Gendering Surveillance Theory: Lessons from the eGirls Project Valerie Steeves Jane Bailey Surveillance & Society Conference 25 April 2014

Laura Mulvey

radical

Hollywood

objectified

women

to be looked at

subjectivizing men

male gaze

Michele White

online social media

disruptive

“to-be-looked-atness”

alternatives to discriminatory stereotypes Senft Dixon-Scott

transgress socially-imposed modesty norms Koskela

feminist critical race queer theory

in/visibility objectification otherized identities

watched intelligible

doing surveillance studies

gender sexual identity intersections

race Aboriginality

watched

heightened state and institutional monitoring

path-breaking

panoptic

empowered few

objectified many

Brighenti

spectrum of visibility

multi-directional

see be seen

interpersonal governmental/institutional

bedroom culture

self representation

producers

panoptic

synoptic

interpersonal watching

surveillance studies

power relations

individual rights and liberties

otherized

non-institutional

discriminatory myths & attitudes

de-liberating

gendering of surveillance studies

“artificially abstract bodies, identities, and interactions from social contexts in ways that both obscure and aggravate gender and other social inequalities” Monahan, 2009, 287

super visible

normalized

panoptic synoptic interpersonal watching

surveillant forces

rupture

Mulvey

body

replicated & amplified

commercial surveillance

family member and peer surveillance

visual nature

bedroom culture

permeated

online performances

interaction of panoptic and synoptic gazes

mainstream stereotypes

commercial

panoptic and synoptic merge

razor thin

the slut line

“more girls everywhere trying to be like the prettiest girls on magazines and stuff”

“It’ll make you feel like crap. It’s like, just again setting in, why can’t I look like that? Why can’t I be like that? Why don’t I have these friends? Why am I not popular? [It] just drains everybody”

“You’re like, oh man, I don’t look like that, um, but I could some day you know, but you just, you just don’t right now. So you might get down on yourself because of that”

“change my body”

“I think social media is great at giving girls this fantasy world. But at the same time, I think it’s also really easy to sort of make themselves feel really bad about themselves”

“I used to think, oh cool, I got 10 likes, and then you look at girls who look revealing and they have 50 [from guys]. And you’re like, oh, I wonder why…”

“confidence”

“They’re going to get feedback like, ‘Wow, you’re hot’. Definitely from guys. ‘Wow,you’re sexy!’ ‘Damn, what I would do if I as here,’ and, like, all that kind of stuff”

“And from girls, you’re going to get, um … from their best friends, probably, ‘Oh my God, you look gorgeous! You look so skinny!’”

“And you’re going to get, from girls that don’t like her, ‘Wow, you’re a slut!’, you know, like, ‘You’re nothing but a whore!’, like, ‘Put some clothes on!’”

“A girl, let’s say she’s, I don’t know, with a bunch of guys in a sexual pose, or … has tons of booze around her, or something”

“Someone will write a comment that will be, like, kind of subtle but showing that it’s inappropriate”

“And a lot of people will join in, and you can get, like, up to 75 comments and everyone’s joining in and fighting”

“Guys can get away with murder”

“You’re fat. You make me look good.”