Every person is subject to concerns related to surveillance and has an innate desire to maintain privacy. Privacy is the desire of each individual or agency to retain the level of information about them that is made publically available. The definition of privacy in online spaces is often made out to be more blurred but the description still holds correct. Digitally, each facet of a person’s individuality is printed out in data and retaining control about who has access to what and how much data is maintaining digital privacy.
The perception of online privacy depends on a number of factors; values, trust, and interpersonal communication. And each of these factors is relative and subjective in nature. Privacy is thus a social construct because the need for creating boundaries comes from social expectations in public and private spaces. These expectations are certainly gendered in nature too. And this makes sense considering gender itself is a social construct. Gender is the sociocultural roles, behaviors, and expectations assigned to an individual based on sex-based social structures. And gender is the performance of femininity and masculinity based on one’s background and upbringing.
Fig: A figure showing how gender and privacy are both social constructs.
Since both gender and privacy are social constructs, the way society and its individuals see those terms tend to vary with time, information, societal needs, and so on. This means that privacy concerns are subjective and regulations guarding gender and privacy shift over time [1].
The current societal makeup is patriarchal in nature which creates privilege and power for cisgender men over women, transgender people, intersex people, and gender-diverse people who are othered and sidelined in important decision-making and community-building activities. This sidelining and marginalization begins during the socialization process in one’s childhood.
Women are usually pawned as the markers of social status which means their activities are heavily guarded since childhood. This means that they grew up sensitive to the image that they are projecting to the outside world [2]. Thus, women express a higher awareness and concern for privacy issues.
While non-cisgender identities are discouraged, marginalized, and berated because they don’t fall into the binary structure in which patriarchy thrives. Thus, their experiences are negated and forced within the gender binary set by society at their time of birth.
If we look at the current world, the continuation of patriarchy well into the digitized world that we currently live in has permeated into the said digitized world. Followers of patriarchy see the internet as yet another space that requires clear demarcations of gender roles while marginalized groups like women and transgender, intersex, and gender-diverse people look forward to a more egalitarian, inclusive, and feminist internet [3]. This, among other factors, results in threats to social security for marginalized groups.
A clear example of how marginalized groups have been subjected to security threats on the internet is the risk that LGBTQIA+ people face on dating apps. Only 33 nations in the world legally recognize same-sex relationships while 69 nations, as of September 2022, criminalize same-sex relationships as illegal with 13 nations where they are punishable by death.
Fig: A map that shows the legality of same-sex relationships by country
Even though we love to think of the internet as an isolated space, it is as much affected by offline activities, regulations, and social perceptions as any other physical space. For a community that has historically struggled to find support from their community, the internet represents hope for a safe space that looks beyond one’s gender and orientation. But this hope is often shattered because the queer community is one of the most heavily surveilled communities.
Because of the lack of wide social support for the queer community, the fact that dating apps like OkCupid, Grindr, and Tinder collect user information to be sold to third-party apps is extremely concerning. Because of this reason, Grindr, for example, has even been dubbed a killer app [4], because of the high number of cases where queer people have been killed, assaulted, and tortured by people they met off the app. In nations like Russia where queer people are systematically berated, the fact that dating apps are required to share information on local servers is concerning, and the companies and individuals behind those apps are required to play a more active role in developing stronger privacy tools for an already marginalized community.
A few initiatives have been taken. For example, SCRUFF has been randomizing location data, sending alerts when entering nations where homosexuality is illegal, and preventing third-party sharing to ensure data privacy [5]. But these examples are few and far in between.
The IT developers who are concerned with the development of such technologies should also be encouraged or ethically mandated to ensure inclusivity and privacy in any technologies developed [6]. Research has long shown that privacy concerns have a negative impact on the usability of technology, especially when marginalized experiences like that of women, transgender people, intersex people, gender-diverse people, the queer community, the disabled community, etc. are concerned.
Fig: A figure that shows different concerns for designing for accessibility
IT developers don’t consider at all or consider privacy concerns too late especially when it comes to making technologies that are used by disabled people. They have been found to make ad hoc decisions about privacy initiatives. They have also been found to use their social networks or internal experts rather than the government agencies’ published rules for information [7]. Thus, it is also up to the developers to take proactive steps to ensure an inclusive, safe, and just internet.
As we vow to create a safer internet space for everyone regardless of their gender, sexual characteristics, sexual orientation, ability, social class, etc., we must realize the way in which social upbringing affects the perception of online privacy and the differences that then arise should be respected. As is the trend with privacy scholarship, a more gender-conscious lens should be put on to understand the dynamics of online privacy. The scholarship then created is more full-proof and can assist in further online lobbying against the government, IT companies, and other concerned parties for the creation of safer digital spaces for everybody.
References
- Do men and women differ in privacy? Gendered privacy and (in)equality in the Internet
- Health privacy as sociotechnical capital
- Privacy and Gender in the Social Web
- Death by Grindr: Is It the New Killer App?
- Online Surveillance, Censorship, and Discrimination for LGBTQIA+ Community Worldwide
- Assistive technology effects on the employment outcomes for people with cognitive disabilities: A systematic review
- The Privacy and Security Behaviors of Smartphone App Developers