We are more naked, as a nation, than we've ever been. We are forever baring our souls, revealing the mundane and the sacred. We are naked in our curiosity about the semi-famous and the strange, we are naked in our aspirations (to be semi-famous, even for something strange), we are naked online - or, at least, considerably more exposed than we tend to realize.So if I choose to reveal myself in various ways, I will accept someone else forcing me to reveal myself? That's like the old and much-maligned argument that if a woman is sexually active, then raping her isn't such a serious crime — and that it's impossible to rape a prostitute.
All of which may help explain why most Americans seem unconcerned about those full-body airport scanners, the ones that see under your clothes. In an existential sense, we are used to this sort of thing. Go on, take a gander, we seem to be saying. We have nothing to hide.
December 23, 2010
We were already "more naked, as a nation, than we've ever been" — which is why we're accepting the airport naked-body scanners.
Asserts Libby Copeland:
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37 comments:
I will not use the naked-body scanners on those rare occasions when I fly. I'd rather be groped by the TSA agent. Should I warn the agent that I am dreadfully ticklish?
I fly about twice a year, for work. Never for pleasure.
That's like the old and much-maligned argument that if a woman is sexually active, then raping her isn't such a serious crime — and that it's impossible to rape a prostitute.
Hmmm. I was under the impression that "malign" was a synonym for "slander." A quick check of dictionary.com shows there are multiple meanings, but I still think the term connotes unfairness.
Frankly, I think this is one old argument that deserves more than maligning.
WV: nurasoli
Ordinary folks have been exposing their lives to everyone with an internet connection for a decade now. By abandoning so much privacy do we really all have a strong sense of it?
You don't own your property, the government does. When they want to use it or take it away, they will.
You don't own your body, the government does. When they want to use it, they will.
MORE naked? What is that, like more pregnant or more stupid?
I just went through the scanner yesterday on my way to Florida. I asked the security broad if she wanted me to strip naked. I am not shy. If she wants to see the pisc-a-dele, hey knock yourself out.
They let me right through
Ordinary folks have been exposing their lives to everyone with an internet connection for a decade now
Voluntarily. The ordinary folks who decide to volunteer information about themselves and to expose themselves on the internet or any other venue have done so of their own volition.
Involuntarily being exposed, physically in public and without consent being groped is a completely different thing.
Involuntarily having someone else expose your life or body is an invasion of privacy and a violation of our fundamental and Constitutional rights.
impossible to rape a prostitute
It's impossible to rape your wife - the correct charge is assault.
Female modesty is no longer involved - the origin having been that respect for a woman is how good a deal she makes for herself.
A prostitute is respectable under the same conditions, eg. what's her name Spitzer's whore.
At some level with prostitutes though, assault would be the right charge.
It won't be the charge though - you can rape your wife, legally, at the moment.
Buckley wrote against that when it changed, back in the early 70s I think, from assault.
Feminists ought to be for the assault charge too, since it doesn't cast women as special sexually.
But they like the power.
"In for a dime, in for a dollar." Hey, we're just quibbling about the price!
I think it's more that people know al Qaeda is dependent on lone wolfs to carry out attacks using things like shoe and underwear bombs and the "naked" images are benign, unidentifiable, unsexy images. Most people just don't care and want to get on their flight with a little bit more piece of mind.
I am going to require both the naked body scanner and the groping.
I want them to be in awe of my hard ripped body
Thank you and good day.
I only expose my life on this blog.
Other than that you couldn't google me or facebook, twitter or anything me.
I am practically not even alive.
Well, it's not really "naked naked" is it?
Barack will tell you when to be naked, and when to be groped.
Michelle will tell you what you can eat.
Barack and Nancy and Harry will tell you which doctor to see , what tests they can order, which specialists are allowed, and how much they can spend on you.
"Barack Obama will require you to work. ...Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
By the by, Meade made big news on Troop's blog last night.
Meade and Althouse fuck three times a day.
In case you guys were interested.
OMG-my password to post is "cockers"-how weird
I have the solution that solves two problems.
Make everybody use the toilet before boarding.
No doors in the cubicles, like guys' dorms.
Everybody gets checked out by the attendant.
Also solved: the excess passenger weight problem, which costs fuel.
If Trooper was ever taken up on his offer, or just took it upon himself to go through security a capella (as he wants to do), we would see immediate and radical changes to our whole homeland security system.
It's worth it.
MMan: "I'd rather be groped by the TSA agent."
And, once you hit that age when no one else wants to bother, you may even look forward to it.
What a wonderful world we live in.
I used to be in Drum Corps and traveled all over the U.S.
Do you know some schools in the south do not have any doors or dividers in the toilets? Just a throne.
I used to have to pinch a loaf and the guy was brushing his teeth in the sink right next to me.
What's up with that?
I believe we should have the personal freedom to choose which groper gets to grope us.
Have them all line up and if there is a hottie in the bunch, which is a big if, you get to pick them.
Althouse and Meade do it three times a day.
