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| Cultural studies, sociology, and other fields of scholarship are concerned with the concept of increasing surveillance in our society—the metaphorical panopticon that Foucalt was so worried about. Activists and regular citizens alike echo those concerns, usually with a focus on right to privacy and civil rights.
Surveillance happens both willingly and unwillingly. Sometimes we accept and even benefit from, say, surveillance of our home or our local ATMS. Whether alarms and video cameras actually keep anyone safe is another question, but they do give us the feeling of safety, which sometimes is more impactful than actual safety.
Other times the idea of being recorded in a convenience store or knowing the government can read our personal email at any time or even the concept identity theft—that some faceless hacker is tracking our information over the Web—is troubling. Statistics show an alarming trend of not only an increasing amount of surveillance, but increasing types of surveillance. What’s more, those of us born into the age of modern technology often do not question the boundaries between private and public. For example, most of us don’t think twice when asked to enter our personal information when registering for a service on the Web. We believe that by having a “dummy” email account we thwart the efforts of spammers and watchers. What we don’t think about is that the spammers and watchers already have our real names and birthdays. And their methods of surveillance are getting more and more sophisticated.
The notion that “we are being watched” is real and true. Those of us with gmail accounts are not only familiar with the idea of customized ads, but we’re slowly becoming immune to them. It seems we’re okay with gmail “reading” our emails; after all, it’s just algorithms. But what message are sending corporations through the technological free market? We are saying we no longer care about privacy. The boundaries between us and our technology, our so-called tools, blur even more.
As technology advances, corporations will soon be able to fill every inch of our lives with customizable ads. We’ll see more ads, we’ll believe them, we’ll feel a make-believe void in our lives, we’ll buy more things at the expense of what, I leave up to you to decide. Digital cable companies, for example, currently collect not only our personal information, but keep a log of all the television programs we watch and for how long. They don’t have the technology to synthesize all that information just yet. But they will. And they’ll find a way to make money off of it. Whose money? Ours, of course.
Myspace is now leading the way for social networking websites to capitalize off the abundance of personal information (likes and dislikes) that we post on our pages. The industry calls our personal pages, "digital gold." But wasn't the original idea of social networking sites so that we could go online to connect with friends and family? In this day and age, I wonder, are we really posting blogs and messages to our friends? Or are we posting blogs and messages to Rupert Murdoch and his buddies over at Fox Interactive Media?
Surveillance, in the past, has only been used as a way of monitoring and controlling prisoners and criminals. I’m curious: what kind of technological prison exercises its control over us now? And in how many ways is freedom only an illusion on the internet? And in our homes?
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Proposition 73: Endangering Young Women’s Lives and Eroding Women’s Rights
By Diana Ming Yin
ARTICLE
QUOTE: “The problems with Prop 73 do not end with all its dangerous
health consequences. It harvests deeper, underlying political motives.
The authors of Prop 73 have slipped in a provision that would add the
term ‘unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born’ into the
California Constitution. This then sets precedence for future
anti-choice initiatives that can then use the state constitution itself
to erode women’s rights.”
Those who are most
affected by Proposition 73 cannot vote for themselves in the upcoming
special election. They do not have the resources to lobby for their own
interests. They are not involved in government politics. Young women
and teens. Their futures are being decided upon by the adults in their
lives, and we have a responsibility to keep them safe; safe from
initiatives like Proposition 73, which would amend the state’s
constitution requiring health care providers to notify the parents of
under age young women before providing abortion services—a procedure
that seems beneficial at first glance, but is in fact wrought with
dangerous consequences.
Backed by several wealthy, conservative,
anti-choice donors—including James Holman, a San Diego millionaire who
opposes contraception and believes that abortion should be outlawed,
even in cases of rape and incest—the proposition would put young
women’s lives at risk by casting doubt and distrust towards doctors and
clinics, leaving teens with no place to go for health care, for help or
for information. And by forcing them to resort to desperate ends such
as back alley and self-induced abortions. In addition, if passed,
Proposition 73 would insert dangerous anti-choice language directly
into our state’s constitution; language that sets precedence for
dismantling abortion rights all together.
Parents, teachers,
doctors, elected officials, religious leaders, and medical associations
through out California understand the hazards of Prop 73. Many are
lobbying against it through the Campaign for Teen Safety
(www.noonproposition73.org), believing that Prop 73 does nothing to
facilitate communication between parents and teens (as it purports to
do), but rather, does more to endanger the health and safety of young
women.
Fact sheets published by the California Women’s Law
Center tell us that many of our state’s teens receive their general
health care “through the window of family planning services made
available through federal and state funding” and that “obstetricians
and gynecologists, who routinely detect breast and cervical cancers,
sexually transmitted diseases, diabetes, hypertension and other
diseases while providing family planning services, have become the
effective primary care provider for many women.”
Proposition
73 unfairly casts suspicion on doctors and medical clinics licensed to
care for our youth. Local community clinics are the same service and
educational organizations that work to prevent teen pregnancy by
talking to young people about sex, that publish youth-friendly
brochures about drug addiction and the dangers of drinking and driving,
that do workshops at schools encouraging teens to be healthy and safe,
and that teach young people about date rape, STDs/ AIDS, domestic
violence, and other important issues affecting their lives. Can we
afford to take all of this away from our youth?
Proposition 73
attacks a system that works. In fact, research has shown that the
majority of teens already talk to their parents about sensitive issues.
Young women who come from homes where there is communication about sex
will by default consult their parents about sex and abortion. And if a
young woman does not feel comfortable talking to her parents, shouldn’t
she be able to feel safe going to a doctor or clinic that is licensed
and trained to care for her?
The problems with Prop 73 do not end
with all its dangerous health consequences. It harvests deeper,
underlying political motives. The authors of Prop 73 have slipped in a
provision that would add the term “unborn child, a child conceived but
not yet born” into the California Constitution. This then sets
precedence for future anti-choice initiatives that can then use the
state constitution itself to erode women’s rights.
Prop 73 is
marketed as an initiative that will improve young women’s lives by
“protecting” them from clinics and doctors, when what it actually does
is put their lives at risk and disrupts a system that is working. It is
marketed as an initiative that will facilitate communication between
parents and their teens, when in fact most young women already consult
their parents about these sensitive issues. Those who seek advise from
doctors do so for a reason, and we should feel relieved that teens have
their support. It is unfair that young women’s health and safety are
being sacrificed to further a conservative political agenda—one with
far-reaching effects.
We are accountable to the young people in
our lives, and because they cannot cast votes for themselves in
November, we must cast our votes on their behalf as well as our own.
Saying yes to teen safety means voting NO on Proposition 73.
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| My Yellowfist blogring has gotten all huge and stuff. I kind of want to revise the description, because as with politics and thought, if it remains stagnant, it's lost its purpose.
But changing the description of the blogring would mean cheating people out of something they signed up for. I can't just up and make it different, even if I want it to reflect where I am right now politically. It's not my blogring, I should say, so I really shouldn't think of it within the parameters of ownership.
This blog is strange for me, because no one ever reads this anymore except strangers and weirdoes. But I still like it. Because it's the first bloggy I ever had. | | |
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