Free Willy?

'Voluntary : Preceding from one's own choice or consent. Free of coercion, including any sanctions for not taking part.'

It was in the news this week that chemical castration is being proposed as the latest measure in the war against all things paedophile. The authorities insist that this would be a voluntary measure, naturally, as we are not the kind of country that goes around hacking off the balls of sex offenders in a response to the will of the lynch mob. No, we are far more civilized than that. We give them little pills, or a shot of Depo Prova in each buttock and of course, it’s entirely their choice. Isn’t it?

So this story got me thinking about the term ‘voluntary’. How it is used as a weapon to control people by those in authority. I want to explore the psychology behind it and highlight how in many cases, voluntary choices, as defined above, just don't exist.

I guess most people who can remember their childhood can relate to the kind of ‘voluntary’ decision making that adults imposed on them. I remember clearly a time in my early childhood where I was first made aware of the ambiguities of this ‘voluntary’ concept. It might be a rather frivolous example compared to castrating paedophiles but the psychology of the situation is the same.

My parents were the first to pull the voluntary trick:

‘Tidy your room or don’t tidy your room, it’s entirely up to you’, they said. ‘Go on, live in a pigsty, it doesn’t bother us. All your toys will get spoilt, your clothes won’t get washed, but we don’t care. It’s your choice, Jen, you do what you like.”

So I called their bluff. I thought I was being clever. I was fooled that I actually had the power of this so called voluntary decision behind me. I refused to tidy my room and went outside to play cricket with my brothers. When, several hours later, the sun had set and I came back inside they were both waiting, arms folded, by the bottom of the stairs.

“You haven’t tidied your room, Jen. “

“You said I didn’t have to.”

“Yes well…. (exasperated eye roll)…. I know we said that but your auntie Mary’s coming over tomorrow and you don’t want her to see your room all messy do you?”

“I don’t care. I’ll shut the door if you care that much. Can I have that ice cream left over from tea?”

“No. Not until you’ve tidied your room.”

“But you said I didn’t have to.”

“Well, you do if you want any ice cream.”

“Well, (exaggerated nonchalant shrugging of shoulders) I’ll go without then. It’s only Kwik Saves raspberry ripple anyway, and that goes all gritty between your teeth. ‘

“(audible sighs) Jennifer, stop being difficult. That room is getting tidied, tonight, whether you like it or not. Now do we have to drag you there and sit with you whilst you do it? Do you really want us to see what’s lurking under your bed? Or can you be a good girl and do it on your own?”

(Cue violent stomping up the stairs, tears, slamming my bedroom door and other general tantrumish behaviour.)

Then of course, one dirty sock at a time, in between the sobs and the foot stomps; I tidied the goddamn room. So much for voluntary decision making.

That is why I am always suspicious when I am presented with a choice and it is described as voluntary. This is why I am deeply against anything that curtails civil liberties and freedoms even on a so called voluntary basis. These things always start off as free choice, but end up mandatory. It’s the nature of the system: of power and control. When somebody demands you should make a choice, I find they usually have an agenda themselves and the chances are its not going to be so voluntary after all. The very fact that you are being told to make a choice kind of goes against the voluntary thing in the first place, doesn’t it? I mean, in a totally free world, if I wanted to live in an environment without clutter, I would just make the spontaneous decision to tidy my room, vice versa if I didn’t care about my possessions I would just leave the mess be. The very fact that my parents brought the subject up at all just highlights the fact that they have the power to make me do it. Simply by saying ‘we don’t care what you do’ they are drawing attention to the power dynamic and implying that if they did care, there’s not an awful lot you could do about it. The fact that you are being given a voluntary choice speaks volumes when in fact that voluntary choice should just go without saying; it should be part of your human rights. The fact is that most so called voluntary choices are badly disguised ultimatums. Failure to comply with the ‘right’ voluntary choice leads to further sanctions until you make the decision the authorities deem is right. Of course, if I hadn’t gone upstairs and tidied the bombsite that was my bedroom, there would have been a whole other range of escalating threats, pleas, and measures of force on the part of my parents until they got their way.

