One of the most trenchant arguments made by proponents of forced masking is some variation of “it’s just an inconvenience”, so/and/or “why do you have to make such a big deal about it”. (To be clear, this is not a legitimate scientific or factual argument for the adoption of any policy, but that is not what this article is about.) I am largely going to avoid the issues unique to masking children – what is plainly institutionalized child abuse – and for people with disabilities or past trauma, as many of the harms inflicted by masks are readily apparent and easily articulable.
On the surface, this contention seems like a morally and factually compelling argument. After all, if masks had any meaningful efficacy, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile tradeoff to endure a little discomfort to reduce the far worse suffering and death that would otherwise be inflicted by covid?
Yet this argument – “what’s the big deal” – does not square with how many people experience masks and mask mandates, including practically everyone who disagrees with masking as a policy. It is undeniable that millions of people are considerably more tormented by facemasks than what we would expect is reasonable or even possible for something that is indeed merely an “inconvenience”. People generally do not profoundly suffer from trivialities.
In other words, clearly facemasks are a considerably greater burden for many people than how they superficially appear; and yet few people are able to work out for themselves what about them is so abusive or terrible. The goal of this article is to enumerate some of the myriad harms and emotional abuses inflicted by forced masking, specifically those that are difficult to articulate or identify the connection to masking.
So what exactly is the big deal about wearing masks?
In a nutshell – as was just stated – mask wearing is to many people something that is enormously stressful, and something that evokes inordinately powerful negative emotions. This is simply the reality, irrespective of whether such feelings “make sense”.
Now, as a general rule, if someone feels powerfully about something, there’s a reason; or in other words, there is something that is provoking the strong emotions. And the source of these feelings does not have to be the thing that the feelings attach to. The only thing that matters is that the feelings exist, however misguided they may be.
This is not to say that the reality of feelings should be the dominant consideration above everything else. The current radical ‘social justice’ movement that has elevated one’s subjective “identity” as the defining characteristic of a person is the Reductio ad Absurdum of enshrining subjective feelings in place of objective reality itself.
What is true however is that the emotional distress and suffering of people is quite real. So even if you happen to be in favor of mask mandates and not at all bothered by mask wearing, that does not make the profoundly distressing experience of someone else any less real of an experience.
The following list is not exhaustive, just a collection of some of the factors that make mask wearing, especially forced masking, so distressing to many people.
A few important things to keep in mind:
Not every listed issue is true for every person who finds masks distressing.
Each issue amplifies the other ones, so that the cumulative distress is far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s like the difference between 1+2+3+…10 and 1x2x3x…10 (55 vs 3,628,800).
This list is not exhaustive.
The short explanations are intended to give a bit more insight into how people might typically experience that particular stress. They are not intended to comprehensively define the issue.
Emotional Stresses of Mask Mandates
Deprivation of Personal Autonomy
Depriving someone of their personal autonomy is stressful and demeaning. This is amplified when it is about something that is emotionally fraught, subject to strong opinions and feelings, relates to morality/values, and/or is something that has an implication that you lack the capacity to look out for your own interest. Free will is a defining trait of being human, and the abrogation thereof is experienced as an assault on ones individuality.
A Sense of Helplessness
Being at the mercy of the arbitrary and capricious whims of others makes you feel a sense of helplessness, which is extremely stressful and grueling, and can eventually break a person mentally and emotionally, and is therefore a favored tactic used by tyrants to break the will of the population so that they are too broken to revolt (see Stalin’s reign of terror).
Invalidating Your Personal Identity
Masking is now – regardless of the factual merits – a political symbol in society. Being forced to mask is by definition being forced to yield in ones own actions – and worse, in ones public appearance – to your ideological and/or political opposition. Imagine if the government decided to make wearing a religious skullcap mandatory for everyone – you can make the same argument that is being made for masking – what’s the big deal, you barely notice it, etc – I am quite confident that atheists for instance would would feel very keenly the assault on their personal identity.
