Preventing the Exploitation of Activists’ Care

Abstract

Care exploitation is a pervasive yet undertheorized injustice that emerges in both our interpersonal and structural relationships. Among those that are particularly vulnerable to this injustice are activists, those invested in bringing about positive change precisely because of how deeply they care about a given cause. Care exploitation occurs when an individual with caring attitudes is called to aid in the flourishing of a subject (e.g., LGBTQ + rights, anti-racism, conservation) by another that presumes they will answer said call simply because they care. In this work I offer an account of what it takes to prevent care exploitation in the narrow context of activism. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young, I argue that we have a political responsibility to (at the very least) adopt a stance of solidarity with activists by virtue of our structural relationships with them. This demands two things of us: (i) being sensitive to activists’ well-being and (ii) supporting their capacity for self-authorship.

1 Introduction

Care exploitation is a pervasive yet undertheorized injustice that emerges in both our interpersonal and structural relationships. Among those that are particularly vulnerable to this injustice are activists, those invested in bringing about positive change precisely because of how deeply they care about a given cause and those most directly affected. This is reflected, for example, by the overwhelming representation of BIPOC, queer and trans*, young, and disabled folks and their kin in the movements for anti-racism, LGBTQIA + rights, environmental justice, and disability rights respectively; these communities bear the disproportionate burden of dismantling the oppression that has been foisted upon them.

I contend that understanding this injustice in terms of structural care exploitation can help us better understand how to prevent it moving forward. I am not suggesting that this is the only or best way to understand said injustice, merely that we can glean helpful insights by examining it through the lens of care exploitation. In focusing on activists here, I also do not mean to suggest either that they are the only ones affected, nor are they necessarily the most severely affected by structural care exploitation. Those in professions predicated upon caring are generally more vulnerable to having their care structurally exploited, including but not limited to: teachers, healthcare professionals, migrant care workers, and soldiers.¹ We ought to strive to prevent and alleviate care exploitation across all domains, but the normatively salient suggestions for how to actually achieve this are contextually sensitive. Each domain is deserving of close examination, and I adopt the narrower focus here as to not trivialize attention to each.

In order to figure out how to prevent exploiting the care of activists, we must first get clear on the injustice we’re attempting to avoid. In articulating the wrong and conditions of care exploitation, it will become apparent that respect is integral to protecting against it in our interpersonal and structural relationships. Respecting caring individuals demands two things of us: (i) being sensitive to their well-being and (ii) supporting their capacity for self-authorship. I’ll first explain these two elements of respect in greater detail, and how they naturally follow from my account of care exploitation. From here I’ll examine what this requires of us – what our political responsibilities are – by virtue of our structural relationships with activists.

2 The Wrong and Conditions of Care Exploitation

To exploit one’s care is to undermine their dignity by unfairly taking advantage of their vulnerability that arises from caring about (rather than caring for) the subject (McKittrick-Sweitzer 2023). Generally speaking, to care for some thing or being (a subject) is to perform actions that tend to, nurture, or help it thrive. To care about some subject is to pay attention to, worry about, and become invested in its well-being. In other words, to care for is a matter of actions while to care about is a matter of mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, or feelings) (Collins 2015, 49). To care about a subject is to have a belief about the status of their flourishing, a desire to support them in flourishing, and an awareness of the way that “[one’s] own needs, desires, and interests may color, obscure, or deflect those of the individual cared for” paired with an effort to mitigate the effects that our perspective may have upon their flourishing (Kittay 2011, 615).² While caring about a subject attentively involves appropriately privileging the perspective of the other, one can still care about another while muddling perspectives. This way of caring about is not to be confused with pity – a closely related but distinct belief-desire pair. While pity and caring about have beliefs about another’s flourishing in common, pity’s desire to aid arises from problematically self-interested motivations. One that pities holds that they know what is best for another, privileging their own perspective, and not that of the individual they desire to aid. This is conceptually related to the distinction between solidarity and charity.

Care exploitation occurs when one calls a caring individual to aid in the flourishing of a subject – a being, thing, or project, broadly construed – with the presumption that they will answer said call simply because they care.³ Elsewhere (McKittrick-Sweitzer 2023), I have offered a formal characterization of care exploitation, which occurs when the following conditions obtain:

• 1. One party, A, calls another party, B, to aid. In issuing the call, A fails to be open to the possibility that B will choose to do otherwise. This call can be actively or passively made.

