Technology, Dead Male Bodies, and Feminist Recognition: Gendering ICT Harm Theory

Abstract

Drawing on anthropology, feminist science and technology studies (STS), and critical masculinity studies, this article contributes to a theory of male harm by reflecting on examples of data-driven screening practices in refugee protection and targeting practices in drone strikes as a way of making sense of the relationship between technology and men’s suffering. The article identifies and unpacks the shifting composite of attention and dis-attention to male vulnerability and intersectionality residing at the heart of the gendered and racialised logic of screening and targeting. This logic produces distinctions between ‘protectable’ and ‘undesirable’ civilian bodies, where data-mediated masculinity emerges as a key attribute of this undesirability. The article ends by discussing possible methodological turns for developing a more conscious techno-legal feminism.