Assaulting Your Sense of Morality / Making You Feel Like You’re Immoral and Selfish
Mask mandates force people opposed to internalize that they are acting immorally and selfishly for two reasons. The first is that society is enshrining into law that how you act is immoral and selfish, which is a public declaration to the world that you are immoral and selfish. The second is that how you act outwardly always exerts influence in how you fell and identify internally, so constantly wearing a mask eats away at your internal convictions – even if you can withstand this, it creates some degree of cognitive dissonance internally. No one likes to feel like they are evil or selfish.
Deprives / Ruins Human Interactions
The quality and nature of social interactions is greatly reduced. Every interaction behind masks is fundamentally different. Interacting in this way can feel sad, despondent, isolating, cold, and/or cruel, among other things.
Over Time Changes Your Personality
Facemasks are a radical and unnatural impingement on normal mental and emotional functioning. Over time, this can change your personality – such as making you less social, less outgoing, more suspicious, decreased tendency or desire to be kind and so on.
Turns Other People Into Abusive Tyrants
This is meant to capture the phenomenon of a subset of people who have turned into cruel and vicious individuals, and abuse people whom they have power over.
A General Feeling of Being Trapped in a Nightmare
Many people feel a clear and distinct sense of being trapped in some sort of perverse nightmare as a result of covid policies, which is an extremely distressing experience, especially when there feels like there is no end in sight.
Elementary Lack of Fairness
People are very sensitive to fairness, and can feel enormous stress and distress when treated unfairly, especially when the unfair treatment is egregious. Mask policies are literally imposing on some people so other people can feel safer – a grotesquely unequal treatment, that in order to help the emotional health of the scared-to-death-of-covid pro-maskers, everyone else’s mental & emotional health will be trampled on by forced masking. Moreover, mask mandates preferentially enshrines the political, moral, and ideological views and sensibilities of one segment of society without any justification.
Repeated Experience of “Losing” in Public Policy Decisions
The experience of losing again, and again, and again in substantial, significant public policy decisions is itself very distressing. This happens to be one of the more prominent animating forces that drove Trump’s voter base – that they felt they always lost again and again and again and again. Covid policy for a substantial portion of the population has been a series of devastating losses as practically every policy choice cuts against them.
Feeling That Other People Matter While I Don’t
This is a distinct distress in addition to the lack of fairness – that “I don’t matter”; this is amplified considerably when “other people matter”. This is what people who are systematically disregarded tend to feel, and it is very painful.
And this is especially pronounced in racial minorities who already feel this way from previous history — mostly white liberal elites are forcing their preferences on blacks and other minorities.
The Stress of Difficulty Communicating
The frustration that comes from difficulty communicating is underappreciated, and tends to leave people feeling annoyed, frustrated and stressed.
The Damage From Failed Communication
This particular harm also has another, more tangible dimension – often, people having a hard time communicating simply give up, and giving up is itself an added stress factor that leaves people frazzled. If you’re talking to your doctor and you “give up” instead of making sure you understood what he was trying to tell you – especially older people who psychologically tend to both give up faster and have more innate difficulty physically hearing to begin with – that could be a big problem.
The Distress of Constant Harassment
Mask mandates are a constant intrusion into people’s personal lives that leaves people feeling exasperated – “just leave me alone already” / “just let me live in peace”. It is a basic human need to not be constantly harassed by others.
Living In Constant State of Worry, Fear, and Anger
Knowing that you have to submit to the mask mandates in many places where you need to go leaves you always feeling a variety of negative and unhealthy emotions about it.
Saps the Joy From Many Different Activities
Take shopping, for instance. For many people, shopping is a leisure activity that can be an effective emotional detox from life stresses… but not when you have to wear a mask to do it.
