Fraternity and Social Change in the Digital Age: The It Gets Better Project in the March of Online Fraternity

Introduction

Our daily lives require interaction with others; there’s no way to avoid people entirely. We categorize relationships with names: some people are friends, others family, coworkers, enemies, heroes, celebrities, in-laws. But one of the most powerful relationships that can exist between people is fraternity. It straddles the defined boundaries between friendship and family, affection and obligation, desire and necessity, floating elusively within the human psyche as an indefatigable bond between individuals. It enables discussion, understanding, unity, and respect, though differences may exist amongst those who preserve it. Few have tried to define fraternity, and even fewer have succeeded in any memorable way, but nevertheless we recognize it in its many manifestations when and where it exists.

However, for something so fundamental to the human condition, and society generally, fraternity’s prevalence has ostensibly waned in America. Ideological differences have polarized people, and respect for one’s fellow man or woman – as man or woman – has deteriorated. Tolerance is diminished, and people segregate themselves on any number of arbitrary bases. This dysfunction is so severe that the Tea Party’s vitriol represents the greatest example of modern day fraternity: they interact, debate, and work together in the political and social arena. However, this fraternity is so different from what we have traditionally recognized as fraternity, and it is devoid of cooperation or respect for political difference whatsoever.1

The digital age, with its flexible tools and forums, presents new opportunities for social interaction. The Internet, in particular, allows users unprecedented methods of connection, communication, and cooperation, despite the skepticism that exists.2 Its ability to foster change in society is disputed, but its potential to do so is enticing. Might powerful relationships formed over the Internet be considered fraternal? On a very basic level, the Internet provides unprecedented and accessible tools to people regardless of wealth and placement in society. However, fraternity, I will argue matters less among the powerful than among the powerless.3 The Internet presents a potential, however contested, for organized counter-hegemonic debate and communication; it can be a forum for those considered ‘apart.’ My overarching question, therefore, presents itself: if the Internet becomes a vehicle for counter-hegemony, does it do so by fostering fraternity amongst oppressed or powerless groups of people?

To answer this question, this paper analyzes an Internet phenomenon called the It Gets Better Project. In doing so, it answers the three inquiries listed above, namely: 1.) can fraternity exist online? 2.) how might this fraternity have political influence? and 3.) does Internet fraternity potentially act as a vessel for marginalized group power?

Fraternity And The Internet: A Blueprint

Communities consist of citizens who must live amongst each other. When the bond between people in such a community becomes strong, durable, and unavoidable, one may call it fraternity; this basic bond has played a large role in historical movements worldwide.

The French Revolution famously pursued liberty, equality, and fraternity in attempt to bring Enlightenment ideals to fruition in a people’s republic. However, fraternity was not so much a goal as a byproduct of many revolutionaries’ striving for the loftier ideals of liberty and equality. At every stage, the Revolutionary leadership (Robespierre, the Directory, Napoleon, etc.) remained relatively silent or indifferent on outright questions of fraternity, instead stressing equality or liberty (Mason & Rizzo, 1999, pp. 334-336). Later thinkers largely ignored it as well, and concentrated primarily on equality in itself, as opposed to its rumored end: fraternity. Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, recognized “[respect] for man, as man, [as] the foundation of every noble sentiment” (Wollstonecraft, 2009, p. 132). In order to attain such mutual respect, however, she proposed more societal equality (2009). Even Immanuel Kant saw the values of international hospitality to the establishment of perpetual peace, but identifies the spread of liberty as the means to such an end (Kant, 2006). Fraternity is, therefore, an afterthought for Kant.

Few contemporary works deal overtly with fraternity. Fortunately, The Idea of Fraternity in America, by Wilson Carey McWilliams, presents an eloquent analysis of fraternity’s role in civic life throughout American history. His comprehensive work provides a solid backdrop against which I may construct a formal definition for fraternity. His original definition is as follows:

1. [Fraternity is] a bond based on intense interpersonal affection, and,
2. Like all such bonds, is limited in the number of persons and in the social space to which it can be extended; that it
3. Also involves shared values or goals considered more important than ‘mere life,’ and
4. Is closely related to the development of ‘ego identity,’ since it
5. Includes a recognition of shortcomings and failure in the attainment of ultimate values, but
6. Provides the emotional encouragement and sense of worth (‘assurance of identity’) which makes it possible to endure such tensions without betraying one’s own values, and finally,
7. Implies a necessary tension with loyalty to society at large” (McWilliams, 1973).

