2 ms·
I’ll Be Watching You: NSA Surveillance and the Male Gaze
- mjfl 13y agoI think there is a fundamental difference between the "male gaze" evaluating and "objectifying" females and the "Sauron's eye" of digital surveillance these days. Sure, men may make you uncomfortable, pay you less, and make your overall self-esteem go down, and that's an injustice, but the other knows, or can know, everything about you. Every out-of-line or could-be-racist comment that you have ever made, any weird porn site you accidentally stumbled upon one day, every angry message you have sent to an ex, any "private" confession you have made on the internet, everyone you care about, everything that you like or don't like, your political and religious beliefs, can be pulled from these databases and used against you. And that is something that I don't think the "male gaze" can do. I will also say that I was not terribly surprised either. Neither were a lot of people. How could anyone believe their Facebook accounts would be kept private after reading Mark Zuckerberg's chat messages with his friends? ("They trust me, dumbfucks"). I don't know how anyone believes what they say on the internet is private or "anonymous", that is just so naive. But that doesn't make it right to allow it to happen if we know about it.