Digital surveillance in post‐coronavirus China: A feminist view on the price we pay

In this piece, I look at the question — are we worth saving and if so at what cost? — through a Foucault‐inspired feminist lens on surveillance. I examine a case that illustrates how digital surveillance, despite being perceived as a successful development in China’s response to COVID‐19, reinforces the country’s gender‐biased discourses on contagious disease and sexuality. In doing so, I want to emphasize that the states of exception that governments can establish and extend are not gender‐neutral. Given the feminist interest in and responsibility for life, this fact compels us to react to states of exception from a freedom‐enabled gender perspective. It is to be hoped that this perspective would then help to promote socio‐political practices that allowed society to challenge the normalizing male gaze induced by digital surveillance.