For McWilliams, fraternity is an intimate bond between people, based on “intense interpersonal affection” (McWilliams, 1973, p. 7). However, fraternity is inherently discriminatory, and “limited in the number of persons and in the social space to which it can be extended” by nature (1973, p. 7). Shared “values or goals” of the utmost importance build the foundation for fraternity between individuals (1973, p. 7). Over time, this fraternal group affects the “development” of members’ “‘identity’” (1973, p. 8). McWilliams hints at a need for mutual understanding within a fraternal bond. This includes an understanding of and identification with another’s values and goals. Perhaps the most significant element of McWilliams’ conception of fraternity, (and our soon-to-be-established definition), lies in his recognition that fraternity affects the development of identity. This is not so much a condition for fraternity as much as an enduring result; people who share a fraternal bond will likely encounter powerful emotional experiences which profoundly affect the identities of those involved. However, simple participation in a fraternal group necessarily changes one’s attitude, behavior, and responsibilities. According to McWilliams, group members learn to: recognize his or her fellows’ “shortcomings and failure[s]” in the pursuit of common goals, give each other “the emotional encouragement and sense of worth” necessary to “endure” challenges without “betraying” one’s “values,” and lastly, create “tension” between group loyalty and “loyalty to society at large”4 (1973, p. 8).

The exact contours of my definition will be explained shortly; simplified, I assert that fraternity exists as an establishment of obligation buttressed by deep mutual understanding and, as McWilliams notes, interpersonal affection. This affection need not be friendship, though friendship is common among fraternal brothers and sisters.5

The familial connotation of fraternity alludes to mutual affection and understanding generally expected within a family, but this allusion is not entirely accurate. Blood relations are often aggressive, competitive, and disdainful. Negative feelings between siblings do not always mean that mutual affection and understanding are absent, but when they demolish affection and understanding between them, then one cannot consider the relationship fraternal. Among those who do experience mutual affection and understanding, mutual obligation arises as well, for there exists interconnectedness. We might call this interconnectedness ‘fraternity,’ and because it is mutually exclusive from any literal familial connection, fraternity’s familial connotation is figurative, not literal.

Equality is another factor that influences fraternal significance. Social and political status or power can separate people indefinitely, and under hierarchical duress, one is likely neither honest, nor comfortable, expressing him or herself. Also, great inequalities often create barriers to mutual understanding, simply because inequalities between people often imply different lifestyles and experiences.

Despite these obstacles to understanding, inequalities themselves are dependent on situational context, insofar as the positions from which people interact alter their perceptions of their interactions. A parent and child, though disparate in political and social status while in a familial setting, are equal as fellow United States citizens with equal rights. A homeless person and a wealthy person, though dissimilar in property ownership, become equal when attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as fellow alcoholics. The inequalities still necessarily exist, but are overshadowed by other characteristics that occupy higher priorities in other various contexts.

These contexts have affected equality, or perceptions of equality throughout history, and Studs Terkel’s Working provides several examples of this phenomenon. Frank Decker, an interstate truck driver, talks about the hierarchies that exist at work: “At the bottom of the ladder, there’s the hooker on your truck. He wants to feel that he’s better than somebody…So you get constant animosity because he feels that the corporation looks down on this steel hauler, and he knows he can order him around…It’s a status thing. There’s a tremendous feeling”(Terkel, Frank Decker, 1972). This work environment, therefore, contains obvious and overt tensions based on job experience, and status. However, Decker also notes that “[e]verybody in that mill that is under union contract has some dignity, [and] some respect from management,” suggesting that the rights and privileges granted by the union create some sense of equality for those involved, regardless of job experience or status (1972, p. 210). The context of the union renders workers equal, while the context of the work environment renders workers subject to hierarchy. Each context is composed of the same people, but their relations to each other are different depending on which one matters at a specific moment or location. Union workers represent but one example of groups who have both established fraternal connection, and used it to promote social and political change in American history. Numerous other professions, including the police and the fire department, continue to provide contexts conducive to the mutual understanding and affection necessary for fraternity.

Again, McWilliams offers some provocative suggestions about the effects of fraternity, and gives us some insight into the mechanism by which fraternity affects identity. It gives people an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, revealing the fallibility that lies beneath any personality. Each person’s recognition of his or her fallibility, in turn, lends members of a fraternal group the knowledge and responsibility to support one another. This support, however, is naturally discriminatory. A person’s feelings of obligation to his or her fraternal brothers or sisters can only be directed towards particular groups of people, for community is often limited in scope, and a person’s resources for compassion even more so. The significance of exclusivity will accompany our conception of fraternity to some degree throughout this essay.