Living In Perpetual Stress From Social Enforcers
Inevitably, people opposed to mask mandates will not be particularly zealous about following them to a “T”, whether it be letting the mask slide down your face, taking it off for a few minutes here and there, or just munching on a bag of peanuts for 3 hours. There is always a baseline stress of constantly having to be alert for the “mask police” (whether they are actual police or just really annoying Karens).
Public Humiliation
The aforementioned “mask police” are often extremely zealous – unhinged, really – a non-masking-compliant person getting dressed down in public is a common occurrence. Public humiliation can be a traumatic experience.
Emotional Abuse
Mask mandates leave many people feeling emotionally abused. This is both from the masking being forced upon people despite all the mental and emotional distress it causes – in other words, abuse – and from the constant manipulation that is characteristic of abusers that is part and parcel of mask mandates.
Bullying Plain and Simple
Mask mandates are forced coercion jammed down the throats of those who strongly resent them. This is vicious bullying. No one enjoys feeling bullied, or having someone else’s will imposed on them against their own will.
The Distress of Being Under the Control of Someone You Loathe
Think of it this way: Imagine two ppl vying for the same promotion who hate each others guts, and then the winner is made the boss of the loser. This is an added, separate affront to the loser. Same idea here – the anti- mask people are being specifically dictated to by the very opponents they despise, and on the very issue that they’re fighting over.
This isn’t just at a national level – this is more
I do not know about what were people thinking when they say "the mask are lesser of the two evils" compared to vaccines, praise Japan or China for masking their residents for 18 months and going and/or normalize it, and the fact that there are 60% about the vaccines and the real, deadliest culls are only 30% of the attention of truthers and pundits.
Listen.
I am the only person in Hong Kong or the 10 countries around me (yes, this includes the likes of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Thailand etc), that I believe, who lose their sanity outright for 18 month masking.
Whatever happened in Asia will make all the vaccination cry-outs look like trivial matters. You do not need vaccination passports to go into restaurants when the masks are already normalized for 18 straight months unfailingly.
Now you understand why I had to explain things in the most cynical extreme that realism could provide, because everything said in this article is my current state and will soon be yours even as YOU ARE LOCKED IN HOME -- the odds are simply not stacked in humanity's favor.
Facemasks Are Not a Mere “Inconvenience”
Article from site itself:
One of the most trenchant arguments made by proponents of forced masking is some variation of “it’s just an inconvenience”, so/and/or “why do you have to make such a big deal about it”. (To be clear, this is not a legitimate scientific or factual argument for the adoption of any policy, but that is not what this article is about.) I am largely going to avoid the issues unique to masking children – what is plainly institutionalized child abuse – and for people with disabilities or past trauma, as many of the harms inflicted by masks are readily apparent and easily articulable.
On the surface, this contention seems like a morally and factually compelling argument. After all, if masks had any meaningful efficacy, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile tradeoff to endure a little discomfort to reduce the far worse suffering and death that would otherwise be inflicted by covid?
Yet this argument – “what’s the big deal” – does not square with how many people experience masks and mask mandates, including practically everyone who disagrees with masking as a policy. It is undeniable that millions of people are considerably more tormented by facemasks than what we would expect is reasonable or even possible for something that is indeed merely an “inconvenience”. People generally do not profoundly suffer from trivialities.
In other words, clearly facemasks are a considerably greater burden for many people than how they superficially appear; and yet few people are able to work out for themselves what about them is so abusive or terrible. The goal of this article is to enumerate some of the myriad harms and emotional abuses inflicted by forced masking, specifically those that are difficult to articulate or identify the connection to masking. So what exactly is the big deal about wearing masks?
In a nutshell – as was just stated – mask wearing is to many people something that is enormously stressful, and something that evokes inordinately powerful negative emotions. This is simply the reality, irrespective of whether such feelings “make sense”.
Now, as a general rule, if someone feels powerfully about something, there’s a reason; or in other words, there is something that is provoking the strong emotions. And the source of these feelings does not have to be the thing that the feelings attach to. The only thing that matters is that the feelings exist, however misguided they may be.