• 2. The specific call made by A is for B to aid in the flourishing of another person or project, and this call is made because B has the general disposition to care about, or cares about the subject of the call in particular.

• 3. A expects a disproportionate benefit from the call for B’s aid, either to A or someone/something A is responsible for.

• 4. B will likely accept the call, due to their caring nature. This is either because B has the general disposition to care about or cares about the flourishing of the call’s subject (which is the source of B’s vulnerability).

• 5. B answers A’s call to aid.

I have argued elsewhere that these conditions are met in interpersonal, structural, and overlapping cases; but how we understand the parties (whether individuals or collectives) shifts (McKittrick-Sweitzer 2021). I use “call to aid” – introduced in the first necessary condition – as a technical term, referring to only those instances where one makes this problematic presumption and it shapes their actions in some way. A call to aid is morally objectionable and ultimately exploitative because the motivating presumption is disrespectful. The presumption is disrespectful – undermining the caring individual’s dignity – by not being open to their choosing to do otherwise, by failing to recognize them as having the capacity for exercising their own agency.^4,5 Calls are distinct from simply asking another if they’d be willing to do something; when one simply asks, one is open to the possibility that the caring individual may choose to do otherwise. This is not to say that the individual called to aid cannot or does not ultimately consent to caring; in answering a call to aid they do exercise their own agency in choosing to care for the subject.

Here a familiar example – setting aside activists for a moment – may be helpful for understanding the first condition and its relationship to the second. Consider a department chair that is tasked with finding someone to do some service, and approaches a particular junior faculty member because they (the junior faculty member) care about the flourishing of undergraduate students.⁶ The chair could enter this exchange in two distinct ways: either the chair presumes the faculty member will do the service because they care about their students and fails to openly consider that they may choose to do otherwise (perhaps because they have other priorities or obligations), or the chair is open to the possibility that the faculty member will say no (i.e., does not presume ascension because of their caring nature) and that they (the chair) will need to approach other faculty or take on the service themself.⁷ The former – and not the latter – amounts to issuing a call to aid. One may be issuing a call to aid even if it is posed as a question, masquerading as an opportunity for legitimate deliberation.

One may be concerned that what makes this call to aid problematic is not the mere presence of a disrespectful presumption, as I’ve argued; rather, it is the chair utilizing the power that arises from their social role to exert control over the junior faculty member. I willingly acknowledge that the power dynamics between them introduces complexity, and the junior faculty member may feel they must comply due to precarity. But the claim that calls to aid are morally problematic simply because they are conceptually reducible to power differentials derived from social roles ought to be resisted.

Consider an alternative example: a peer that cares less about student flourishing enters an exchange with the same caring junior faculty member regarding the same service. The peer could enter the exchange in the same two distinct ways as the department chair. I maintain that if the peer presumes the caring faculty member will not choose to do otherwise because they care, the peer is making a disrespectful presumption and attempting to take advantage of the faculty member’s vulnerability arising from caring about the students. Because the peer aims to gain a disproportionate benefit from the faculty member’s service by issuing this call (i.e., shirking one’s own responsibilities to students) – even in the absence of having greater power – this is an attempt to exploit the faculty member’s care. If the faculty member chooses to care for the students via service – even while recognizing they’re being exploited by their chair or peer – then care exploitation has happened. The presence and wrong of care exploitation is not determined by whether they lack relative power by virtue of their social role, it is determined by the presence of a presumptive call to aid. This is a distinctive wrong that cannot be captured by other theories of exploitation taken independently (McKittrick-Sweitzer 2023). If they refuse, do not actually care, or the benefit gained by the individual issuing the call to aid is not disproportionate (failing to satisfy the fifth, fourth, or third condition respectively), care exploitation has been merely attempted but not occurred.⁸

