Gestures to Trump Supporters
Gestures to Russia and China
Gestures to AfD victories
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Gestures wildly towards workplaces
Workplaces, at least under capitalism, aren't a voluntary hierarchy. You have to sell your labour to survive.
The acceptance of hierarchy, as I have often seen, is very often even wanted.
I think you mean the way workers organize themselves? Like at my workplace our internal organization among coworkers is voluntary and friendly, but our employment is very much not.
Well no, I'm talking about lots of people who gladly just sits at their level at work accepting the manager is the decider etc.
That's different, workplaces buy your time from you.
That doesn't mean we go there involuntarily. Femdom also gives you something back.
I wouldn't exactly call the workplace voluntary though? When the alternative is to be without "legitimate" access to primary needs like food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
Id say it's more coercive than anything.
But yeah voluntarily hierarchies still exist, it's just that normally they're meant to dissolve. Like a student-teacher hierarchy
Is it possible for those needs to be met systematically without some kind of coercion?
In theory, yes. In practice, you've just been visited by a CIA backed coup.
What's the theory?
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Dom/sub is not hierarchy, it's a consensual relationship between people.
Hierarchy is an institutional set of involuntary command/control relationships
Dom/sub is not hierarchy
Yes daddy. Explain sexual psychology to me harder.
If I want to learn to bake bread I voluntarily accept the bakery te4acher as my superior in this matter for the duration of the lessons. If the first person had said voluntary hierarchies are the only valid ones they might have had a point!
here's my reply to another comment like yours:
that wouldn't really be a hierarchy because there's no authority involved. if you're deferring to someone's skill, that's not authority, because you have the freedom to do that and it is voluntary. you or the other people can leave that association at any time.
a hierarchy is, as CrocodilloBombardino@piefed.social so sufficiently just put it, "an institutional set of involuntary command/control relationships".
This really seems like it only makes sense in the context of contrived definitions of "authority" and "hierarchy". Expert Authority (authority deriving from an individual's expertise in a particular field) is a well-established and widely recognized concept.
"Hierarchy" does not inherently imply that the relationships are involuntary. If you want to call such structures "involuntary hierarchy", knock yourself out, I'll agree with everything you say against them. But voluntary hierarchies are still hierarchies by the actual definition of the word, and when the structure is based on expertise (judges, teachers, trades experts, administrative coordinators, etc) they are extremely effective.
Redefining words to exclusively refer to the most negative aspects of the common definition is bad rhetoric, intellectually disingenuous, and ineffective at spreading a message. Like I said, if you would like to be specific, and append an appropriate adjective to existing words to refer to a particular subset of a concept (involuntary hierarchy, arbitrary authority) you'll have much more luck convincing those who know what the base words mean.
It's the problem that occurs when a term that is being used in a narrow more academic context makes contact with people who use it in a more colloquial conversational sense. Neither definition is "wrong" really, it's just very confusing unless clarified, and becomes a problem when both sides refuse to understand that context comes into play here.
when a term that is being used in a narrow more academic context
That's not really what I see happening though, these aren't academic terms, academia uses the "colloquial" definitions. This is a niche in-group co-opting words, changing their definitions, and using them as jargon.
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I know it's semantics (er...is it diction?) and at the end of the day pretty pedantic, but this is the first time I've seen the suggestion that hierarchy necessitates authority, and that authority necessitates compulsion (or an institution, or a command/control relationship). I mean yeah, they definitely have those connotations, for sure. And maybe in the context of anarchist theory, this is their functional definition.
But in a general sense, we still have hierarchies that are completely outside of the realm of social organization, like top down hierarchical categorization of...things...right? Like, stuff? And similarly, we have authorities that aren't necessarily relevant to compulsion, like an authority on a particular niche subject. I guess we're compelled to believe them, but, I dunno...
I'm kinda thinking out loud here. But I guess if I met, say, a master woodworker, and she was guiding me through building a bookshelf, I'd still say she is the authority over my actions, even if I decided to do something contrary to her commands. For sure, she has the right to tell me how to build the bookshelf -- she is the expert, I recognize the authority over me in this matter -- and she retains the authority even if I defy her. Idk maybe I'm talking about a different definition of authority.
No True Scotsman would ever have a hierarchy!
I unironically, have no idea if this post is a satire or not.
I was about to say "what about therapy" and then I remembered how almost every therapist besides me does therapy (and how they react when they learn how I do things...). I know I can't eliminate all the spooks, but I do try my best
That's so vague tell me more.
It's all so second nature to me at this point that I had to spend a good bit of time thinking about all the ways I incorporate my anarchist values in my practice. I'm sure there are more, but these are the most significant ones I could think of
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No insurance, so I'm not forced to pathologize my clients and I'm not beholden to a third-party constraining what we're allowed to work on, etc
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Extremely low cost, with no means testing, and I even accept bartering
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Full therapeutic self-disclosure to help dissolve the power dynamic
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Conduct sessions in neutral or client-centered environments (I have no public office- I meet clients virtually, outdoors, or in their home)
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Peer accountability with a fellow anarchist in the medical field
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Consent and boundaries are iterative and explicit
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Session structure, modalities, etc, are collaboratively negotiated
Edit: I realize this list probably sounds normal and benign to leftists, but libs react very strongly to these things
That stuff does seem like table stakes to me. I've only done telehealth with people who were pretty chill. Sounds like there's some real bad practices if this is abnormal.
