“Stay the F***k Home”: Mask resistance is not about liberty; it’s about domination
It’s not about liberty. It’s about domination.
Right-wing hostility to COVID-19 restrictions, including the simple act of wearing a facemask, has been an ongoing theme of the political polarization that culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Even as members of Congress were taking refuge, crowded into close quarters as an armed mob invaded the Capitol, many Republican members refused to wear masks. Several members of Congress, exposed to colleagues who didn’t cover their faces, have since tested positive for COVID.
A common understanding of resistance against COVID restrictions is that they are perceived to violate individual liberty, particularly the individualist value of non-interference. According to the value of non-interference, individuals should not face external obstacles or barriers in exercising choices. A key role of the state is protecting individuals from direct harm, a form of interference, by others. Paradoxically, such regulation is itself a form of interference. It is a necessary evil that limits personal liberty. Therefore, the power of the state should itself be highly circumscribed and only used to prevent harm in cases where the threat is clear and noncontroversial. Anti-maskers argue — wrongly — that mask wearing offers little protection against the spread of COVID and that government mask mandates are therefore unreasonable. One anti-masker said, “It’s a violation of my freedom, I think, and then also I just don’t think they work. A lot of stuff says it does, but then some doesn’t.” Such views are often fueled by misinformation or even conspiracy theories about COVID, as well as the failure to recognize that wearing a mask primarily protects others rather than oneself.
Mask resistance is often gendered, as various studies have shown. Men who oppose mask wearing, most notably Donald Trump, have regarded masks as feminizing, as displaying weakness. Refusal to wear masks, especially given that mask use is more about protecting others, has been labeled a manifestation of toxic masculinity. Aubrey Huff, a retired Major League baseball player who proclaims support for toxic masculinity on his Twitter page, has decried mask wearing, even while knowing it protects others. He has said that those who are more vulnerable to COVID should “stay the fuck home.”
Resistance to masks shares its libertarian and gendered aspects with certain other anti-regulatory movements, especially resistance to gun control. But there is a deeper commonality here. These forms of resistance to government regulation are about more than non-interference or even toxic masculine identities. They are, knowingly or not, efforts to secure domination over others.
Domination as a political concept comes to us from the tradition of civic republican thought. It means that one party, in view of their political, economic, or social position, can exercise arbitrary, unaccountable power over another and interfere in their choices and actions. According to republican theory, for domination to exist, such power does not even need to be actually exercised. Domination thus goes beyond actual interference itself, as it lies in the very existence of the power relation. Civic republican theorists like Philip Pettit have used the example of a benign slave master who does not interfere with the slave’s choices. The lack of actual interference does not mean there is no domination. Even if were slave to be free to go about their business, they are still ultimately at the mercy of their master’s whims, a point Frederick Douglass made when showing the absurdity of the concept of the ‘kind’ slave-owner. One who is dominated must tread lightly lest they antagonize the person who has power over them. Again, the power relationship, not the action of interference, establishes domination.
Civic republicanism, which should not be confused with the Republican Party, thus emphasizes liberty as non-domination rather than liberty as non-interference. Yes, non-domination is about protecting people from interference, but it is focused on the power relations that enable arbitrary interference and does not see regulatory interference with these power relations as a necessary evil that limits liberty. Rather, it sees such regulatory interference as securing a more robust form of liberty, as long as it is pursued by a government that is democratically accountable and answerable; tracks the interests of its citizens; operates transparently and through known, impartial laws; and is subject to checks against the abuse of power. Especially in contemporary republican thought, the concept of non-domination thus addresses power relations in areas that those favoring limited government would be reluctant to regulate: corporate practices and power, gender and race relations, families, workplaces, wealth and income distribution, and money in politics, to name a few. Under the republican perspective, a libertarian society is less free than a democratic society with a strong set of regulations, as Gwilym David Blunt suggests in a recent discussion of the mask debate.
The problem with many of the liberties that conservatives defend today is that they inherently involve domination. To walk around without a mask or carry a firearm puts others at one’s mercy. Such ‘liberties’ become exercises in power over others. (Here, I might add, the notion of toxic masculinity as an aggressive, domineering construction of gender identity also fits in.)
If I refuse to wear a mask in public or if my jurisdiction allows me to go out in public without a mask, then I am in a position of domination over others. First of all, I can choose whether or not to come near others and potentially infect them with COVID. If they object to my not wearing a mask, I might confront them and yell at them, putting them in further danger. I might also rampage through a store, shouting my refusal to wear a mask, as a group of young people did at a Target in Florida. In the end, I might force those especially vulnerable to COVID to just “stay the fuck home.” The Republican members of Congress who refused to wear masks and subjected their colleagues to COVID infection were similarly exercising aggressive domination.
One can see similar forms of intimidation with unrestricted gun ownership, including open carry. The exercise of unrestricted gun rights leads others to have to adopt onerous security measures, do lockdown rehearsals, and feel unsafe in public places. It also makes society vulnerable to armed uprisings, such as those at the Michigan statehouse and the US Capitol.
Other supposed liberties also involve domination. Government regulations on industry are often cited as restrictions on individual freedom, particularly property rights. However, allowing businesses to voluntarily decide whether or not they will limit carbon emissions, refrain from manufacturing unsafe products, or adopt workplace safety regulations puts the public — and the security of individuals and their property — at the mercy of corporations.
We need to stop thinking about debates over mask mandates, gun restrictions, or other regulations primarily as matters of balancing society’s security against individual liberty. In many cases, when government declines to regulate, it is not protecting liberty so much as sanctioning domination.