Regarding the fourth condition, the fact that the individual being exploited cares about the subject is what makes them particularly vulnerable – by virtue of caring, they experience the vulnerability of openness to being affected by another. This openness makes it possible to both be good at caring about (i.e., receptive to the needs of another), and be taken advantage of. While I remain neutral as to whether care is at the core of morality or the ultimate solution to our socio-political problems, I do follow others in the care ethics tradition by understanding care as a virtue. I similarly take vulnerability as openness to be a virtue: it “tends to enable its bearer to make the right decisions and to perform good actions…” and openness “is conducive to or partly constitutes living a good life” (Tessman 2005, 162). Unfortunately, vulnerability as openness is a double-edged sword, or as Lisa Tessman puts it, a burdened virtue. Burdened virtues are those “virtues that have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer’s own flourishing” (Tessman 2005, 4). By being open, a caring individual can have their own flourishing strongly negatively impacted as a result of having their dignity undermined – of having their care, which openness is essential to, exploited. Openness makes a caring individual susceptible to exploitation precisely because one is invested in the flourishing of another – affected by another – and so feels the need to aid in their flourishing (McKittrick-Sweitzer 2023).

This characterization of the wrong and conditions of care exploitation draws together elements from three dominant accounts of interpersonal exploitation that are otherwise independently incapable of capturing the phenomenon I highlight here. These theories are Robert Goodin’s (1985) vulnerability account, Ruth Sample’s (2003) Kantian account, and Alan Wertheimer’s (1996) maldistribution account.⁹ My articulation of care exploitation draws on Sample’s Kantian account insofar as it highlights that one undermines the caring individual’s dignity by simply assuming they will take care of the subject requiring aid, foreclosing on the possibility that they will choose to do otherwise. And it draws on Goodin’s vulnerability account by recognizing that what makes it possible for the caring individual’s dignity to be undermined is their vulnerability arising from care, making them susceptible to answering calls to aid. It does this, however, while reconceptualizing vulnerability in a way that is not necessarily as a weakness or lack. Importantly, identifying one’s taking advantage of another’s vulnerability as what undermines their dignity allows for the possibility of one consenting to situations in which they will have their vulnerabilities exploited. This would not be plausible if we thought of care exploitation in purely Kantian terms.¹⁰ But it’s important to recognize that caring individuals often consent to providing care, even when they know they’re ultimately being exploited. This is because they hold the flourishing of the subject to be independently valuable, or see one’s choice to care (regardless of circumstances) as a matter of self-authorship.

Paired with these elements from the vulnerability and Kantian accounts, the maldistribution account indicates another dimension of care exploitation that is unfair and an implication of such disrespect: A’s benefiting from the disproportionate burden of caring falling upon B (i.e., the third condition; McKittrick-Sweitzer 2023). The benefit A derives from issuing a call to aid can be from either avoiding a duty or responsibility to another A would otherwise have to take up (e.g., the department chair or peer mentioned above), or simply extracting care that A personally desires but is not necessary to support their flourishing. Here one might imagine a parent that presumes absolute deference from their caring child so that the parent’s preferences are prioritized, but this hardly amounts to a duty for either.

Given this, the solution may seem obvious: namely, to prevent care exploitation, we should not undermine people’s dignity by taking advantage of their vulnerability arising from caring. But this leaves quite a bit up to interpretation; we’re left with little guidance on what it would actually mean to respect caring individuals, protecting against their being exploited. I will turn to offering my positive account shortly, but before doing so, I’d like to dispel an oft encountered objection: care exploitation isn’t actually an injustice; issuing a call is not exploitative simply because “they’re going to do it anyway.” Issuing a call – making the presumption the caring individual will answer it, providing aid – cannot be morally problematic because they would have chosen to care for the subject, regardless of the presence of a presumption. Simply put, the presence of consent alleviates any concern about this being an injustice.

But what those making this objection fail to appreciate is that we often have good reason to act in ways that are ultimately to our detriment, even when that means that we’re treated unjustly. Activists, for example, continue to face increasing and unreasonable demands to achieve social change including (but not limited to) threats to their physical and mental well-being. One reason they might choose to bear these costs is because of the value they place on being a caring individual – caring may be central to their identity and the type of person they aspire to be. Another reason might be that they see themselves as committed to preventing further injustices. That does not mean, however, that their consent indicates the absence of an injustice or makes the injustice excusable.