This is not to say that the reality of feelings should be the dominant consideration above everything else. The current radical ‘social justice’ movement that has elevated one’s subjective “identity” as the defining characteristic of a person is the Reductio ad Absurdum of enshrining subjective feelings in place of objective reality itself.
What is true however is that the emotional distress and suffering of people is quite real. So even if you happen to be in favor of mask mandates and not at all bothered by mask wearing, that does not make the profoundly distressing experience of someone else any less real of an experience.
The following list is not exhaustive, just a collection of some of the factors that make mask wearing, especially forced masking, so distressing to many people.
A few important things to keep in mind:
Emotional Stresses of Mask Mandates
Deprivation of Personal Autonomy
Depriving someone of their personal autonomy is stressful and demeaning. This is amplified when it is about something that is emotionally fraught, subject to strong opinions and feelings, relates to morality/values, and/or is something that has an implication that you lack the capacity to look out for your own interest. Free will is a defining trait of being human, and the abrogation thereof is experienced as an assault on ones individuality.
A Sense of Helplessness
Being at the mercy of the arbitrary and capricious whims of others makes you feel a sense of helplessness, which is extremely stressful and grueling, and can eventually break a person mentally and emotionally, and is therefore a favored tactic used by tyrants to break the will of the population so that they are too broken to revolt (see Stalin’s reign of terror).
Invalidating Your Personal Identity
Masking is now – regardless of the factual merits – a political symbol in society. Being forced to mask is by definition being forced to yield in ones own actions – and worse, in ones public appearance – to your ideological and/or political opposition. Imagine if the government decided to make wearing a religious skullcap mandatory for everyone – you can make the same argument that is being made for masking – what’s the big deal, you barely notice it, etc – I am quite confident that atheists for instance would would feel very keenly the assault on their personal identity.
Assaulting Your Sense of Morality / Making You Feel Like You’re Immoral and Selfish
Mask mandates force people opposed to internalize that they are acting immorally and selfishly for two reasons. The first is that society is enshrining into law that how you act is immoral and selfish, which is a public declaration to the world that you are immoral and selfish. The second is that how you act outwardly always exerts influence in how you fell and identify internally, so constantly wearing a mask eats away at your internal convictions – even if you can withstand this, it creates some degree of cognitive dissonance internally. No one likes to feel like they are evil or selfish.
Deprives / Ruins Human Interactions
The quality and nature of social interactions is greatly reduced. Every interaction behind masks is fundamentally different. Interacting in this way can feel sad, despondent, isolating, cold, and/or cruel, among other things.
Over Time Changes Your Personality
Facemasks are a radical and unnatural impingement on normal mental and emotional functioning. Over time, this can change your personality – such as making you less social, less outgoing, more suspicious, decreased tendency or desire to be kind and so on.
Turns Other People Into Abusive Tyrants
This is meant to capture the phenomenon of a subset of people who have turned into cruel and vicious individuals, and abuse people whom they have power over.
A General Feeling of Being Trapped in a Nightmare
Many people feel a clear and distinct sense of being trapped in some sort of perverse nightmare as a result of covid policies, which is an extremely distressing experience, especially when there feels like there is no end in sight.
Elementary Lack of Fairness
People are very sensitive to fairness, and can feel enormous stress and distress when treated unfairly, especially when the unfair treatment is egregious. Mask policies are literally imposing on some people so other people can feel safer – a grotesquely unequal treatment, that in order to help the emotional health of the scared-to-death-of-covid pro-maskers, everyone else’s mental & emotional health will be trampled on by forced masking. Moreover, mask mandates preferentially enshrines the political, moral, and ideological views and sensibilities of one segment of society without any justification.
