RightsCon Toronto 2018

The session will discuss how people from marginalised groups experience surveillance of multiple kinds, including societal and state-sponsored surveillance, in their daily lives. In the context these oppressed groups, a person
belonging to an LGBTQI+ community experiences monitoring differently than a cisgendered person, and similarly a person who identifies themselves as a woman experiences this surveillance differently than that of their male counterparts. While the comparison on which kind of surveillance is worse than the other can’t be made or justified, it’s important to identify this as a gendered issue - one that the people already living at the brink of oppression encounter in their daily lives, be it at the workplace in the form of CCTV cameras strategically angled, or at public spaces in the form of uncomfortable male gaze, or in an attempt to ‘cleanse’ the society by continuous clampdown on gender minority.

This session aims at bringing together vocal activists from diverse backgrounds and orientations to represent their communities and discuss the many struggles that the people face in their daily routines as a result of this continuous surveillance of many forms.

The conversation will last 60 minutes, and five to six panelists will be speaking for 5-7 minutes each, and whereas the last 10 minutes will be reserved for Q&A session with the audience.