As an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital last winter, I heard person after person tell the same story- that at their crisis meetings with doctors and social workers they had been given a ‘choice’- they could enter hospital ‘voluntarily’ or be sectioned against their will. To anyone who knows anything about mental health, you avoid a section at all costs. It is, in effect, to be deemed insane. Your human rights are taken away, the fuckers can do pretty much anything they want. You have to take what they say, and comply to whatever treatment they deem is appropriate, which can include electro shocking and in some countries, a lobotomy. So when their Doctor popped the ‘voluntary’ question, were these people really being given a free choice that ‘preceded from one's own choice or consent?’ Of course not. Some people gave the shrinks a big fuck you and said ‘The only way you’re dragging me into that place is under section, I am not playing a part in this.’ However, most people I spoke to were neither as brave nor stupid as that and acquiesced. They said no to the section and went ‘willingly’ without need of police escort.

It is in this example that you see the beauty of the voluntary technique. It is effective because it seemingly passes the onus of the decision making from those in power on to you. This is no more than a smoke and mirrors trick to make them looks like the good guys. When you are ordered to do something against your will this generally causes deep wells of resentment which sometimes blossoms into rebellion. However, when you are coerced in the form of a loaded ‘voluntary’ choice (even though you were, in actuality, in the same situation as those who are forced), the process acts upon you emotionally in a very different way.

Expanding on the above example; when these ‘voluntary’ psychiatric patients entered hospital I noticed they were generally easier to control than the sectioned patients- not because as common mythology goes, those under section were actually much iller (although some were) but because the voluntary patients had gone through a process where part of them felt like they had got themselves in that situation. They felt tremendous guilt about agreeing to their treatment even though many of them had huge reservations about it and felt somehow responsible. They got angry at themselves for caving under pressure rather than getting mad at the system for the weight it piled on them in the first place. Even though, later, some of them were angry and recognised that they had been coerced, many of these people at least partially believed the lie the authorities told them; that they had come there of their own free will, they had been given a choice, they had chosen this and now they had to live with the consequences of their actions. What were they complaining about anyway? Of course, once they had entered as a voluntary patient, if they wanted to leave they would again be threatened with, or actually, sectioned, showing how empty the ‘voluntary’ label is. You can see through this example how the act of giving someone a choice makes them complicit and then less likely to rebel further on down the line.

I’m not trying to say there’s no such thing as a voluntary choice. When Owen says to me ‘do you want beer or wine?’ or ‘what shall we do tonight?’ Even though factors might complicate and influence these choices, as in I might know that he prefers wine and wants to go to the cinema; because the power relationship between us is the same, the voluntary choice is not loaded and I am free to say what I really want. I think voluntary choices only become coercions when there is some kind of power imbalance and then it’s hard to ever be truly free. As the power imbalance becomes more extreme, so can the demands of those in control. So the most vulnerable people often have the least rights. The mentally ill are drugged and shocked into submission. The paedophile is castrated. The old person incarcerated. The asylum seekers are detained, the immigrants repatriated, the Jews are exterminated. All of these horrendous things have been done under the guise of free choices, (remember that entrance to the Warsaw Ghetto was, at first, ‘entirely voluntary’) making it palatable to the public until they get used to the idea and then, eventually, it becomes compulsory.

It can be argued (and often is) that laws and regulations are necessary for preventing the system collapsing. I’m not going to get into the arguments for and against chemical castration of paedophiles. I object to it, but my real beef today is with the delusional idea that these paedophiles, who at the end of the day are considered to be the scourge of our society, the very lowest of the low, the very bottom of the power scale, are going to have any ‘choice’ in the matter at all. Yes, they may technically be allowed to turn the treatment down, at least at first, until a bill that makes it compulsory is sneakily passed in parliament ten years down the line. But, I guarantee you, behind closed doors, in the meeting rooms and on prison review committees the pressure for these men to comply with the treatment will mount and mount until the word ‘voluntary’ rings as hollow for these men as it did for the Jews, squashed together like stripy sardines on the train to Auschwitz.