It means that if individuals are willing to make sacrifices for a cause or movement, those sacrifices ought not to be amplified by additionally undermining their dignity. And the presumption that one will answer a call does this by failing to recognize that one’s decision to take on the costs affiliated with caring are often a matter of self-authorship – not a part of one’s story to be written in by someone else.

This is not to say, however, that an activist that chooses to care because they see themselves as merely instrumentally valuable to achieving the ends of others – failing to recognize their own inherent moral worth and capacity for self-authorship – is then deserving of having their care exploited. Simply because they don’t make choices from a place of self-authorship does not mean it is permissible to issue a call, presuming what they will choose to do. To do so is to fail to give them the space to consider whether this is really what they ought to do given their own interests and values. Just because one does not see themselves as deserving of dignity does not mean that they aren’t.

With this in mind, I now turn to offering my positive account of what it takes to prevent the injustice of care exploitation in the context of activism. Respect is integral to protecting against care exploitation in our interpersonal and structural relationships, and respecting caring individuals demands two things of us: (i) being sensitive to their well-being and (ii) supporting their capacity for self-authorship. I’ll first explain these two elements of respect in greater detail, and how they naturally follow from my account of care exploitation. From here I’ll examine what this requires of us – what our political responsibilities are – by virtue of our structural relationships with activists.

3 The Elements of Respect: Well-Being and Self-Authorship

Better understanding the elements of respect can offer us more tangible guidance in preventing care exploitation. The first demand – the necessary sensitivity¹¹ to well-being of those you are in relationships with – follows from the Kantian, vulnerability, and maldistribution aspects (addressed earlier) of care exploitation, albeit in different ways. It follows from the Kantian aspect insofar as maintaining some minimal threshold is required for living a dignified life. To treat someone in such a way that would lead to a dip below this threshold would be to undermine their dignity, to disrespect them. And the need to be sensitive to well-being follows from recognizing vulnerability as what makes disrespect possible because the openness of a caring individual makes it possible for their flourishing to be strongly negatively impacted. This is precisely why I identify the openness of caring about others as a burdened virtue. While the connection is more tenuous, this first demand is also relevant to avoiding gaining benefits from disproportionate burdens borne by another. If one party is experiencing significant negative impacts upon their well-being while in a relationship with another who is not, it may warn us that maldistribution is occurring. While not every imbalance in well-being necessarily indicates that an injustice is present, it remains the case that we ought to be sensitive to and not actively undermine the well-being of another to avoid disrespect.

Rather than defending a particular theory of well-being, I leave it open for the reader to substitute in their preferred view when determining what one ought to do.¹² This is primarily because my theory is political in nature, aimed to provide guidance to a pluralistic audience of individuals that hold reasonably¹³ different conceptions of value (which informs one’s conception of well-being). It is important that my view be political because both structural and interpersonal care exploitation – and care generally – occurs in relationships between individuals that hold reasonably different conceptions of value. I now turn to explaining the importance of self-authorship to preventing the injustice of care exploitation. Following this, attention will be shifted to thinking more concretely about how one ought to act.

3.1 The Importance of Self-Authorship

Self-authorship involves making authentic choices that reflect one’s preferences, “arising from [their] decision to be a certain way, to have certain aspirations, and to undertake certain projects – all of which are up to [them] to determine” (Hampton 1993, 56). These choices are “genuinely subjectively defined (i.e., defined by the subject), and not by [someone] other than the subject” (Hampton 1993, 56). When one is engaging in self-authorship, they are recognizing their own inherent moral value, recognizing that they are worthy of dignity and respect. In this way, self-authorship naturally follows from the Kantian element of my account of care exploitation.