I feel like bad practices are the norm, but maybe my experience is skewed due to living in Florida lol (a blue part, but still)
Most therapists I've encountered/been familiar with obv have new clients sign consent forms, but never actually review it with them; they create a treatment plan for them and say 'here, sign this'; they tell me it's inappropriate to list my own diagnoses and politics on my PsychologyToday page; they argue that bartering is less ethical than charging $150; and I've yet to meet someone IRL (therapist or otherwise) who wasn't surprised (and often lowkey sketched out) when I say I do sessions at parks & in homes.
Also I forgot to add this one- other therapists are always absolutely floored when I tell them I don't do involuntary commitals
I'm Aussie and I can say your practices are not the norm for sure, and I don't think I'd engage a therapist unless they followed your guidelines.
In fact I would not be surprised if some of your practices would prevent you from getting or retaining a licensed! E.g. the involuntary commitment.
Luckily in my US state (Florida), it's only legally required for persons under 18, and I don't work much with minors anymore
Is there a nuance to usage of the word hierarchy that I'm not understanding in this context?
Like if I invite a bunch of friends over to help me move into a new apartment, is there a hierarchy because I'm telling everyone where to put the boxes? If my pal Sarah drives a truck for work, so I entrust her to load the van with two other people, is that a hierarchy?
I'm not asking this to be a smartass, I'd just like to understand if there is a meaningful difference between hierarchy and deferring to someone's skill in a particular domain.
no, that wouldn't really be a hierarchy because there's no authority involved. if you're deferring to someone's skill, that's not authority, because you have the freedom to do that and it is voluntary. you or the other people can leave that association at any time.
a hierarchy is, as @CrocodilloBombardino@piefed.social so succinctly just put it, "an institutional set of involuntary command/control relationships".
because you have the freedom to do that and it is voluntary
So what's the agreed upon definition of "having the freedom" and "voluntary" here? Because even under an authoritarian government, you can technically go against the authorities, but there will be consequences to doing so. What level of consequences do we consider to be acceptable for these purposes? Or is it not a question of level of severity of the consequences?
An example of what I'm thinking of is a situation where you defer to someone else for their expertise because maybe they're the only doctor available who can treat your illness, so you need to do as they say to get better. If you refuse, then you die. Is that voluntary? I can choose to die, so the "freedom" is there, but the consequences are severe.
I think maybe a level of external intentional threat is necessary for it to be involuntary. Deferring to an expert because you want good results or because you feel more comfortable in a follower role seems distinct from being threatened with going to hell or losing your home.
But even then I still wonder because what if the thing you're threatened with losing is the other person's companionship? It's reasonable to not want to interact with someone uncooperative, but you are technically coercing them into compliance if they're going to be removed from a project, relationship, etc.
I also think there needs to be a word for what people mean when they say voluntary hierarchy if we're going to assign it a strictly involuntary meaning. You can't just subtract vocabulary and expect everyone to jump on board.
Illegal actions are always available. States use violent consequences to coerce legal choices. Someone might say the Kent State massacre was an acceptable consequence for violating the rules of the state.
The set of legal and moral actions are not one to one. Any moral deference of autonomy needs to be consentual. There are times I would choose death instead of the doctor. For example, unpayable debt would make death an acceptable outcome.
Autonomy is about power to take an action. Heirarchy is about power over the actions of others. Anarchy is an individual and social philosophy.
A lot of people here take jokes seriously.
Is that surprising at all, though? Leftists take stuff like this very seriously to begin with, but also leftist spaces are more likely to be populated by a higher number of autistic (hi!) and other ND people who don't always know (or care) when something is a joke unless it's literally stated in the text of the joke.
Also also, jokes shouldn't necessarily be granted immunity from serious analysis. It was a thought provoking post, that's a good thing too, right?
I prefer horizontally-hierarchial BDSM.
A console of kinksters decide how best to please you.
This guy fetishes.
Fetishes and kinks are different things.
That greatly depends on who you ask. There are plenty of kinksters who make no distinction between those terms.
ioo then that makes them functionally useless to have two terms, and it means there's no way to get specific about whether something is a need to get off, or just something you just enjoy when being kinky.
You're not wrong, and I agree that there's value in distinguishing between those ideas. I've just been around a lot of kinky people who insist there's no difference in the words, so maybe there's a language shift going on.
But the sub is the one in control? Safe words and all that.
My safe word is harder
This was probably just a bit or whatever, but I feel like it would be pretty easy for someone who actually thought all hierarchy was involuntary to argue that acting according to biological imperatives (such as the need/desire to engage in kink dynamics like femdom) are not voluntary. We can't choose what sexual orientation we have, either.
Those fundamental desires are imposed upon us by our brain chemistry, whether we want them to be or not. You can consent to who you engage with, but you can't consent to experiencing those needs in the first place.
If you squint hard enough, that's similar logic as when people claim that capitalism is fine because you can "choose" to get a different job.
I can literally just point to the republican party.
Re-education camps for nazis? 🤷♂️
C
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What kind of hierarchy is this?
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