#gws302

Key word/phrase: Security or Surveillance?  

I choose this phrase to represent the unit because I wanted to reflect on the surveillance of transgender and black and brown bodies through discriminatory practices.  In class we discussed the Toby Beauchamp article. The author wrote, "Here transgender and gender-nonconforming bodies are bound up in surveillance practices that are intimately tied to state security, nationalism and the “us/them,” “either/or” rhetoric that underpins U.S. military and government constructions of safety.” Beauchamp is explaining the reason for heightened surveillance of certain bodies post-9/11 and how it is rooted in creating bodies that are viewed as less than the white ideal. We talked in class about how TSA security when using scanners assigns a gender to the traveler based on their outward appearance. This practice leads to the practice of “going stealth” where trans folks feel forced to conceal their chosen gender identity in order to pass. I thought it was most interesting that the TSA video we watched in class wanted to appear compassionate and inclusive by claiming to offer service for trans individuals to feel safer during security clearances but would likely not have a trans person on staff in the first please. We then talked about how in terms of disposability, how surveillance can render a body as disposable. This made me think about emotional surveillance and the suspect worker. If marginalized bodies are constantly being watched or subjected to higher levels of surveillance, such as TSA hair pat downs and unnecessary searches, it assumes that they're bodies are inherently more dangerous than what has been deemed the normative white body. To explain it simply, it's the idea that these bodies need to be searched because they pose a threat and are therefore disposable. I thought it was really interesting how big companies like Nike are wanting to create products marketed towards Muslim women that preach inclusion and innovation when culturally they’re still experiencing racism and discrimination. The Kumar article we read stated,"Increasing Muslim representation is not just an ineffective strategy for fighting Islamophobia, but a dangerous one.”

Toby Beauchamp. 2009. “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and

In today’s assignment I will be talking about “The Muslim Consumer Market”.  Muslim Consumer market according to Rashmee Kumar article is an ideology of marketing Muslim women by big corporations like Marcy’s selling hijab for Muslim women to wear.  Why is this important? This is important because first as Muslim, Macy’s is be praised for taking diversity serious by selling Muslim Hijabs, but this does not help solve the issues that Muslim women are facing in America.

Marcy’s has no good intentions selling hijabs rather than promoting their marketing, these Muslims women who wears hijabs are still being forced to take them off at airports during security check. Also, there is bias of race from the pictures that are being used to promote hijabs from Marcy’s, we see only white women on the pictures and not black women. The pictures on adds also portrayed an image that a beautiful and complete Muslim woman should dress and look exactly like the women in adds. If Marcy’s was really concerned about the diversity, why not starting by protesting against the ban of wearing hijabs in public?  

Key word: vilification of bodies

This week, we talked about how some bodies are coded as threatening. I think that the vilification of bodies is especially important to talk about and identify because it is something, as our country gets more and more polarized in the beliefs of what is acceptable and what is not, more people’s bodies are becoming inherently vilified. In class, we talked about how transgender bodies are coded as threatening, especially while going through airport security because the body scans may not match how a TSA agent identified them. Beauchamp says, “Creating the figure of the safe transgender traveler necessarily entails creating and maintaining the figure of the potential terrorist, and vice versa. Because some bodies are already marked as national threats, the ability to embody the safe trans traveler is not only limited to particular bodies, but in fact requires the scapegoating of other bodies” (Beauchamp, 364). In the article about marketing Muslim women, Kumar talks about how “The selective visibility of hijabis reinforces a false binary between “good” and “bad” Muslims, upholding liberal, flag-waving Muslims as tolerable and benign without rectifying deeply entrenched perceptions of Muslims as terroristic and fanatical,” (Kumar). Both of these quotes talk about how the our culture still sees everything on a binary, and that it is not merely acceptable to not vilify anyone’s body but that there always has to be someone that is inherently evil. I think that this is incredibly dangerous, and it isn’t something that I, a straight-presenting, white woman, will ever really have to deal with.

A few days ago, while I was on Twitter, I noticed a tweet from a woman named Lilah Gibney who tweeted “last week i literally got detained at the airport for being transgender while trying to go home to visit my family for thanksgiving...i’m sharing this so anyone who has or WILL experience this is not alone” (@lilahgibney). The tweet was accompanied by a video of her crying in the airport and saying, “it’s so annoying how literally trans people have to go through this and like get detained.” Lilah posted this tweet two days after we talked about how trans people’s bodies can be vilified and coded as threatening when going through security because their genitalia or gender identity does not match how the TSA agent gendered them. It really made me think about how easy it is for people to place people on a hierarchy and decide that the people at the bottom are not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. 

