'Choice' and 'Freedom' in Today's Airport

Among very recent and countless press coverage sources, a Chicago Tribune article posted yesterday by Jon Hilkevitch, Julie Johnsson and Becky Schlikerman, attempts to put together a response to the newest technologies in airport security. The article discusses how loads of people (especially those about to travel for the Holidays) are “Up in arms” about the new, “full-body scans that can see under clothing” (Hilkevitch, Jon). In reading the comments posted under the article, it’s plain to see that many American’s feel the full-body scan violates personal privacy. As the article continues, what becomes more problematic about this new airport security measure is that air travelers have the ‘choice’ to opt out of this all-revealing body scan, only to get an “enhanced pat-down” by a TSA officer of the same sex. This “enhanced pat-down” enforces the TSA officers to, “Run their hands over the genitals of same-gender passengers to look for hidden objects.” (Hilkevitch, Jon). According to a Colbert Report segment aired on November 15^th, where Colbert interviews Jeffrey Goldberg on the matter, if you “choose” to not go through the scanner, or not to get an “enhanced pat-down,” you must leave the airport, or face a civil suit and a $10,000 fine ("TSA Full-Body Scanners"). In taking all of this in, the discourse surrounding the U.S.’s current airline security measures includes troublesome rhetoric embedded in sexual embarrassment at the cost of advanced video surveillance, encompassed all by the liberal construction of ‘choice’ and ‘freedom.’ Before we flesh out the ‘troublesome choice’ of the extremely sexualized “enhanced pat-down,” we must first analyze the discourse surrounding the federal government’s “peering” ability and power in the “full-body scan.” In "Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion," Valerie Hartouni writes, "technologies themselves do not peer; they are instruments and relations that facilitate or obstruct, but above all, contruct 'peering'...likewise 'peering' is not itself a benign, impartial, disinterested, or disembodied activity, but is both mediated and situated within interpretive frameworks, points of view, and sets of purposes" (Hartouni 211). In saying this, the “peer” of the airport security scan not only technologically produces an image of a naked body, but rather socially produces the destruction of private property on a bodily level. Hartouni argues that, “What we see is inseparably linked to and utterly dependent upon how we see” (Hartouni, 211). We must challenge how see these images embedded in our own cultural discourse. In class we discussed the “liberal construction of ‘choice’ and ‘freedom,’” in creating a Subject within the all-encompassing liberal (law) realm. In other words, it is a U.S. ideal that by “law” we are entitled to the right to own our bodies (object) as property of the self (Subject). In saying this, the power of the “full-body scan” peer disrupts the interpreted framework of a set ideal. On the same note, even though the ‘liberal’ framework allegedly sets up a ‘choice’ to resist this destructive peer with the “enhanced pat-down,” the discourse surrounding the latter is embedded in a similar framework of violent ‘constructed peering’ the scan conducts.

The ‘choice’ to get an “enhanced pat-down” by a TSA officer of the same sex, rather than to walk through a scanner that will produce an image of your body naked, can be argued to be even more humiliating and destructive to private bodily rights than the scan. While an image of your naked body on a screen for national security measures is not produced, the federal government constructs a different kind of ‘peer’ that strips the Subject of his or her agency, integrity, etc. through physical bodily humiliation. In all, the discourse surrounding this “enhanced pat-down” assumes heteronormative ideals at the expense of personal freedoms. First, if you choose to not go though the scanner, you either have to take on the identity as male or female. Second, if you choose to not go though the scanner, you must also take on the identity of being straight. The Colbert Report touches upon the troublesome discourse surrounding a TSA member of the “same sex” performing these pat downs, asking: What if you’re gay… a hermaphrodite… a creepy man claiming to be gay so he can be felt up by a woman, a child, etc.? ("TSA Full-Body Scanners”) Jeffrey Goldberg argues that these procedures are not only “unnecessary,” but also extremely problematic, because basically they are set up not for “national security,” but “humiliation” ("TSA Full-Body Scanners”). In a sense, which ever ‘choice’ you make, you are doing so at the expense of your ‘freedom’ as a citizen and Subject with agency. Hartouni asks us to explore beyond “what” we are seeing, to “how” we are seeing these “peers” (Hartouni, 211). In the case of our current airport situation, we are seeing a terrorized population being forced to make a ‘choice’ between being subjected to loosing their ‘freedom’ either by an image or by a physical assault. In relation to Hartouni’s argument about reproductive rights, people who, “champion ‘choice’… lose site of the profoundly radical and consequential fact in a post-1980s struggle for reproductive freedom,” that pregnancies, “occur in women’s bodies” (Hartouni, 213). A physical (yet sexualized) body that exists in a liberal (legal) system, which protects it’s biological reproductive “freedoms” as one through privacy. And yet, this is proven not to work, because when a liberal system (for security reasons, etc.) is set up in a discourse that doesn’t acknowledge the body as private, we ask: who owns what bodies? Who is entitled to own their own body as private property? How can a ‘choice’ be made by someone who is not entitled to their own private property? The new airport security measures proves there is actually no ‘choice’ for an allegedly ‘free’ populace. How strange?

WORK CITED:

Hartouni, Valerie. “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion.” The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: NYU Press, 1998. 171-97.

Hilkevitch, Jon, Julie Johnsson, and Becky Schlikerman. "Up in Arms over Airport Security." Chicago Tribune. 15 Nov. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-15/news/ct-met-airport-security-1116-20101115_1_full-body-scans-tsa-thanksgiving-travelers

"TSA Full-Body Scanners." The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. New York City, New York, 15 Nov. 2010. 15 Nov. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/365686/november-15-2010/tsa-full-body-scanners---jeffrey-goldberg