not just a performance. It was a political performance. It was an expression of a political commitment that he has to a certain outlook involving COVID.
Ellie: 32:34
And the sense that he needs to shame people into following the regulations that he wants put in place, because what's so interesting is that even though the anti-masker rhetoric is supposedly about a lack of regulations, this is a case where we see that it's actually about regulations. He wants to regulate my not wearing a mask and to mock me for wearing it in the same way that parents who are arguing against mask-wearing in schools aren't about deregulation; they're about new regulations or different regulations. I'm really curious about how this has been in Paris. How many people do you see that are wearing their masks under their noses?
David: 33:17
You see some people, especially walking out and about, but it's clear that it's either an accident because they fall down or because they're not actively thinking about it. Maybe they took it down to, um, take- to smoke a cigarette or smoke a pipe because it's Paris and then they just forgot to put it back on. But you never get the sense that there is a whole section of the population that is making a point-
Ellie: 33:42
Ah, well-
David: 33:43
about not wearing their mask correctly.
Ellie: 33:45
So that's so interesting. and it's also interesting that you don't seem to get the sense that people are wearing it under their nose because they don't know that you have to wear it over your nose. I think a lot of my friends and I have commiserated over the fact that people who are wearing them under the noses in the U.S. maybe just don't realize they're supposed to be over your nose because there's such bad messaging around this in public.
David: 34:05
Yes. And I think this is the difference between a country where there was again, active, aggressive campaigning on the part of the government to educate people about the nature of the pandemic, the movement of the virus, and the steps that need to be taken to ensure public health, and a place like the United States, where the president called the virus, a hoax, and a lie, and did nothing but try to politicize it for his own reelection campaign.
Ellie: 34:33
Absolutely. And I think too, being out in public space in the U.S. during this time is fraught with emotions, pretty much across the mask-wearing spectrum. It's very common for people to publicly shame each other, and that doesn't feel good. When we are in public spaces, and we're always afraid of not feeling good or we're by default not feeling good because we're judging others, what kind of freedom is that?
David: 34:56
Well, and there's another side to this discussion of shame, which is the way in which, and we've seen this flare up in a number of videos that have gone viral, some of them may I add including close friends of of situations where you'll find yourself out in public and you'll see somebody who is not wearing a mask and they are endangering everybody around them. And because there is no other avenue, the only option on the table is to try to exercise shame and to shame them publicly for not wearing a mask. And, you know, in this regard, I'm not against this kind of public shaming of people who are not wearing a mask in places where they should be wearing a mask. I guess I'm a little-
Ellie: 35:37
Oh, I do it all the time with my glares.
David: 35:40
Yeah. I mean, I am in favor of even more than just glares, I am enough of an Aristotelian in this regard to think that shame has actually an important role to play in moral development and the formation of a communal bond. And so Aristotle very famously in his writings on ethics will say, you know, part of what it means to shame somebody, it seems like a negative act, it seems like an aggressive and violent act, but it's ultimately an act of caring because you only shame people that you see as part of your community and that you expect to do better than they're currently doing.
Ellie: 36:25
I read in an article recently that was comparing the- that was comparing the American response to the 1918 flu epidemic to our current debate around mask wearing, and there was this epic quote from San Francisco health officer William Hassler who told citizens, during the 1918 pandemic, "Wear your gauze masks at all times! And ridicule the person who refuses to wear one!" And so Hassler is encouraging us to ridicule or to shame people who aren't wearing masks a hundred years ago. And I think that's precisely because of this sense of communitarian ideals that you're mentioning, David. Public shaming obviously gets a bad rap and it can certainly be bad in some cases, but it's also a really effective tool for pointing out social norms, some of which may be important and necessary and good.
David: 37:14
Yeah. And I think we can differentiate between the kinds of shame that targets somebody for who they are, and I think for example, queer theorists have done an extremely good job at highlighting the ways in which shaming can be atrocious for individuals, versus a kind of social-constructive shaming, which is the kind of shaming that we use when we want to let somebody else know like, "Hey, we expect better from you than you are delivering, and it's because we see you as one of us."
Ellie: 37:45
Absolutely. And so there's a shame that targets people's identities, often marginalized ones. But there's another kind of shame that targets people's behaviors and that, it sounds like David, is what you're describing as a socially-constructive shame.