Sources:

Toby Beauchamp. 2009. “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility: Transgender Bodies and U.S. State Surveillance after 9/11.” Surveillance and Society. 6 (4): 356-366.

Rashmee Kumar, “Marketing the Muslim Woman: Hijabs and Modest Fashion are the New Corporate Trend in the Trump Era.” The Intercept

Keyword: Going Stealth

In the article “Artful Concealment and Strategic Visibility” by Toby Beauchamp, he talks about the concept of transgender folks “going stealth.” This is when a trans man or woman fully “passes” as their preferred gender. The article talks about how often it is virtually impossible for trans people to completely go stealth because of how documents always keep some kind of record. Different states and even cities have different policies when it comes to changing your gender on legal documents, making it incredibly hard for people to go stealth. This is also a sticky concept because then it falls back into the binary category of genders, only having male and female. This forces trans folk not only to fall into a category of male or female but also to act/dress/present themselves as the “right way” of being either gender. We talked a lot about TSA and their treatment of transgendered people in airports. What surprised me was about the buttons they press for male or female based on how you present yourself. This is problematic for a number of reasons, of course, many times people might not present themselves as the gender they are, causing a disturbance in the system. This term is very important because this puts trans and gender-nonconforming people at a major disadvantage in terms of mobility and puts a target on them in a way. It automatically makes trans folk seem suspicious merely for how they chose to present themselves. Going fully stealth is thought of as being the ideal life for trans people when in reality not all trans people want surgery or other life alterations to make themselves pass. But if they don’t, they are still seen as suspicious because they don’t conform to the standards of society. 

Throughout modern history in the United States, those in power have relied upon a boogeyman of some sort to justify increasing surveillance while simultaneously sowing mistrust among the people. During the twentieth century it was the Red Scare of McCarthyism. The paralyzing fear that Communists could be right around every corner, sleeper agents merely waiting on a signal to tear down this country, nuclear war, invasion of Europe, and many many more. Even though US perceptions of a Soviet “menace” were based upon lies from the very beginning, the people followed suit granting more and more power to the government. 

At the end of the twentieth century the Soviet Russia fell along with the states of the USSR, bringing an end to the cold war. US foreign policy for two generations was based on a false notion of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and with the collapse of their boogeyman, another needed to be found. How else would the United States justify absurd military spending and continued surveillance of its people? The simplest way was to find a new boogeyman. Whether by coincidence or design (though I seriously doubt it was by design) the events on September 11, 2001 brought about this new boogeyman. I should note that  I dismiss the idea of 9/11 being a direct action of the US government. It was a series of miscalculations, bad decisions, and shortsightedness from the Cold War (specifically the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the US support of the Mujaheddin and the subsequent neglect of the situation we created) which set the stage for the 9/11 attacks. Rather than a complex and well thought out conspiracy it was simply neoconservative hawks with neoliberal ambitions seizing on an opportunity to make lots of money at the expense of people in the Middle East and the United States. 

The boogeyman of the early 21st century was Islamic terrorism. While this notion is based on fantasy, ignorance, intolerance, and racism its ramifications have had real consequences. I can remember how scared everyone seemed to be of Muslims in the years following 9/11. This fear helped galvanize support for military operations in the Middle East and beyond. Currently military operations are ongoing under the guise of counter-terrorism all over the world and far removed from public discourse. The passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 did exactly what its full title says: provided tools to intercept and obstruct terrorism, but these “appropriate” tools in hind sight have only created a culture of fear.

Beauchamp’s piece focuses on the USA PATRIOT Act’s unforeseen consequences on transgender bodies, but it is the culture of Islamophobia which has had the greatest impact on the largest group of people. This Islamophobia has grown to a more general fear of non-white bodies which has allowed people in power to inflict great suffering on so many others. From torture at Guantanamo Bay (and presumably many other sites we aren’t aware of) to caging migrant children at the US-Mexico border, the culture of fear has only grown stronger and more divisive within our society. Airport surveillance and increased scrutiny of non-white bodies has cultivated a toxic environment of fear which keeps public discourse talking about symptoms of a larger systemic problem while the root of the issue remains and grows stronger. Ignorance breeds fear and fear drives people to very dark places. 

