STUDENT VOICES | THE 2023 CHYNN ETHICS PAPER PRIZE First runner-up WINNER
OCD, Humanism, and “Cancel Culture”
by Penny Joseph, Fordham College Lincoln Center ’25
In May 2020, I became utterly fixated on something I’d written earlier in high school: a poem that contained some language about which I now have misgivings. I grew obsessed with trying to figure out whether or not what I had written was “okay,” morally speaking. Over a period of about three months, I thought about what I had written nearly non-stop. I looked for similar stories online, in order to compare my situation to others’. I even located and reread the hated poem, hoping that, by doing so, I might discover that all was well. None of this helped, because I wasn’t just struggling with simple regret; I was suffering from OCD. At the time, I thought that my anxiety revealed my concern for behaving well, in a way that didn’t hurt other people. It was only through OCD therapy that I realized that my actual concern was something else. Even back then, I knew that my mistake had not negatively affected anyone. Rather, I was worried that it revealed my own immorality. To this day, my OCD compels me to try to reassure myself that I am not an immoral person.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, is “a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions).” These obsessions often stem from a point of uncertainty. People with OCD respond to the discomfort of these obsessions with repetitive actions known as compulsions (“Obsessive”). My most prominent OCD subtype is moral scrupulosity OCD, which is characterized by obsessions related to morality and moral purity. In the example earlier, my compulsions were both internal, such as rumination, and external, such as online research. All of my compulsions were in response to the same obsession: a fear that my mistake revealed that I was immoral. I hoped that engaging in these compulsions would free me from the fear that my inner self was evil, but they never did.
How can an inner self be evil? Well, of course, it can’t; I think many of us know this, at least on a conceptual level. So, why was it so hard for me to let go of a seemingly minor, harmless offense?
In his book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, historian Yuval Noah Harari defines Humanism as a philosophy which “sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens” (Harari 65). According to Humanism, Human beings “must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe” (221). Furthermore, Humanism “assumes that each human has a single authentic inner self” (235). I am most interested in this idea of an “inner self” through which one must understand the world. I see this philosophy as imposed upon all of us from early childhood in platitudes about the importance of being oneself, being true to oneself, following one’s innate passions, etc. We are surrounded by Humanism from our earliest encounters with language.
This sort of Humanist belief—which prioritizes the self as a source of morality and as the basis for decision-making—is not entirely negative. It implies certain worthwhile values such as an individual’s right to select their own life path. That said, this way of thinking is connected to a serious problem: our modern obsession with moral purity.
Some call this obsession “cancel culture.” I’m hesitant to use that term; I notice that a great number of “canceled” celebrities are not canceled at all, only criticized intensely for a brief period before returning to their former glory. That said, I do see an alarming modern tendency of thinking about individuals as either acceptable or “problematic.” This dichotomy of labels demands that people perform transparency, even about very personal matters. If, according to Humanism, we all have an “inner self,” then it seems to follow that that inner self can be good or bad, moral or immoral. In the modern world, largely through social media, we have taken upon ourselves the task of making these distinctions—to the detriment of nuance, subtlety in media, and privacy.
I’m not arguing against accountability for harmful words and actions. Instead, I’m thinking about someone like Grace Van Dien, an actress who was harassed online by fans of the television series Stranger Things for her support for a romantic relationship between her character, Chrissy, and fan favorite Eddie. Some fans, of the opinion that the two characters had too great an age gap—or that Eddie was gay—attacked Van Dien for her interest in the relationship (Prajapati). This harassment was not framed merely as a disagreement with Van Dien’s interpretation of the show; in fact, some harassers went so far as to accuse her of being a pedophile for endorsing a fictional relationship between a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old (Blairsmacaroon). Her shortcoming, then, wasn’t in her actions, but in some supposed internal failing—pedophilia—that fans presumed they could identify and call out. This certainly wasn’t a typical response, but it typifies broader issues of Humanist thinking, which can lead to assertions of internal, deep-down moral shortcomings.
