The New Moral Police: Foucauldian Perspectives on Power Dynamics in Reddit Online Support Communities

Table of Contents

Introduction: Context and Background

The original study “When Help Hurts: Secondary Victimization in Online Support Communities: The Case of r/rape” (Orientamento.it, 2024) examines how support communities like r/rape on Reddit might inadvertently contribute to secondary victimization through rigid categorization of sexual experiences. The research analyzes linguistic patterns and response tendencies within these communities, finding that members predominantly respond with absolute certainty (“It’s rape!”) even to ambiguous or nuanced situations described by users seeking guidance.

The study reveals that when individuals approach these communities with uncertainty about how to classify uncomfortable or potentially violating sexual experiences, they frequently encounter binary responses that leave little room for ambiguity. Community members, while well-intentioned in their desire to validate and support, often default to categorical labeling that may not fully capture the complexity of described situations. This pattern creates an environment where users seeking perspective may feel pressured to adopt specific interpretations of their experiences to receive community support.

Building on these findings, this article examines these dynamics through the lens of Foucauldian theory on power and social control.

The New Moral Police: Foucauldian Perspectives on Power Dynamics in Online Support Communities

In examining the linguistic and normative patterns observed within r/rape and similar online support communities, a compelling framework for analysis emerges through Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of power. The tendency toward categorical responses (“It’s rape!”) in ambiguous situations reveals a complex interplay of power, discourse, and subjectification that extends beyond mere supportive communication. This chapter explores how these digital spaces, while ostensibly created as safe havens for survivors, simultaneously function as sites of discursive power that regulate intimate behaviors and experiences in ways reminiscent of formal moral policing institutions.

Disciplinary Power in Digital Spaces

Foucault’s understanding of power as productive rather than merely repressive offers valuable insights into the dynamics of online support communities. According to Foucault (1977), power does not simply constrain; it produces particular forms of knowledge, truth regimes, and subjectivities. Within communities like r/rape, we observe the emergence of what Foucault might term a “disciplinary apparatus” that operates through language and categorization rather than physical force.

When community members respond to ambiguous sexual encounters with definitive labels, they participate in what Foucault described as the “micro-physics of power” — the diffuse, capillary ways power infiltrates the most intimate domains of human experience. The collective insistence on rigid categorizations (“It’s definitely rape”) functions as a normalizing judgment that both defines acceptable sexual conduct and produces particular subject positions: the “victim” who must recognize their experience as assault, and the “perpetrator” who is categorically condemned.

Digital Panopticism and Self-Regulation

The structure of these online communities bears striking resemblance to Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon, wherein subjects internalize the gaze of authority and begin to regulate themselves accordingly. Users seeking guidance about ambiguous experiences find themselves subject to the collective scrutiny of community members whose judgments carry the weight of moral certainty. This creates what could be termed a “digital panopticism” where individuals begin to interpret their own experiences through the anticipatory lens of community judgment.

The consequence is a form of self-regulation where individuals monitor their intimate relationships against an increasingly rigid set of standards determined by community consensus. This self-surveillance extends Foucault’s insights about how power operates not primarily through overt coercion but through the internalization of normative expectations.

Parallels with Institutionalized Moral Policing

The dynamics observed in these online communities bear striking, if unexpected, parallels to formalized systems of moral policing such as Iran’s Gasht-e Ershad (Guidance Patrol). While dramatically different in context, methodology, and severity of consequences, both systems function to regulate intimate behaviors through the establishment and enforcement of moral boundaries. In Iran, the religious police enforce standards of modesty and proper conduct in public spaces; in online communities, collective judgment enforces standards of proper sexual conduct in private relationships.

Both systems demonstrate what Foucault described as “biopower” — the regulation of bodies and behaviors in service of particular social norms. The crucial difference lies in the decentralized nature of online policing: rather than emanating from a state authority, this power circulates horizontally among community members, creating what Foucault might call a “capillary” system of power relations that reaches into the most intimate aspects of sexual experience.

From Support to Surveillance

The evolution of these support communities reveals an unintended transformation from spaces of healing to mechanisms of surveillance. Originally conceived as counter-hegemonic spaces that validate experiences often dismissed by traditional legal and social institutions, they risk becoming what Foucault termed “technologies of the self” — mechanisms through which individuals are taught to understand and modify themselves according to external moral standards.

When users approach these communities with genuine confusion about how to interpret ambiguous encounters, the predominantly binary responses (“It’s rape!”) function not merely as support but as what Foucault called “dividing practices” — techniques that categorize individuals and their experiences in ways that both enable and constrain their self-understanding. The person seeking guidance is divided from their own complex experience and reconstituted as a victim whose trauma must be recognized according to community standards.

The Double-Edged Sword of Discursive Power

It would be reductive to suggest that these communities function solely as repressive mechanisms. Following Foucault’s insistence that power is productive rather than merely negative, we must acknowledge that these spaces simultaneously provide validation for genuine trauma victims while propagating new forms of discursive control. They represent what Foucault might term a “strategic reversibility” of power — the same mechanisms that liberate individuals from one form of subjugation (societal dismissal of sexual violations) potentially subject them to another (rigid interpretation of sexual experiences).

The uncompromising stance taken in ambiguous situations reflects what Foucault called “regimes of truth” — systems that determine what counts as valid knowledge within a particular domain. Within these online communities, the certainty with which ambiguous situations are labeled establishes a truth regime wherein nuance and complexity are frequently sacrificed for categorical clarity.

Conclusion: Beyond Binary Thinking

A Foucauldian analysis invites us to move beyond seeing online support communities as either wholly beneficial or problematic. Instead, they represent complex sites where power and resistance are simultaneously enacted. The parallel with institutionalized moral policing is not meant to delegitimize the valuable support these communities provide but rather to highlight how power operates in unexpected ways even within spaces intended as liberatory.

The challenge for these communities lies in maintaining their supportive function while developing greater tolerance for ambiguity and nuance in intimate experiences. By recognizing the ways in which power infiltrates even the most well-intentioned supportive discourse, these digital spaces might avoid reproducing the very binary thinking and rigid moral categorizations that feminist and survivor advocacy have long worked to complicate.

As these communities continue to evolve, a more Foucauldian approach would involve remaining vigilant about how power operates through language, categorization, and moral certainty — even when deployed in service of supporting vulnerable individuals. The goal would not be to abandon moral judgment entirely but to develop what Foucault might call an “ethics of discomfort” — a willingness to sit with ambiguity rather than rushing to definitive categorization in situations where human experience resists such simplification.

Citations

Articolo contenuto sul sito www.orientamento.it. Autore Leonardo Evangelista. Vedi le indicazioni relative a Informativa Privacy, cookie policy e Copyright.