The End of the Line

Abstract

The transmission and interpretation of information generated from full-body scanners is increasingly becoming a site of contestation in airport security queues all over the world. Body scanning technology raises questions surrounding the rights of governments to images of human bodies, acts of surveillance and to what extent technologies such as full-body scanners are helping to make us more ‘secure’ – or are disadvantaging particular groups of bodies. We examine the use of full-body scanners and their consequences from a feminist perspective, demonstrating how the scanners constitute both a ‘gendered technology’ and a ‘gendered practice’. In addition we present a typology outlining several forms of feminist resistance that have manifested in reaction to the use of this technology. While these acts do not necessarily pose an overt challenge to the larger airport security structure, as they occur within rigidly defined boundaries, they do offer the space for individuals to exercise some autonomy and control over their bodies. By engaging with feminist security scholarship as well as theoretical approaches concerned with reclaiming the ‘everyday’ as a space for feminist agency, we begin to unravel the complicated web of full-body scanning technology.