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The #mutualaid tag on social media

created: 2023-01-04 22:42:21 UTC

modified: 2023-01-04 22:42:21 UTC

People have recently been talking on fedi about the #mutualaid tag: A convention where someone in need of financial support asks for donations and calls it mutual aid. This is an inaccurate use of the term, though, it's supposed to be used to describe group organization for the providal of community services like food and disaster relief. Some people on the internet really don't like the trend. So much so that they'll actively discourage donation to any financially vulnerable people asking for some money to get by for the month because they put the #mutualaid tag at the bottom of the post.

Should we allow people to keep misusing the term? There's a pretty straightforward utilitarian solution to this. Which is worse? Letting it stay around and damaging the progress of anarchist advocacy and organization in mainstream society? Or denying it and stunting peoples ability to generate the funds they need to eat, or to avoid getting evicted from their apartment, or to escape from an abusive situation? I hope peole agree it's the latter. All potential negative effects of misusing the term Mutual Aid are broad, indirect, and gradual. The negative effects of attacking that misuse are immediate and directly affect the thousands of people that rely on it as a social support system.

I really don't see how anyone can fail to realize the harm they're doing here. It should be pretty intuitive that it's bad to shame poor peole asking for money because of a nuanced adjacent political issue.

I do like mutual aid as the term is originally used though, seems pretty poggers. So why don't we try and keep it around without hurting people? Like, maybe:

Encourage people to use different terminology you think is better but don't shame them for not. They're just trying to get by, after all.
Don't allow predatory businesses to use mutual aid as a buzzword to promote something not even remotely related.
Include mutual financial support and donation between peers in the definition of mutual aid. It's already close enough, anyways. The only major difference I can see is the scale of time: people's financial status and through that their ability to donate to others changes slowly then, say, someone's availability for volunteering.