David: 37:58
Well, and not just any behaviors, of course, because you could target behaviors that are also connected to people's identities, but behaviors that harm the social bond, that harm that which makes communal living possible. So the people who, for example, litter, the people who don't recycle, the people who don't wear a mask, the people who don't take precautions, basic precautions, that don't cost them anything, but that could mean the life or death of their neighbor. Enjoying this episode? Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Ellie: 38:42
So I'd like to think now about the symbolism of mask-wearing in relation to gender, especially in relation to what's known as toxic masculinity, because I think that's been well documented is that men are more resistant to mask wearing than women. And I've really noticed this anecdotally, in couples I pass on the street, these heterosexual couples, where in many cases, the man is not wearing a mask and the woman is. I'm like, "What the heck is going on there? This doesn't make sense." Either one member of the couple should wear a mask or the other one shouldn't. So I think there's this sense that the individualistic conception of freedom is closer to the ideals of masculinity in our culture, and that the ideals of social pressure and following social norms are closer to women's socialization in our society.
David: 39:28
And when we think about what anti-maskers are really afraid of, there's a difference between what they claim to be afraid of and what they seem to actually be afraid of, right? They say that there are afraid of choking on the mask because it's not very good for your health and they worry about dying because of CO2 contamination. But the toxic masculinity that is at work really suggests that there is a more fundamental fear here, and that's the fear of something that is read either by the individual or by the community as feminizing or emasculating. And in this case, that's the mask itself.
Ellie: 40:06
And you saw this, for instance, in Trump's making fun of Joe Biden for wearing masks at the debate. And he was like, "Joe Biden's always wearing a mask! He's got the biggest mask you've ever seen!" and that was very much a dog whistle for masculinity. Not that Trump is like an ideal example of masculinity, but he's got a lot of the toxic elements of it.
David: 40:24
Well, I do think he is sort of like a great example of toxic masculinity, which is this combination of narcissism, egomaniac personality structure, and complete fear of being perceived as weak.
Ellie: 40:39
Hmm. And that fear of being perceived as weak expresses itself in male entitlement and it's entitlement to this sort of radical individualism that we've been describing. One thing that comes to mind here for me is the way that masculinity is tied to the ability to present oneself however one wishes in public space. This is something that women and people of marginalized genders are routinely denied. We're constantly aware of being objects for others to begin with. Being able to be legible on your own terms is something coded masculine in our society. Women don't even expect that to begin with. And in fact, when we demand it, there's something transgressive about it.
David: 41:23
And here we have to really ask what the threat is, when seen from the perspective of men. And I suspect that the threat is that as men, we're not psychologically prepared to not be in full control of our presentation in public, and basically the way in which we present ourselves before those around us. And it really shows the extent to which all men, #allmen, take for granted the fact that we will always be in control of our image in social settings and COVID, and the mask, are really threatening to take that away because of course, with a mask you're literally not able to present yourself as you normally would. And yeah, we might say, okay, well, the mask is a very minor thing that really doesn't change the way in which I am seen by others, the way in which I'm seeing seen by the public or by a public, but that's what I think is part of the trigger for men. Um, you know, we have talked about, the example that you had with this guy who coughed on you, who was a white man, and there does seem to be a connection here between white privilege and this kind of behavior, but also men of other races, because I've read some research that for example, Latino men, so I'm here talking about my peeps, are not doing super well in this regard either. And there is a clear psychology of fear that is informing this all the way from the bottom up.
Ellie: 42:56
What do you mean by the psychology of fear in relation to Latino men?
David: 43:01
Well, not just Latino men, but men in general. Um, and when I think about the things that are threatened by the mask, one thing that comes to mind is the fear of blocking the airway that we can interpret on the one hand as homophobic, because it's associated with this image, whether it's literal or symbolic of, uh, the penetration of the mouth and the throat. Um, but also we can talk about this in terms of the Judeo-Christian context about the association with speech. Speech is the medium through which we make ourselves legible to others through language. Under COVID, while wearing a mask, men have had for the first time to really think about the fact that maybe they are not fully in control of the way in which they are read by others and they present themselves as others.
