Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash

When Dave Eggers published The Circle in 2013, some readers dismissed it as dystopian satire — a cautionary tale about a fictional Google–Amazon–Facebook mashup gone too far. But more than a decade later, Eggers’ world feels less like satire and more like a mirror.

Mae Holland, the novel’s protagonist, begins her job at The Circle as an ordinary young woman just looking for stability. Within months, she is manipulated, monitored, and molded into the “perfect” transparent employee. Her transformation — from someone with a private self to someone whose every move is broadcast — is chilling. But it’s also deeply gendered.

Women, especially, are expected to perform transparency. Whether it’s the constant curating of Instagram posts, the pressure to “overshare” online, or the surveillance of women’s bodies in schools, workplaces, and public policy, Eggers’ dystopia echoes the lived reality of gendered visibility today.

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Privacy Isn’t Just a Tech Issue — It’s a Gender Issue

In The Circle, Mae is manipulated into giving up her privacy bit by bit. At first, her coworkers shame her for not posting enough about her life: Why didn’t she update about her father’s MS? Why didn’t she share her kayaking trip? Their guilt trips echo a dynamic women know well: being made to feel selfish or withholding if they don’t share themselves for others’ consumption.

This is what philosopher Simone de Beauvoir warned of when she wrote that women are historically positioned as “the Other” — not autonomous subjects, but beings defined by how much of themselves they offer to others. In Mae’s case, “sharing” isn’t an option; it’s compulsory.

Sound familiar? Influencer culture, mommy vlogging, OnlyFans, even corporate demands that women perform relatability online — all place women in a loop where their value is measured by their visibility. Transparency becomes both a labor and a form of control.

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The Male Gaze Goes Digital

Eggers shows how technology doesn’t erase patriarchal dynamics — it amplifies them. The Circle’s demand for “SeeChange” cameras everywhere recalls John Berger’s observation in Ways of Seeing: women are taught to survey themselves constantly because they are always being watched.

Mae’s SeeChange necklace, positioned “over her heart,” becomes a metaphor for how surveillance penetrates intimacy itself. She can no longer distinguish between her authentic self and her curated self — because both are designed for the watcher.

In today’s world, tech companies market wearable devices, home cameras, and AI-driven tracking apps as tools of empowerment. But for women, these technologies often double as tools of control: from abusive partners using Find My iPhone to stalk, to workplaces monitoring productivity, to governments surveilling abortion seekers. Like Mae, many women are told this surveillance is for their own good.

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Manipulation as a Feminized Experience

Throughout the novel, Mae’s superiors manipulate her by framing compliance as care: care for the community, care for the sick, care for the disabled, care for those “missing out.” This feminized rhetoric — positioning guilt, empathy, and social connection as levers of control — highlights how women are disproportionately targeted by “soft” forms of manipulation.

In tech today, this looks like algorithms that sell women diet programs, fertility trackers, and “self-care” products under the guise of empowerment — while mining their data and monetizing their insecurities. Mae’s indoctrination into transparency reflects how women’s labor, emotions, and even private lives are packaged into profit.

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Why The Circle Still Matters

Mae’s final transformation — publicly confessing even her private bathroom conversations — is the logical endpoint of a system that treats privacy as selfish and surveillance as salvation. Eggers warns us of a future where no one can hide. But for women, especially, that future is already here.

From reproductive surveillance post-Roe v. Wade, to the expectation that women brand themselves online to advance in male-dominated industries, transparency isn’t neutral. It’s gendered.

What The Circle makes clear is that Big Tech’s promises of connection and safety often mask deeper structures of control — structures that have always sought to discipline women’s bodies, voices, and choices. The novel may be fiction, but its warnings feel eerily nonfictional in a world where privacy is privilege, and visibility is demanded at all costs.