Excellent article on sexuality, privacy and surveillance by Naomi Wolf


Naomi Wolf is a feminist, social critic, and the author of the international bestseller "The Beauty Myth" in which she argues "beauty" is a socially constructed category.


In her article Sex and Surveillance, Naomi Wolf gives her own interesting take on a recent storm of sexual scandals involving public figures, such as the head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and raises some interesting points and questions. She argues that the number of sex scandals which have been publicly revealed recently by the media are proof not only of the 'human sex drive' but also of the omnipresence of surveillance in our societies.  She further exposes the efforts of some governments, including the US and some European countries,  to "brand" surveillance as positive -- and asks what this may mean for our sexual lives.  In Naomi's view, the normalisation of surveillance in society will give the state the power to blackmail anyone it wishes, and "means that eventually everyone must face the same anxieties about exposure as public figures do."

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