Victimization, Voyeurism and Vulnerabilities

Peering is a thing of voyeurism. A voyeur is “a prying observer, who is usually seeking the sordid or the scandalous” (merriam-webster.com). I feel, though, that we are all voyeurs in some way. Scandal is a subjective thing, after all, and one can find baseness in the most mundane if they’re looking for it. This is why there are so many forms of surveillance. From TV shows like Big Brother to sonography to Facebook, we are always watching and being watched.

Hartouni's discussion of "fetal exposures" speaks to a specific kind of voyeurism, where the scandal is abortion. In an age of the idolatry of the child, it is no surprise that people are compelled to keep a watchful eye on their prized idol from the moment it is understood as such. In her exploration of "some of the ways in which the public presence of the free-floating fetal form has fundamentally reshaped both the perceptions and practices that constitute abortion..." (Hartouni, 198), the reader comes to realize that the current discourse on fetal life and its termination (purposeful or accidental) is one that treats the fetus as an autonomous being, essentially removing the mother-figure from the situation. In fact, "...for the embryo/fetus to emerge as autonomous...all traces of the female body (as well as the embryo's presence as a parasite within that body) must disappear" (Stabile, 172). This erasure of the feminine presence is done through the fetal ultrasound.

My discussion will refer to sonography, or ultrasound technology, and the misnomer of its description as "non-invasive". While ultrasound technology is often thought of as a non-invasive technique, the preparation and procedure of ultrasound imaging breaks a level of intimacy that, though it is perhaps physically non-invasive, can be mentally trying. I will not refer to the ultrasound as it is used to for monitoring the fetal environment. The ultrasound is typically used for diagnosis of abdominal problems (though it is best known for its use in viewing fetal life); it is a way of seeing what is wrong from the outside. Yes, there is no breach of the physical barrier between sonographer and patient. All tissues are still intact and no harm has been done to the body. I must ask, though, how this procedure is not considered invasive.

From my experience, this is the typical stage of an ultrasound: the patient lays on the table, abdomen covered in lubricant, possibly contorted into a position that is unnatural to them. The patient will have a probe pressed into their flesh, hard enough to “see” through the fatty tissues to get the optimal “picture.” This picture is nothing like a photograph, though. As you can (or can’t) see in this video, the image is a black-and-white, fuzzy mess. As Hartouni puts it, "So much for the given, the unquestionable, and the self-evident" (Hartouni, 208).Without the title and voice-over, the viewer would not know that they are looking at the inside of a woman. Interestingly, this video gives an example of what I consider to be an extremely invasive ultrasound procedure: the intravaginal ultrasound.

(image courtesy of http://www.dotmed.com/listing/603503)

This "non-invasive" probe (if that isn't an oxymoron) is inserted into the vagina "like a tampon," as my sonographer told me. The situation, though, is nothing like inserting a tampon. It is done in the presence of another person, laying in the dark, with your bladder full of liquid. It is not even the clinical situation of visiting a gynecologist; a sonographer cannot touch the probing victim, so she must victimize herself, put on display for the technician. The other problem is this: the probe must be long enough to be inserted into the vagina with the head of the probe penetrating the uterine opening. They are very, very long, and the heads are very wide. In short, the situation is one of discomfort, embarrassment, and definitely one of invasion:

(image courtesy of http://www.cancer.umn.edu/cancerinfo/NCI/CDR258027.html)

At sixteen years old, I went into the ultrasound clinic to find the source of my terrible abdominal pain. I left with a feeling that was almost one of being violated. I'd had no idea that an ultrasound could take place inside of me. I also left with no more information that I had gone in with. An ultrasound technician cannot read a sonogram; that is the job of some unseen peering eye.

In a way, the ultrasound gives autonomy to the parts of a body that are reliant on the body as a whole, while simultaneously taking the autonomy of that whole. It acts as a form of surveillance, revealing the vulnerability of the thing that it monitors. In this way, the ultrasound is similar to the digital photography taken in Abu Ghraib.

As they were presented to the public, "The photographs [of the prisoner pyramid] from Abu Ghraib have been presented to us in suitably blurred form so that we cannot see the care with which the torturers made sure that each man had his penis touching the buttocks of the man below" (Mirzoeff, 25). The image featured in Mirzoeff's article is significantly blurred and in black-and-white, looking almost like a sonogram. Out of context, one might not even know that the image shows a group of men being forced into sexually vulnerable positions. Their faces are not shown, removing the autonomy of the individual and showing only the collective embarrassment of the group.

The tortures of Abu Ghraib were performed with surgeon-like precision, and the photography revealed only the vulnerability of the victim. "This desire to obscure the guards' practice, rather than any belated concern for Islamic sensibility, motivated the digital erasure of this contact" (Mirzoeff, 25). The care is never for the autonomy of the victim. Here, it is for the perpetrators; with medical imaging, it is for the fetus or the organ. As with most forms of surveillance, when it comes to medical imaging, as with the photos of Abu Ghraib, I find myself feeling that the most important question is the one that is rarely asked. What is being left out?

Works Cited:

Hansbilboard. "Vaginal Ultrasound." Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRENaeKSAvw&feature=related

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.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib

Stabile, Carol. “Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and the Politics of Disappearance.” The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: NYU Press, 1998. 171-97.