Repeated Experience of “Losing” in Public Policy Decisions
The experience of losing again, and again, and again in substantial, significant public policy decisions is itself very distressing. This happens to be one of the more prominent animating forces that drove Trump’s voter base – that they felt they always lost again and again and again and again. Covid policy for a substantial portion of the population has been a series of devastating losses as practically every policy choice cuts against them. Feeling That Other People Matter While I Don’t
This is a distinct distress in addition to the lack of fairness – that “I don’t matter”; this is amplified considerably when “other people matter”. This is what people who are systematically disregarded tend to feel, and it is very painful.
And this is especially pronounced in racial minorities who already feel this way from previous history — mostly white liberal elites are forcing their preferences on blacks and other minorities.
The Stress of Difficulty Communicating
The frustration that comes from difficulty communicating is underappreciated, and tends to leave people feeling annoyed, frustrated and stressed.
The Damage From Failed Communication
This particular harm also has another, more tangible dimension – often, people having a hard time communicating simply give up, and giving up is itself an added stress factor that leaves people frazzled. If you’re talking to your doctor and you “give up” instead of making sure you understood what he was trying to tell you – especially older people who psychologically tend to both give up faster and have more innate difficulty physically hearing to begin with – that could be a big problem.
The Distress of Constant Harassment
Mask mandates are a constant intrusion into people’s personal lives that leaves people feeling exasperated – “just leave me alone already” / “just let me live in peace”. It is a basic human need to not be constantly harassed by others.
Living In Constant State of Worry, Fear, and Anger
Knowing that you have to submit to the mask mandates in many places where you need to go leaves you always feeling a variety of negative and unhealthy emotions about it.
Saps the Joy From Many Different Activities
Take shopping, for instance. For many people, shopping is a leisure activity that can be an effective emotional detox from life stresses… but not when you have to wear a mask to do it.
Living In Perpetual Stress From Social Enforcers
Inevitably, people opposed to mask mandates will not be particularly zealous about following them to a “T”, whether it be letting the mask slide down your face, taking it off for a few minutes here and there, or just munching on a bag of peanuts for 3 hours. There is always a baseline stress of constantly having to be alert for the “mask police” (whether they are actual police or just really annoying Karens).
Public Humiliation
The aforementioned “mask police” are often extremely zealous – unhinged, really – a non-masking-compliant person getting dressed down in public is a common occurrence. Public humiliation can be a traumatic experience.
Emotional Abuse
Mask mandates leave many people feeling emotionally abused. This is both from the masking being forced upon people despite all the mental and emotional distress it causes – in other words, abuse – and from the constant manipulation that is characteristic of abusers that is part and parcel of mask mandates.
Bullying Plain and Simple
Mask mandates are forced coercion jammed down the throats of those who strongly resent them. This is vicious bullying. No one enjoys feeling bullied, or having someone else’s will imposed on them against their own will.
The Distress of Being Under the Control of Someone You Loathe
Think of it this way: Imagine two ppl vying for the same promotion who hate each others guts, and then the winner is made the boss of the loser. This is an added, separate affront to the loser. Same idea here – the anti- mask people are being specifically dictated to by the very opponents they despise, and on the very issue that they’re fighting over.
This isn’t just at a national level – this is more
usa is very easy to control. they are doing it RIGHT NOW lmao
they know all this...all according to plan ;)_
I do not know about what were people thinking when they say "the mask are lesser of the two evils" compared to vaccines, praise Japan or China for masking their residents for 18 months and going and/or normalize it, and the fact that there are 60% about the vaccines and the real, deadliest culls are only 30% of the attention of truthers and pundits.
Listen.
I am the only person in Hong Kong or the 10 countries around me (yes, this includes the likes of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Thailand etc), that I believe, who lose their sanity outright for 18 month masking.
Whatever happened in Asia will make all the vaccination cry-outs look like trivial matters. You do not need vaccination passports to go into restaurants when the masks are already normalized for 18 straight months unfailingly.
Now you understand why I had to explain things in the most cynical extreme that realism could provide, because everything said in this article is my current state and will soon be yours even as YOU ARE LOCKED IN HOME -- the odds are simply not stacked in humanity's favor.