JSP Forum: Brie McLemore, “The Right to Choose?: FemTech, Privacy, and the Neoliberal Contradiction”

Please mark your calendars for the third JSP Forum of the semester on Thursday, Nov. 16, 11am-12:15pm, in Room 141 of the Law building. Lunch will be served after the Forum in the Kadish Library at 2240 Piedmont Ave.

 

JSP Forum is a workshop series in which students in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy PhD program present works in progress. All are invited and welcome to attend.

 

Brie McLemore will discuss her paper, “The Right to Choose?: FemTech, Privacy, and the Neoliberal Contradiction.” Professor Rebecca Wexler and Sociology PhD Student Maria Smith will offer comments. 

Please RSVP here by Nov. 9.

The paper will be made available here. You are encouraged to read the paper in advance, but doing so is not required to attend.

 

If you are unable to attend in person but would like to join by Zoom, please use this link: http://bit.ly/jspforumzoom

Paper abstract: “Corporations, unfettered by government restrictions, have amassed troves of data documenting almost every aspect of our lives. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, police, prosecutors, and vigilantes quickly weaponized this digital surveillance infrastructure to track and surveil abortion seekers. Menstrual-tracking apps, or “FemTech,” were of heightened concern due to the sensitive data they collect, making them a powerful tool for surveillance. Privacy experts called for strengthened protections, but the onus of responsibility fell on users, who were urged to delete their apps. This rhetoric mirrored neoliberal conceptions of privacy, in which individuals are tasked with making responsible choices to avoid corporate and government surveillance. However, conceptions of the responsible neoliberal subject were also evoked by the FemTech industry, which marketed its products as tools for empowerment and self-actualization for users seeking to rectify the medical neglect of the menstruating body. My research situates FemTech apps as neoliberal tools for empowerment that reflect the neoliberal limitations of privacy, in which technology and the law work in tandem to produce conflicting narratives of the ideal neoliberal subject. My research traces how the legal construction of the right to privacy, which is strongest for those who “choose” to protect it, is reflected in the privacy protocols of FemTech apps, in which users are presumed to have consented to these intrusions, justifying digital surveillance while simultaneously masking it. As a result, FemTech users find themselves ensnared in a complicated web of surveillance, fueled by corporate and State actors, all under the guise of “choice.”