Because self-authorship is an exercise in recognizing oneself as worthy of dignity and respect, it might be thought to be at odds with undermining one’s well-being (where well-being is necessary for living a dignified life). Hampton argues that “it is a necessary condition of a preference’s being self-authored that its content not conflict with what is required to meet that person’s objective needs as a human being” (Hampton 1993, 57). This strikes me as far too restrictive of which preferences or choices count as self-authored. One just needs to look at the efforts of women of color that consistently advocate for their communities from a place of self-authorship – and ultimately to the benefit of everyone – while unavoidably facing threats of violence to see that choosing to care can be at odds with also ensuring well-being is not undermined. There are often cases, however, when one is faced with a limited range of choices coherent with their values, each of which is also at odds with other elements of one’s flourishing.¹⁴

One may also be concerned that self-authorship is conceptually at odds with individuals’ interconnectedness with, dependency upon, and vulnerability to one another that care theory has highlighted. But, self-authorship can still be exercised in conditions where one’s choices are shaped or limited by one’s relationships with others. The presence of connection does not demand the complete erasure of one’s self or entail the inability to make a choice shaped by one’s own preferences.

In order to respect someone’s capacity for self-authorship, conditions must be created where they can exercise their ability to make authentic and autonomous choices. What is required to create these conditions will depend on whether the caring individual recognizes themselves as worthy of respect. If they do, all that is required is not making presumptions about whether they will answer one’s call, and accepting their choice – not attempting to write their story in the way that would best suit the individual issuing a call. This would be what’s called for in the case of those activists where their caring has been either authentically chosen as central to their identity and the type of person they aspire to be, or they see themselves as committed to preventing further injustices.

Creating conditions of self-authorship requires more in the case of a person that chooses to care, taking up activism, because they either see themselves as merely instrumentally valuable to achieving the ends of others – failing to recognize their own inherent moral worth – or, their caring has been cultivated solely because of unjustly imposed norms. These norms might be imposed because of any number of unjust expectations tied to social identities, including but certainly not limited to race, gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation or ability status. In addition to not making presumptions and accepting their choice, one ought to ensure (to the best of one’s ability) that the situation in which the activist is making a choice is conducive to self-authorship. This means affirming that one sees them as deserving of respect (i.e., as deserving of being treated with dignity).¹⁵ It also means helping to facilitate a deliberative process, where they see that they do, in fact, have a choice in the matter. To simply accept their choice (and not facilitate deliberation) when it is rooted in a problematic self-valuation can hardly be said to be enough for respecting the capacity of self-authorship if the caring individual fails to recognize they have this valuable capacity in the first place. This is analogous to how one cannot be said to respect another when they do not protect against undermining their well-being.

In preventing care exploitation, both ensuring that caring individuals’ well-being is not undermined and respecting their self-authorship are required. To fail to do either of these would be to disrespect them. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young, I now turn to considering what it would mean to respect the activists one has structural relationships with and what one’s political responsibilities might be.

4 Our Structural Relationships with Activists

Structural relationships obtain between people that are socially connected through their participation in institutions. And each of us has political responsibilities¹⁶ (distinct from personal responsibilities) by virtue of our social connections arising from “belonging together with others in a system of interdependent processes of cooperation and competition through which we seek benefits and aim to realize projects” (Young 2011, 105). In this system, we are each entitled to be treated with dignity and others “legitimately make claims of justice on us,” making us collectively responsible for positively transforming the structural processes with unjust outcomes (Young 2011, 105). But the legitimate claims made upon us and that we can make upon others are varied, with our political responsibilities being contingent upon how power or privilege have influenced our participation in background conditions and structures that foster injustices.¹⁷ Looking at the way activists have their care exploited can helpfully illustrate this.

Activists work tirelessly to reveal and undermine unjust institutions and policies because they care deeply about those affected; they have a desire to support the oppressed in flourishing, which requires dismantling the very systems that perpetuate the oppression.¹⁸ This is explicitly found, for example, in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which states “We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise. We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” (Black Lives Matter) The LANDBACK Manifesto offers another clear statement: “It is bringing our People with us as we move towards liberation and embodied sovereignty through an organizing, political and narrative framework… It is recognizing that our struggle is interconnected with the struggles of all oppressed Peoples” (LANDBACK). And activists do this in spite of serious threats to their well-being, including but not limited to the very real danger of violence – often at the hands of the state – and exhaustion.¹⁹ These burdens are disproportionately borne by activists because of the failure of others to appreciate the urgency, scope, and demands of the work required to undo injustices that ultimately affect us all.²⁰

Those that fail to appreciate these burdens and take up the work alongside them are exploiting the care of activists.²¹ They are unfairly gaining advantage at the cost of activists’ dignity when presuming activists can and will do all that is required to achieve justice (because activists are the ones that care). We all participate in the structures and background conditions that have permitted both the injustices activists seek to remedy and the care exploitation that they face, but we do so in different ways.