This unit I think the concept of visibility and invisibility are very important to know when it comes to the “suspicious” body. Visibility in the sense of who is allowed to be visible and who is seen versus invisibility where people are forced to be or are just seen as invisible because of some outlying factor. I think a really good example of this was the TSA videos we watched in class. It really got me thinking about all the interactions I’ve had with airport security throughout the years. I had to start traveling alone when I got to college and every time, no matter what airport I’m in, i get checked, even if I have no jewelry on me, or anything that looks suspicious. Whenever I had my hair in protective styles, I would always have to do a hair search. Even with my natural hair, I wear it up most of the time, and I get checked then too, and its just crazy to me that a white person with the same hairstyle isn’t given two glances. I think because I am for one, black, and a a woman I’m already hyper-visible and invisible at the same time. I am seen as suspicious just based off of what I look like, because I don’t fit the “cultural norm” I am assumed to be suspicious or dangerous. In this society you are either hyper-visible or invisible just based off your appearance and what others perceive you to be. That in itself promotes violence and room for all the -isms (racism, sexism, classism, sexism, etc.) A trans person of color is at risk everyday just because of who they are, but they are also not allowed to be seen, and don’t have the freedom to be seen. Whereas, a trans non POC is still visible because of their whiteness, but part of their identity is forced to be written off. People have to pick and choose when they can be visible and when it is even safe for them to be visible. For me, I find myself struggling to do so in work settings or classroom settings, because most of the time I am the only black person. While its clearly visible that I am black, I have to pick and choose when I can and when its safe for me to share my experiences with those who don’t come from the same background as me. I’m seen as a black person, but then I’m not seen if that makes sense. People acknowledge that I’m black, but they don’t acknowledge my experiences, my voice, or other parts of my identity that make me who I am. They only see whats on the outside and they judge me or stereotype me based on that. They think they know what kind of person I am based off that, and most of the time they are wrong. I’ve had to deal with countless microaggressions just based off the color of my skin and society’s unwillingness to see me as a person, like many POC, many trans people, many women, and so many other marginalized groups. 

Disposability or the concept of the disposable body are two important terms to know when looking at different social.feminist issues through an intersectional lens. Disposability refers to who is seen as “disposable” as in their life and person-hood doesn’t matter because it doesn’t align with society’s vision of who is worthy enough to take up a certain space. For example, in bigger cities like NYC, Austin, D.C. and other places, a lot of people are pushed out of their homes because of gentrification. companies try to whiten up “urban” and predominantly low income or POC neighborhoods to bring in more money. Then it causes the people that already live there to be forced to leave or are find themselves homeless because they cant keep up with the increasing rent prices. On a service trip I went to in D.C. we took a neighborhood tour of all the neighborhoods that had been gentrified and it was just really shocking to see and know that so many people that had been living in their homes for years were forced out all because some company wanted more money. They were seen as disposable because of who they were and what they looked like. These companies didn’t care that these people had to relocate or because homeless, because they didn't see them as people. This also factors in to who becomes homeless, and who is more likely to get help when they are homeless. People often times associate homelessness with drug addicts or POC and just write them off as “crackheads” who aren’t deserving of help. Growing up, every time I saw someone of the side of the road asking for help, people would tell me not to give them any money because they’d only use it for drugs or alcohol. They weren’t seen as more than that. POC are already seen as disposable bodies for ample amount of reasons and that just contributes to society’s view of homeless POC. Brown bodies or “unhealthy” bodies are just tossed aside and not given the same respect or treatment as white “healthy” bodies. i think the concept of disposability is important because it is easy to try to identify which groups are marginalized, but knowing this concept lets you go deeper and figure out why they are marginalized. Why they are disposable or seen as such in the first place. It helps you understand why certain things happen to certain people , like why POC are forced out of their neighborhoods, or why black women are constantly given the short end of the stick. It all goes back to who society views as disposable. 

Craig Willse, “Neoliberal Biopolitics and the Invention of Chronic Homelessness.” Economy and Society 39 (2): 155-184.

Keyword: Chronic Homelessness