Privacy has been on my mind a lot lately. First, Tiger Woods’ personal escapades become national and international fodder. And then days and days of private grief and mourning laid bare as Haitians and their families search and pray for their loved ones. Privacy doesn’t seem to be an option for anyone, anywhere; rich or poor. How ironic, that it is in this public space that the world’s richest and poorest are united on common ground. Somehow, we masses have decided that neither the most affluent nor the most devastated are entitled to the same privacy as the rest of us. Yet, invading someone’s privacy is a violent, harmful act and one that no one should be subject to, regardless of their social standing.
The problem is that it is hard to balance the fact that we are all social beings with the need to maintain something of our own. Our bodies our public. As the feminist scholar, Judith Butler sees it, “the body implies mortality, vulnerability, agency: the skin and the flesh expose us to the gaze of others, but also to touch, and to violence, and bodies put us at risk of becoming the agency and instrument of all these as well.”
It is precisely because we are embodied subjects, at the mercy of friends, family, neighbours, colleagues and governments that our right to privacy is so valuable. Privacy is a basic human right. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.” Apparently, "arbitrary interference" is a pretty arbitrary concept.
The question that the past few weeks raises is whether or not there are occasions in which an individual can legitimately be denied their right to privacy? In the case of the earthquake victims in Haiti, one could argue that by making their personal stories of searching for loved ones or of loss public, they are garnering international attention, support and aid. So publicity is positive. And yet, I can’t imagine how it makes anyone feel good to have a microphone shoved in to their face as they talk about finding family members crushed under buildings, or not finding people they care about. There is no doubt that in Haiti, personal stories give human voice and face to the massive humanitarian tragedy. But individuals are being made to expose the rawest, most painful of human emotions for this greater good. I don’t know if it is better or worse that those in Haiti will never hear themselves reproduced over national and international airwaves. To hear some of the interviews or see some of the images, would be to relive a thousand wounds, again and again and again.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have Tiger Woods. Wealthy, attractive, successful and a man whom many believe invited the public scrutiny he is now enduring because his personal self did not live up to the public image in which Nike and other companies invested so much. As Buzz Bissinger wrote in Vanity Fair, “In an age of constant gotcha and exposure, (Woods) had always been the bionic man in terms of personality, controlling to a fault and controlled to a fault…With Woods, everything was crafted to produce a man of nothing, with no interior—non-threatening and non-controversial.” So the public feels betrayed and now everything he has ever done and said, to women, is under the microscope.
So all this has me thinking about privacy and how we take it for granted until it is gone. And I wonder if I will ever face public scrutiny. I certainly don’t seek the limelight but it seems that in this day and age, whether or not you live a public life is beyond your control. Tiger Woods didn’t choose to live a public life. In fact, he clearly chose not to. It was the 911 call that changed everything – a call that for anyone else would have remained in the hands of a single dispatcher. And then Haiti happened. And although they are on extreme ends of the public spectrum, they are linked by our insatiable quest for the anguish and torment of others. We can do nothing for Tiger Woods and his family, so why do we have to know about every gory detail? (Ironically, I was ignoring any details of the story until the privacy issue started to bug me and then it was very easy for me to learn the latest, including his visit to a sex therapy clinic). And why can’t we help the two million homeless or the families and friends of the 200,000 dead without hearing about a sister finding her sibling’s bloated body hanging from a tree (thanks As It Happens)?
I don’t understand our public fascination with the private and the personal. Don’t people realize that it could very easily be their lives that become the next headline on-line, in the papers, on the news? A scary thought. And a personal one that I am willing to make public.
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