Paper short abstract:

In seemingly uncertain and insecure times in urban spaces, gendered safety gadgets and Tik Tok videos are being used as means of protection over the body. This paper will address the materialisation and digitization of safety as a gendered experience in Brooklyn, and the impact this has on the body.

Paper long abstract:

‘I don’t have my taser with me but I’ve got My Kitty.’ Marisol

In times of insecurity and uncertainty in urban spaces, my research in Brooklyn has found women and non-binary folks turning to non-lethal weaponization in the form of safety gadgets; self-defence weapons, such as tasers, pepper sprays, alarms and kubotans. These tools are frequently advertised directly to women and are gendered as such, from pink spikey cat ears attached to key rings, to cute mushroom-shaped tasers. This paper will address the complex relationship between gendered-safety-gadgets and their user’s conceptions of their body, as both gendered and supposedly insecure. This paper will explore how this connects to the digitization of safety, as these gadgets are often advertised and purchased via Tik Tok. My interlocutors also use Tik Tok to watch and post videos about their experiences of gender-based violence in the city, such as harassment, stalking and assault, posted as a means of empowerment, to warn others, and to engage in community conversation.

This paper will address how safety, as a gendered experience, has been materialised and digitalised, and explore the implications this has for how the body is envisioned in urban spaces. It will also ask, do these Tik Tok videos and safety gadgets create agency or anxiety? Are they technologies of care or rather do they reaffirm the very sense of insecurity and anxiety that they attempt to dispel? A question that is particularly pertinent in the context of the US and its constructed atmosphere of fear.