“Why Some Women Don’t Actually Have Privacy Rights”

Jess Brooks
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

“In her new book, The Poverty of Privacy Rights, Boston University law professor Khiara M. Bridges tackles the wider phenomenon underlying “Jane Crow” practices. She argues that poor women in America simply do not have privacy rights. They do not have a choice but to let the government collect private information about their reproductive and sexual choices, and physically intrude into the private spaces where they raise their kids. CityLab spoke to Bridges recently about these intrusions imposed on women who need government assistance…

What this book does is it makes legal arguments about the nature of privacy rights in the present moment. It argues against the idea that that poor mothers have privacy before they actually accept the benefits, or that they will retain privacy — like wealthy women — if they don’t take government benefits. That’s just not the reality…

The physical space in which poor people live their lives are these neighborhoods that are heavily regulated — there’s a heavy police presence in these neighborhoods…

The other response I would have to that argument is if we really think that doing this survey of folks’ sexual history, history with intimate violence, mental illness, homelessness, job histories — if we really think that doing these surveys actually helps us protect children from abuse and neglect — then we wouldn’t just reserve that for poor people. We would be asking these questions of everybody — rich or poor, man or woman. And yet, we have no law mandating that for wealthier people. We are ignoring children of more affluent folks.”

I’m not thrilled with this term “Jane Crow”, that’s clearly just for media attention. It invites a lot of unhelpful comparisons and puts an awkward frame one these issues. I wish the author had just cone up with a new term.

Class Conscious

name in progress…. Social and economic class, and all the weird places it shows up (ex. the long list of people who get to enter an airplane first)

Jess Brooks

Written by

A collection blog of all the things I am reading and thinking about; OR, my attempt to answer my internal FAQs.

Class Conscious

name in progress…. Social and economic class, and all the weird places it shows up (ex. the long list of people who get to enter an airplane first)

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