Toilet cams underline women’s vulnerability
No place safe, says lecturer on gender
Various incidents of women and girls being surreptitiously recorded while using the bathroom — including in public locations — give them one more reason to feel constantly on guard, says the executive director of the University of Regina Women’s Centre.
Jill Arnott, who also teaches in Women’s and Gender Studies at the university, said incidents such as those that surfaced this week — similar to instances of revenge porn — most often appear both targeted and gendered.
“I think all of these things sort of function in the same way, and that’s to keep women feeling on guard and unsafe, vulnerable in all kinds of spaces,” she said. “I mean, you can’t go to the bathroom in a public place without being fearful and victimized.”
Police released information earlier this week about two incidents in which cameras were found in the women’s bathroom at the Tim Hortons at 5855 Rochdale Blvd. Police said 17 females, ranging from youths to seniors, were recorded using the toilet on Jan. 20.
A camera was spotted that day and was subsequently seized by police. On Feb. 3, staff saw a man entering the women’s bathroom and they immediately after found a second camera.
Police have since charged a man — not connected with the business — with two counts of voyeurism.
Police in Saskatchewan have dealt with other cases of voyeurism in bathrooms, from a Carnduff business owner who installed a camera, to a Regina man who set up a two-way mirror and a camera to record his step-granddaughter, to a Saskatoon case in which a man placed a camera in a gas station bathroom. A different Regina Tim Hortons was the location of a camera-in-bathroom incident in 2014, on that occasion involving an employee as the offender.
Arnott said these sorts of violations of privacy and bodily integrity serve to “keep women and girls in some measure in their place.
“You know, just to say that we can’t expect that sort of basic level of dignity,” she said. “We’re conditioned to always be afraid, to be on guard, to cross the street when there’s somebody walking down the street, to be careful in the bathroom. So the way that you experience your whole life then is different than it is for people who are not vulnerable in that way.”
Arnott said such attitudes have become so entrenched in our society that few women even think twice while doing things to try to protect themselves — whether it’s avoiding unlit areas or keeping a set of keys handy as a self-defence tool.
“I think we’re not even conscious all the time of that sort of vulnerability and fear because we’re so used to it,” she said.
Arnott questioned what that sort of ongoing tension does psychologically to females over time. But she also said cases like these highlight that in many cases of female victimization, there is nothing the woman or girl could have done differently to avoid the situation.
“What cases like this maybe do is to hammer home the fact ... it doesn’t matter if it’s public, if it’s well-lit, if it’s in your own home, if it’s in a back alley, if it’s in a bathroom inside of a restaurant,” she said. “Really, women and girls have ... a profound and inherent lack of safety. There’s a lack of even the expectation of safety. And women and girls know that.”
Arnott has no doubt most men, as well as women, see it as wrong to record people in an intimate way without their knowledge or consent. For those who think it isn’t a big deal, she urges them to think of the women they care about and imagine them being placed in that type of situation.