Some of us have little choice in how we participate, doing so merely by paying mandatory taxes that fund racist public institutions, for example, without the time and resources (for reasons beyond one’s control) to transform the structures or reshape the background conditions with others.²² Perhaps this is because one cannot, or can just barely, achieve a minimally sufficient level of well-being for oneself and those one is personally responsible for. In this case, what one is able to do to satisfy one’s political responsibilities will be limited in ways that others are not.

Others, however, have greater political responsibility. This comes with having the time or resources to work with others more substantively for just outcomes once one becomes aware of injustices and the structural care exploitation of activists fighting them; willful ignorance or having one thought too few is not an excusing condition (Driver 2020). This is because one can participate in these structures in such a way that they can advocate for dignity rather than exploitation.

Of those with greater political responsibility, there are some that are uniquely positioned, with the power to independently – or in coordination with a small number of other powerful individuals – shape structures (e.g., U.S. President, the incredibly wealthy). These individuals will often bear the most responsibility because of their increased capability for spreading awareness or making substantive structural changes that would alleviate both the injustices that activists protest and the injustice of exploiting activists’ care. Legitimate claims upon the most powerful are often compounded by their either disproportionately benefiting from past injustices or being identifiably personally responsible for certain unjust outcomes. For example, an elected official that fails to appreciate the exhausting grassroots voter registration efforts that (in part) helped them secure their position of power.

Regardless of one’s degree of political responsibility, the baseline is the same: we must move into a stance of solidarity with those subjected to care exploitation.²³ Solidarity, as Young puts it, is “a relationship among separate and dissimilar actors who decide to stand together for one another” (Young 2011, 120).²⁴ Importantly, solidarity is not the same as charity, which is “usually one-sided” and focused on “working for” rather than “working with” those who suffer injustices (Scholz 2008, 93). Charity also presupposes what is best for the individuals or community in need, advancing the conception of well-being held by the charitable individuals. Charity might be an appropriate response to other injustices that victimize those that are typically unable to give input on how they can best be helped. One might think that children, those that have severe cognitive disabilities, nonhuman animals, or even ecosystems may count as appropriate candidates for charity. I am skeptical, however, that the injustice of domination is avoidable when one fails to decenter one’s own comprehensive conception of well-being in such a way that is at least consistent with what it might take for the victim to flourish. Solidarity, on the other hand, “demands a non-arrogant perception of the other’s needs as we listen and ask what we can do” (Scholz 2008, 94).²⁵

5 Why Solidarity?

The reader might wonder why they ought to adopt a stance of solidarity with activists, given this characterization. For one, it may seem unreasonable to expect activists to reciprocally take up a stance of solidarity with someone not subjected to similarly grave injustices; activists are, after all, preoccupied with combatting the most pressing injustices of our time. Furthermore, a single person simply cannot prevent structural injustices; put differently, whether any particular individual moves into a stance of solidarity will have little effect on the overall success of the movement. Here it should be clarified that adopting a stance of solidarity means that one is trying to join with others to achieve the collective goal of bringing about justice. And when we are in solidarity with and for one another, it is to advance our mutual interest to participate in structures that are just, promoting rather than impeding our legitimate claims against one another.

So, when one adopts a stance of solidarity with activists, they are positioning themselves to promote the activists’ entitlements and do their part to prevent injustice.²⁶ Doing this will often mean joining alongside activists in their work, so that the burdens borne can be more justly distributed. Reciprocity of this stance of solidarity between activists and those joining alongside them who are subjected to other injustices may be unique to this context. In other contexts, reciprocity may merely be an aspirational ideal. For example, we might imagine public schoolteachers (who are care exploited) ideally adopting a stance of solidarity with those that have more power or privilege, but thinking reciprocal solidarity needn’t be present for the more narrow injustice of care exploitation. But in the case of activists, given that the reason for their care exploitation is the alleviation of other injustices, reciprocal solidarity is necessary to collectively address all forms of injustice.²⁷

Caring about others is ultimately at the heart of solidarity; we are required to have a belief about the status of their well-being, and a desire to help them flourish while privileging their perspective.^28,29 It shouldn’t be surprising that solidarity is the baseline of our political responsibility for care exploitation, given that alleviating care exploitation requires being attentive to the well-being and supporting the self-authorship of those we are in solidarity with.³⁰ How much we ought to do to be in solidarity with those subjected to injustices is what increases with the degree of our political responsibility.

