• audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    24 hours ago

    Yeah, sorry, my thoughts on the original question/scenario evolved as we were talking so this ended up being messy and unclear.

    I want to retract my response about excluding the non-masker, not because I don’t think it’s possible to do that in a way that respects autonomy and doesn’t leverage power structures, but because the specific way that would be done would be fluid and dependent on factors we can’t really take into account in the abstract. My answer to your proposed scenario is, I don’t have enough information to make a judgment of the situation.

    Another way of putting what I’m getting at: when someone/some group is given power over others, the normal social dynamics of how people cooperate and be in conflict with each other are disrupted, because the power-holders can just wield the authority to enforce their will regardless. In your scenario, a non-masker choosing to go against the community’s will is a conflict, and the action to be taken should be based around resolving that conflict under the conditions it’s taking place in. If we just say “they’ll be excluded from community spaces under threat of violence” or “they’ll be locked up and forced to reintegrate into the community”, we’re wielding authority to bypass the actual conflict with all of its messiness and nuance. Nothing actually get resolved other than the person not physically being there anymore. Resentment grows, and we end up with more violence and wielding of authority down the line.