Honour, omertà, codes of silence, etc
Thinking about the recent naming and shaming of an online scumbag, and the fact that apparently there are people out there who think that breaking the Code of Online Anonymity is far worse than violating the privacy of random (female) individuals...
Are we not, my dearios, reminded somewhat of the Schoolboy Code of Honour, whereby it was Not Done to inform authority that, e.g. Flashman was torturing younger boys -
Or indeed, of Omertà, the code of silence -
Or, of being a grass being a very high-risk occupation.
All a bit problematic, shall we say, in terms of imbalances of power and who is being done wrong unto. A certain amount about protecting an in-group at the expense of members of out-groups.
We may also note that the laws on blackmail, in the UK, originated as a means of defence to be employed by persons of some privilege against attempts at extortion -
and, from Upchurch's important study, Before Wilde, we learn that cases brought by relatively humble citizens accusing men of higher rank of having attempted to commit sodomy with them tended to meet the defence that this was simply an attempt to extort money by false accusation -
I think we have to ask about anonymity is who is it protecting and are its claims absolute, and where is the power and who is the wronged party.
Not to mention, the generally rather poor reception given to whistleblowers.
(Cf, do I really need to add, what happens when a woman dares to speak out apropos of some incident of sexual harassment or indeed the general culture of same.)
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