Raise your hand if this happened to you:
You had a notebook in school, or a binder or a scrap of paper. You wrote something personal on it. Maybe it was just a sentence, like "Chris Jones is a total fox." Maybe it was the lyrics of a song stuck in your head, or a poem. Maybe it was a scrawl of rage against a teacher or classmate. And some kid saw it, someone you never meant to see it. And they took it from you, or told on you. And you were stuck there, ashamed, defenseless, violated. And you learned that day to never write anything down: not where they could find it, anyway.
(more musings to follow.)
I was thinking about privacy today.
I'm sure a lot of other people here were, too.
And I was trying to put into words just why it should matter to me so much that my phone conversations be private. If I have nothing to hide, the wingers are always saying, why should I mind? Because . . . because! Because its a fundamental--something--
Then I thought about the time my angry 7th grade spiral notebook screed against a bitchy popular girl was seen by a wannabee. The wannabee told the bitchy popular girl, and a female fatwa against me followed. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about, and if you've ever been the target, believe me, it is brutal.
Then I remembered the 12 grade-angst-filled teen poem that was overlooked by a concern-troll class-mate that didn't know me very well, and taken for a suicide warning-sign. The classmate told a teacher, who told a couselor, who called my mother, who went into hysterics. I fumbled around for an explanation, and ended up outright lying: I told them I was writing a short story, and one of the characters in it was writing poetry.
Privacy. Violation.
I walked into Walgreens with my kids the other day. My son said, "Look Mom!" We were on closed circuit TV, you see, right there, looking at children’s cold medicines. "Oh, yes," I said. "That’s us isn’t it? Wave hi! Yep, there we are."
There are cameras installed at intersections all over my city. I don’t like them. Not for any real tangible reason. I’ve run red lights in my time, but I don’t make a habit of it. I think it’s the feeling it gives me, this electronic weapon, aimed not at me, but at the Public. I find it strangely accusatory, this white, sterile apparatus. It is like that teacher you hated, pacing around during a test looking for cheating and note-passing and whispering.
I buy something, and suddenly 14 catalogues come in the mail related to whatever I just bought.
I get my groceries and a coupon machine rolls out discounts on feminine hygiene and odor-control cat litter. Good to know that the grocery store knows I've recently had a yeast infection and that my 3-cat household has a tendency to stink.
A sign in the dressing room at Macy's informed me that my room was being monitored by "same-sex" security employees. As if I'm just fine with strangers seeing me in my old underwear with the worn-out elasic, my pale white thighs rippled with cellulite. Just as long as the security employees are female. And presumably straight.
But for all these anonymous strangers’ knowledge of my vaginal issues, home-odor problems, underwear, (dude, is that a maternity bra? She’s still wearing that?)stretch marks, on-line purchases, and intersection habits, somehow none of this is about me. I, Reep, the individual is erased from this picture. I am the consumer. I am the target demographic. I am The American People. The Public.
Or am I a high-risk target? Am I planning to shop-lift those jeans? Am I about to hold up the pharmacy with a gun and demand pain-killers?
In Czechoslovakia, before the end of the USSR, people got used to covering up the books they read with paper wrappers so the titles could not be seen. I've heard that many people there still do so, out of habit. And they never write anything down, if they can help it. You didn't in the old days, you learned to keep things in your head. Some people still do that too, out of habit.
Perhaps I will become like them. Cover all of my books. Pay only in cash. Shred all of my mail. Write nothing down. But why should I have to? Isn't that what our Bill of Rights is all about?
The violation of privacy is a violation of the self. It dehumanizes you. You, your belongings, your thoughts, your very body are no longer of any value. You, as an individual are X-ed out.
And so, to answer the wingers' question about why I should mind being spied on when I have done nothing wrong, here's my answer. IT IS NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS. LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!
End of rant.