Dreams of Control at a Distance: Gender, Surveillance, and Social Control

Abstract

Modern surveillance systems operate upon masculine logics of disembodied control at a distance. As such, they artificially abstract bodies, identities, and interactions from social contexts in ways that both obscure and aggravate gender and other social inequalities. This article explores the gender dimensions of surveillance systems in several public domains: welfare, healthcare, and transportation. By exposing the dominant rationalities of such systems and critiquing the discourses that support them, one can challenge the supposed neutrality of such technologies and question the power relations to which they give rise. The goal of this article, therefore, is to introduce a new line of inquiry into gender and surveillance, one that perceives surveillance as operating on the level of abstraction but with embodied effects for women and men.

Humor at the Airport? Visualization, Exposure, and Laughter in the “War on Terror”

“…This puts considerable emphasis on questions of agency and institutional constraints. When, as Harrington () reports, images from body scanners at US airports reinforced “all the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size [which] thrived on our secure government radio channels,” this in fact falls well in line with the argument that “women, minorities, and the poor tend to be subjected to greater transportation burdens than their male, White, and relatively affluent counterparts” (Monahan :298). How, then, can we explain the rather benign practices of joking we encountered at Hamburg airport, where fun was not primarily made of passengers, but where humor resulted from social interaction across the power gap?…”

“…Yet, in a move of seeing/not seeing, the specter of the flesh overshadows the scenery of the security checkpoint, as “ disappeared elements haunt the stabilization of the setting and remain thus somehow present ” (Bellanova and González Fuster :204; emphasis in original). Introducing a matchstick figure in order to conceal the original image of the “naked” body has been a crafty move to resolve a number of legal issues related to privacy and maybe even possesses the potential to disrupt the “logics of disembodied control at a distance” (Monahan :287) that are so inherent to modern surveillance measures and that enabled security officers in the United States to (secretly) make fun of passengers over their secured radio channel. Indeed, as Harrington () writes, “many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display.” Such depiction of the human body had been erased from the machines at Hamburg airport—but arguably, a smiling abstraction has nevertheless failed to resolve the unease created by the machine gaze; the anxiety of the virtual strip; the unspoken evaluation of what is hidden beneath the clothing; and the focus on the corporeal, fleshly body, that otherwise would only be revealed in situations of utmost intimacy.

A passenger steps out of the scanner and looks puzzled at the green “OK” symbol on the screen: “I can't see anything!” The security officer replies: “That's because everything was OK.” The passenger laughs nervously and says: “Oh, and I thought one could see the whole body.” (Field Journal, June 8, 2011)

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The End of the Line

“…Feminist scholars writing about the relationship between technology and gender have noted that there is a complicated and intimate connection between the two which is reflected in both the development and utilization of most technologies (Terry and Calvert 1997;Johnson 2006;Rosser 2006;Monahan 2009), with many viewing the relationship as 'mutually constitutive' (Wajcman 2004: 8).…”

“…Kleiman's piece suggests that the use of this technology has unique and complex meanings for female passengers that need to be explored. Here it is important to note that, while scholars have only recently begun the task of examining the gender dimensions of airport security technologies, such as full-body scanners, feminist scholars have long been exploring the connections between technology and gender (Rakow 1988;Terry and Calvert 1997;Wajcman 2004;Johnson 2006;Rosser 2006;Monahan 2009). This literature suggests that it is of vital importance that the links between gender and technology be brought to light and fully assessed, particularly in a society that has increasingly come to rely on technologies as a part of everyday life.…”

‘Abnormal’ Bodies on the Borders of Inclusion: Biopolitics and the Paradox of Disability Surveillance

“…Surveillance Studies has made significant contributions to discussions on human rights by documenting practices of discrimination based on characteristics such as race (Poudrier 2003;Glover 2008Glover , 2009Browne 2012), gender (Monahan 2009;Koskela 2012), and class (Gilliom 2001;Maki 2011). Yet surveillance practices associated with the embodiment of impairment and the experience of disability have been largely ignored.…”