Ellie: 43:56
And it's so interesting here because I've heard so many women remark on precisely the safety they feel behind the mask because they're not being asked to "smile baby" all the time, and their face is not being commented on as much as it might ordinarily be. And they feel less pressure to do things like wear makeup. It really strikes me that women feel more comfortable behind the mask in public space, because we are suddenly free from this demand to be legible at all times, to be publicly available objects of sexual consumption.
David: 44:28
Yeah, and what I see at the root of this discrepancy, for example, that you point out between men not wearing a mask and women typically wearing a mask more regularly, is a really fragile, toxic masculinity that is also homophobic. And it's a masculinity that simply cannot entertain the possibility of a muffled mouth with all that this signifies.
Ellie: 44:53
Yeah. And then in contrast to what you're describing, David, as toxic masculinity's fear of being penetrated by the mouth, there is so much in the heterosexual imaginary that eroticizes the obstruction of airways for women. Kate Manne talks about this in her book Down Girl, specifically the prevalence of strangulation. So of course there's strangulation in the BDSM communities, but here she's talking specifically about the misogyny of heterosexual relationships and the prevalence of strangulation in domestic violence cases. Men very frequently exert their power over women, literally by strangling them. So I wonder what you think about that, David, this way that constraining women's breath is a tool of misogyny.
David: 45:37
It reminds me of the feminist sex wars in the 1980s and 90s, where one of the points that was being debated was how feminists should relate to certain sexual practices. And in particular, I'm thinking here about Catharine MacKinnon's interpretation of the film Deep Throat that came out in the 70s and it became one of the world's first porn, um, successes, really international successes, uh, basically overnight. And so the movie turns on this character, uh, Linda Lovelace, who is played by Linda Borman, who, in the film, goes to a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I forget what kind of medical expert it is, who diagnoses us a specific condition. And what's this woman's condition? Ah, it turns out that her clitoris is magically in her throat. And so the only way in which this woman in this porn film can experience sexual pleasure is by deep throating, hence the title of the film. And that means that within the context of this film, having an obstructed throat through deep penetration is literally the condition for the possibility of her sexual desire. So her sexuality is entirely oriented around being penetrated and Catharine MacKinnon interprets this film as highlighting something much more general about misogyny under conditions of patriarchy, which is the way in which female sexuality itself is constructed not only along the lines of passivity, which we know, or penetrability, which becomes obvious in the film, but also around this concept of the muffled mouth, the mouthful that prevents women from expressing themselves.
Ellie: 47:23
Yeah, that's so interesting in relation to the gender dynamics of mask wearing. It's as if women are used to being gagged already. And we're used to being gagged in a metaphorical sense by being constrained and expected, to adhere to certain norms in public. And this is enforced by things like myself and my friend, who's also a woman, getting coughed on because we're wearing masks. There's a sense in which we are so accustomed already to being on display that wearing a mask in public not only feels more comfortable to us, as I mentioned before, but we also, when wearing masks, are mostly focused on how other people are perceiving our mask wearing whether it's a sol- whether it's a point of solidarity or whether it's a point of contention. Well, David, there's so much more to talk about here, but we should probably wrap up.
David: 48:14
Yes. And thanks to our listeners for joining us to talk about the symbolism of the mask.
Ellie: 48:18
Yeah, first we talked about the politics because of the individual and communal dimensions of wearing a mask, and then we contrasted a conception of freedom that we get from philosopher John Locke with an alternative that we get from Hegel.
David: 48:31
Next we talked a little bit about the role that shame can play in holding people accountable to certain social norms when they breach them, and we talked about the role that gender and sexuality play in thinking about the symbolism of the mask, the way in which the mask can become this magnet for toxic masculinity.
Ellie: 48:55
So don't spray around your molecules of assholeness; put on your mask!
David: 49:00
See you next time!
Ellie: 49:04
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
David: 49:12
You can email us with questions, feedback, or even requests for life advice at dearoverthink@gmail.com.
Ellie: 49:20
You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter at @overthink_pod. We want to thank Anna Koppelman, our production assistant, Samuel P.K. Smith for the original music, and Trevor Ames for our logo.
David: 49:34
Thanks so much for joining us today!