4 Sexing the Internet
Censorship, Surveillance, and the Body Politic(s) of Malaysia
Heike Jensen, Jac sm Kee, Gayathry Venkiteswaran, and Sonia Randhawa
The scholarly investigation of digital censorship and surveillance has moved from an
initial focus on fact fi nding — what was fi ltered, who was under surveillance, and how
this was accomplished technologically — to more contextualized investigations of the
political, economic, and social dimensions of specifi c censorship and surveillance
practices. A gender-sensitive approach is arguably more important now than ever for
fully understanding the meanings and struggles over censorship and surveillance
regimes. For instance, consider the central fi nding reported by Jonathan Zittrain and
John Palfrey: “ The Internet content blocked for social reasons — commonly pornography, information about gay and lesbian issues, and information about sex education —
is more likely to be the same across countries than the political and religious
information to which access is blocked. ”
1 Why should this be the case? And which
logic has encouraged the common suppression of such disparate content?
The logic at issue is the logic underlying the nation-state and its task of perpetuating itself through the reproduction and renegotiation of its internal social hierarchies.
We use Malaysia as a case study to point out some of these dimensions of national
reproduction, tied as they are to the reproduction of citizens within national borders.
At issue here is a nation ’ s patriarchal policing of gender roles and their appropriate
forms of (potentially procreative) sexuality, from an overall heteronormativity to
fi nely tuned divisions based on class, race, region, and other salient markers.
2 This
policing has been increasingly transferred to the digital realm, because this space has
in unprecedented ways accommodated both the proliferation of alternative takes on
the established gender and sexual order and the policing of citizens through censorship and surveillance.
Gender-sensitive research is thus urgently needed in this fi eld of study, and our
exploratory chapter is meant to chart some of the prime issues that need to be tackled.
3
To begin with, a change of perspective is required to see that the social issues in digital
censorship and surveillance are not “ soft ” and relatively unimportant compared to
“ hard ” issues such as political or religious persecution, but are in fact the central
matters that go directly to the root of the social fabric. Attention to the reproduction
Censorship, Surveillance, and the Body Politic(s) of Malaysia
Heike Jensen, Jac sm Kee, Gayathry Venkiteswaran, and Sonia Randhawa
The scholarly investigation of digital censorship and surveillance has moved from an
initial focus on fact fi nding — what was fi ltered, who was under surveillance, and how
this was accomplished technologically — to more contextualized investigations of the
political, economic, and social dimensions of specifi c censorship and surveillance
practices. A gender-sensitive approach is arguably more important now than ever for
fully understanding the meanings and struggles over censorship and surveillance
regimes. For instance, consider the central fi nding reported by Jonathan Zittrain and
John Palfrey: “ The Internet content blocked for social reasons — commonly pornography, information about gay and lesbian issues, and information about sex education —
is more likely to be the same across countries than the political and religious
information to which access is blocked. ”
1 Why should this be the case? And which
logic has encouraged the common suppression of such disparate content?
The logic at issue is the logic underlying the nation-state and its task of perpetuating itself through the reproduction and renegotiation of its internal social hierarchies.
We use Malaysia as a case study to point out some of these dimensions of national
reproduction, tied as they are to the reproduction of citizens within national borders.
At issue here is a nation ’ s patriarchal policing of gender roles and their appropriate
forms of (potentially procreative) sexuality, from an overall heteronormativity to
fi nely tuned divisions based on class, race, region, and other salient markers.
2 This
policing has been increasingly transferred to the digital realm, because this space has
in unprecedented ways accommodated both the proliferation of alternative takes on
the established gender and sexual order and the policing of citizens through censorship and surveillance.
Gender-sensitive research is thus urgently needed in this fi eld of study, and our
exploratory chapter is meant to chart some of the prime issues that need to be tackled.
3
To begin with, a change of perspective is required to see that the social issues in digital
censorship and surveillance are not “ soft ” and relatively unimportant compared to
“ hard ” issues such as political or religious persecution, but are in fact the central
matters that go directly to the root of the social fabric. Attention to the reproduction