For those that are greatly constrained in their interactions with the structures, one’s political responsibilities are relatively limited. Adopting a stance of solidarity would amount to little more than respecting activists’ self-authorship by simply appreciating that they take on these risks from a place of care and, when possible, using one’s vote at the ballot box to support policies that do not undermine their well-being as past policies have. This would mean listening to activists and appreciating their perspective on what work is required to alleviate the injustices they are immediately involved in undoing, not merely advancing what one independently thinks is in their best interest. Importantly, it costs nothing to recognize that others are deserving of dignity.

For those with greater political responsibilities, there are a wide range of possibilities for what one might do in addition to appreciation and voting, which will be contingent upon which responsibilities are the most pressing in the movements social justice activists are involved in; more equitably sharing this work will mitigate care exploitation by ensuring that advantages gained are not unfair. Additionally, if one has the privilege of occupying a space where one can appropriately raise awareness of the systemic mistreatment of activists, one should. There are nearly limitless injustices we might be in solidarity with the subjects of, and we have finite time and energy, but we must do what we can with at least some of them. My suggestions here are intended for those that are politically (and not personally) responsible for care exploitation and interested in the cause, or for those that have substantially benefited from or clearly caused past care exploitation. So maybe care exploitation is not the cause one focuses the bulk of one’s attention towards in meeting the legitimate claims that others have upon them (if one is only politically responsible). This strikes me as fine if one meets the baseline requirement of adopting a stance of solidarity, ensuring that one is doing what one can to participate in reforming structures so that they do not undermine the dignity of those that one has structural relationships with. Whatever measures one takes, it should be for the right kinds of reasons: to promote respecting activists, and not merely to improve conditions to be more tolerable. It’s not difficult to imagine small gains in well-being that are still paired with problematic calls to aid, and ultimately fail to truly respect them.

It should be noted that activists also have political responsibility deriving from their structural position, just like everyone else. This is acceptable in part because a Youngian account of political responsibility for structural injustice doesn’t entail blame or guilt. Activists, like all other politically responsible people, contribute to the unjust structures’ production and perpetuation through their participation in the background conditions. While they are often greatly constrained in how they can be in solidarity with each other, they are uniquely positioned to give those outside of their movements insight into how to best support them, which is central to ensuring they are treated with dignity.³¹

In short, we have a political responsibility to – at the very least – adopt a stance of solidarity with those we are in structural relationships with that are vulnerable to care exploitation. Adopting this stance positions us to participate in the collective project of ensuring just entitlements, both respecting activists’ capacity for self-authorship and exercising a sensitivity to activists’ well-being.

At some point, someone might feel that something has got to give. If it means exploiting others to shift burdens away from oneself, that may not seem problematic given the circumstances. The fact that injustice and exploitation are so pervasive admittedly makes it difficult to be in solidarity with activists as the victims of care exploitation, to ensure well-being is not undermined and that the capacity for self-authorship is supported. Although it’s difficult, we must remember what solidarity essentially is: “to work together to improve the state of well-being [for ourselves] and/or others…” and not accept “the past as determining the present and the future” but instead taking our existing social structures and relations “as possibilities… things [that] can be improved” (Young 2011, 120; emphasis original).

If anything ultimately has got to give, it ought not to be our respect for one another, but instead the social structures that make us feel as if that is our only option. Here I’ve articulated the responsibilities that we have to prevent structural care exploitation, to avoid undermining the dignity of activists as caring individuals: being sensitive to their well-being and supporting their capacity for self-authorship. In our structural relationships this requires – at a minimum – adopting a stance of solidarity with one another, positioning ourselves to engage in the collective project of alleviating injustice by ensuring the just entitlements of those we are socially connected to.