At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I would say that a certain morality is circulating1. Everything must be "communicated assertively": whether you are looking for a relationship or not, under what terms and conditions, whether you want children, whether you are up for going to a family birthday party, or if all of that is too much. Disguised as "emotional responsibility," the announcement that for some reason the relationship will not work out is disguised as a rejection that does not reject.
All attempts to compensate for the stereotyping, violence, and submission that for so long testified to the "there is no sexual relation." This would have been left behind. Today it is put into words, respectfully debated, and struggles are shared; the flag of this new morality was raised long ago.
However, despite good intentions, the threat of collapse in the encounter between the sexes is immutable, and love ties are reduced to "a convenient game, attended by no risk and no spiritual participation."2 There are so many areas in which we are required to speak honestly and clearly that it is increasingly difficult to uphold that banner.
In contrast to Victorian sexual morality, in addition to neurosis, double morals emerged as a "degree of sexual freedom" so that men could respond to the cultural demands for marriage. For Freud, this was "the plainest admission that society itself does not believe in the possibility of enforcing the precepts which it itself has laid down."3 I wonder what the double standard is in this responsible and communicative morality, what our confessions will be.
I think of funar (to call out)—also "to cancel"—as our "degree of freedom," a liberated zone where a blind eye is turned, and segregation has free rein. It strikes me how exposure, classification, and violence fall on someone's head in an increasingly sharp way on screens. And there's something else. Without fear of contradiction, it is in this liberated zone that such flag is raised every day.
Having the power to call out someone—in Mapuche, funar is "to rot"—reveals the failure of the morals of emotional responsibility. But above all, it reveals itself to be its cornerstone: separated from a remainder that is called out, it creates a whole based on consensus. Hence the paradoxical but necessary coexistence between this morality and what is allowed to fall into a state of decay.
It is probably too late, and certainly cancellable, but I think it is worth asking ourselves what else our morality confesses.
[1] The verb funar means to publicly denounce, expose or repudiate someone for a reprehensible act, originating in Mapudungún in Chile, spreading to social media to criticise people or brands, similar to the English verb "cancel."
[2] Freud, S., "Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" (1908), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. IX, London: The Hogarth Press, p. 200.
[3] Ibid., p. 195.