Another example would be that of Kit Connor, an actor on the television series Heartstopper who recently came out as bisexual due to pressure on social media. His character on the show is queer, but previously, Connor had not publicly labeled his own sexuality. This led some fans to accuse him of “queerbaiting” for profiting off of playing a queer character without indicating that he himself was queer (Zornosa). As some fans of the series apparently saw it, even the possibility that an actor playing a queer character might be straight represented an offense to the queer community. If his inner self were straight, Connor would, according to these fans, be problematic, whatever the consequences of his real-world actions. Furthermore, this ambiguity about Connor was one that seemed, to these people, to require immediate explanation—similar to how OCD thinking demands the immediate resolution of uncertainty.
It is hardly radical to claim that actions are more important than thoughts. That is not my argument. Rather, I am trying to make the case that there are important similarities between so-called “cancel culture” and OCD. Both some subtypes of OCD, such as moral scrupulosity OCD, and “cancel culture” understand the internal self as either pure and moral or impure and immoral, as compliant or noncompliant with particular ethical standards. With this similarity in mind, I think that we can treat these two conditions—OCD and “cancel culture”—in a similar way.
The most widely accepted form of OCD therapy is called exposure and response prevention, or ERP. Exposure refers to “practicing confronting the thoughts, images, objects, and situations” that trigger someone’s obsessions. Response prevention entails “making a choice not to do a compulsive behavior once the anxiety or obsessions have been ‘triggered’” (“Exposure”). For a person with OCD related to contamination and cleanliness, ERP might involve eating in a public place, despite the elevated risk of catching a disease. For a person with moral scrupulosity OCD, ERP might mean deliberately recalling a morally ambiguous choice, then resisting the temptation to ruminate on it.
We cannot literally apply ERP to society as a whole. However, ERP’s goal of accepting ambiguity and discomfort is absolutely relevant to today’s “cancel culture.” Modern society—particularly digital society—must become more comfortable with uncertainty in regard to celebrities, politics, and media. OCD therapy teaches us that absolute certainty, particularly about internal states of being, is impossible. We can hold people accountable for outright harmful words and actions, but we also must accept that there are some uncertainties that we might never resolve.
Returning to the example of Kit Connor—the young actor who was accused of queerbaiting and pressured into coming out—“cancel culture ERP” would mean accepting uncertainty about his personal life and allowing him to continue maintaining ambiguity around his sexuality. ERP is all about acceptance of uncomfortable situations, about making no attempt to resolve them. Many people—myself included—don’t care about straight actors playing queer characters, but for those who do object to such castings, the discomfort around an unlabeled actor should not warrant a response. We’re not the thought police. We’re all just strangers on the Internet.
More broadly, I think it’s necessary to reevaluate the philosophy of Humanism, which is fundamental to both certain patterns of OCD thinking and our modern expectation of individual transparency in the name of morality, especially online. The Humanist focus on the individual as a source of meaning and truth is likely exacerbated by the isolating nature of digital and social media. Let us abandon this idea of a true “inner self.” Challenging Humanism will allow us to stop moralizing our internal states of being—both personally and collectively.
For more information about the prize, past winners, and submission requirements for 2024, please visit the Chynn Ethics Paper Prize webpage. The deadline to submit is Friday, March 15th, 2024 and is open to ALL undergraduates.
Works Cited
Blairsmacaroon. “The harassment of grace van dien.” Reddit, 11 Jul. 2022, http://www.reddit.com/r/StrangerThings/comments/vwn0j5/comment/%20-%20try%20to%20find%20better%20source%20though/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.
“Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).” International OCD Foundation, 2023, iocdf.org/about-ocd/ocd-treatment/erp/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harvill Secker, 2016. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” American Psychiatric Association, 2023, http://www.psychiatry.org/Patients-Families/Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.
Prajapati, Siddhika. “Joseph Quinn Blasts Fans Victim-Blaming Stranger Things Co-Star Grace Van Dien After S*Xual Harassment Allegations: ‘It’s Disgusting.’” Animated Times, 10 Mar. 2023,www.animatedtimes.com/joseph-quinn-blasts-fans-victim-blaming-stranger-things-co-sta r-grace-van-dien-after-sxual-harassment-allegations-its-disgusting/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.
Zornosa, Laura. “Fans Have Been Speculating on Kit Connor’s Sexuality For Too Long.” Time, Time USA, 1 Nov. 2022, time.com/6227242/kit-connor-heartstopper-bisexual/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2023.
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