Women have different boundaries than men, but it's hard to see how those gray images, however revelatory, can be in any way prurient. People don't object to them because they are unobjectionable. That said, my guess is that Sarah Palin or Glen Beck are in much greater danger of having their scans leaked to the internet than Nancy Pelosi or Oprah....Any invasion of privacy committed on a conservative is a prank or part of the public's right to know and is protected under the first amendment. A similar violation of a liberal is the first step towards fascism.
You are not forced to fly or blog and can easily avoid this extra exposure by taking other means, but who can resist?
I think it would be fun to wear a vinegar soaked Depends diaper through the groping line.
By forcing measures that neither increase safety nor catch terrorists, the Obama administration will cause more deaths as people tell airlines to screw it, and they drive for any trip less than 500 miles.
Heckuva job, Barry!
Heckuva job, George! You too, Barry!
There, corrected.
I don't remember W demanding we go naked.
But I'm sure it makes you feel better to say so.
Another accomplishment for Obama! I know, let's re-elect him!
The guy (or girl) who runs for POTUS and says, "I will abolish the TSA", and does it, will get the votes of the flying public - which is a lot of people.
And then there's The Zero's DNI, who doesn't know what's going on in the world of counter-terrorism. We have an Administration that really can't do very much except harass the people.
So if I choose to reveal myself in various ways, I will accept someone else forcing me to reveal myself? That's like the old and much-maligned argument that if a woman is sexually active, then raping her isn't such a serious crime — and that it's impossible to rape a prostitute.
======================
I think there are degrees of injury from acts - depending on the individuals and circumstances. We try hard to define the degree of outrage in robbery and murder by assessing impact and level of damage society suffered.
We have been derailed by feminists infantile prattle that "Rape is rape" and there is no difference between a prostitute saying no to a "doggy style" request and still getting boned that way "against her consent", a husband drunkenly jumping his drunken wife - and some teen dragged into the bushes and gang-raped by total strangers.
But we do have manslaughter, negligent homicide, various degrees of murder, and a tort system that sorts out some financial damages for deaths still not entirely the persons own fault but contributed to by others..
But even with gradients, you would still have an exceptionally hard legal time saying that you want all the women employees at your firm good enough looking to wear a bikini on the beach to work in bra and panties at work, voluntarily, in return for better pay and promotions than the less choice women at work who would be an eyesore so exposed. Or maintaining to offended employees that the babes have gone skimpy before and everyone has seen babes in bikinis so no big deal...
Photographer Oleg Volk has a email posted on his blog with some details on one persons encounter with the back scatter scanner. They may see more than you think.
I love the compartmentalization (I think that's a word) of your posts. In one post you are glad of the repeal of DADT, which will have the result of straight men being forced, in the shower, to expose themselves to gay men. You clearly approve of this as you approve of the DADT policy being repealed.
Yet in this post, you write;
"So if I choose to reveal myself in various ways, I will accept someone else forcing me to reveal myself?"
For years military men and women have chosen to reveal themselves in the showers to other men and women. We've all probably done it, but many of us would choose not to if we knew it would be coed.
Now, in a sense, coed is forced upon us and you approve.
Perhaps a little more consistency in your positions is in order.
garage mahal said: "I think it would be fun to wear a vinegar soaked Depends diaper..."
This confirms what I long suspected of your hobbies and interests, garage. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, to each his own.
eric, that's a very good point.
I think the author's point was more along the lines of asserting that modesty as a virtue is in decline. That's a point I would agree with, though I'm not sure how much I mournthe fact.
To be sure, modesty has been used as a prop for squelching those who supposedly should be more modest -- usually females -- and still is used for that purpose in states with theocratic features.
Once one has been through junior high school gym class, or if one happens to frequent the locker room of one's own gym as an adult, a full body scanner really shouldn't IMHO, be that traumatizing.
The analogy to sexual assault is so weak as to seem like trying to gin up controversy for its own sake. Not that there is anything wrong with that -- it's your blog.
WV: vatcy -- part of a Vatican City email address, e.g. "pben16@vatcy.gov"
Whatever. The new TSA stuff even has me off flying, and I have nearly always opted for a flight over a drive. No nude pictures and no groping. Who'd have thought that those travel requirements would someday mean you couldn't fly?
Pogo,
With the Patriot Act and its spawn (DHS) we have willingly, thrillingly, given up our modesty for that false feeling of greater security. That George did not completely strip us naked while Barry wants to, only speaks to the inevitable continuous expansion of this government program.
"That's like the old and much-maligned argument that if a woman is sexually active, then raping her isn't such a serious crime — and that it's impossible to rape a prostitute."
Actually the "logic" is far worse than that: If you follow it, you see it's more like saying that if "we as a society" are more sexually active, then raping individual women isn't serious.
"We" are a collection of individuals, not a collective; arguing that any average predisposition (whether true or not) implies universal individual consent (or implies individual consent unnecessary) is completely absurd on the face of it, proving yet again that being able to say something that *sounds* meaningful is completely unrelated to being able to say something meaningful.
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