France has been enacting various restrictions on the wearing of burkas.
Some people are arguing that this is a sign of wider opposition to Islam. But the official argument is that the wearing of a burka is demeaning to women.
Now I personally agree that burkas are demeaning to women. But my question (leaving aside the issue of opposition to Islam and taking the French government at its word) is how is it any less demeaning to women to have the government telling them what clothes they can wear? It’s just a different social pressure being applied to a woman to make her conform to somebody else’s standards.
That sums it up pretty well: it’s a paternalist solution to paternalism, so if the goal was equality for women, it would be a failure. But the actual goal is winning the support of voters who are uncomfortable with unassimilated Muslims, and on that front it may be successful.
I don’t think that they are demeaning per se, as the religious requirements are for modesty and a burka is nothing if not modest. Same with the hejira/head scarf.
I do agree that the French government is out of bounds in constraining the wearing of the burka. What is next - refusing to let women wear full length skirts, long sleeves and a head scarf by Hermes? [a friend of mine keeps modest dress by a long skirt, long sleeves and a decorative european headscarf]
It’s a good point, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It is clearly a form of subjugation pressed on women by men in a religion that gives men all the power. If a woman could choose to not wear it an suffer no result, then I’m with you. But I don’t think that is at all the case. I think this is one of those instances that society has to “help” a group of people get past some very old, very ingrained, very bigoted misogynistic views.
I don’t really disagree with you, but the idea of banning the burqa is just an awful way of going about it. Just for starters, if we’re viewing the burqa as a sort of abuse inflicted on some Muslim women by their husbands or fathers, then the law is crafted so as to punish the people it alleges to protect. It’s like arresting a woman for being beaten by her boyfriend.
The other problem is that the bill is placing those women who are forced by their male next of kin into an impossible situation. Let us operate under the assumption that these women are in a relationship in which they are effectively unable to make a free decision not to wear a burqa, because their husband/father holds a bizarre and medieval concept of female modesty. But outlawing the burqa isn’t going to change their concept of female modesty, it’s just going to force them to go to further extremes to enforce it. Worst case scenario is a woman has to choose between getting arrested/fined for leaving the house wearing a burqa, or getting beaten by her husband for leaving the house without wearing a burqa. I suspect most men in these situations will simply forbid his wife to leave the house at all, thus completely cutting her off from society at large, and making her even more dependent on her abusive spouse, and that much more unlikely to attempt to better her situation by leaving him. And a significant number of these husbands are going to send their wives back to the home country, removing them from the poisonous secular ideas of the West entirely. Which is no favor to the women, because at least as long as they’re in a Western nation, there are some resources they can use to extricate themselves from an unlivable and likely abusive marriage. There are not, I suspect, a great number of women’s shelters in Saudi Arabia.
So while I agree in general terms with the stated goals of this policy, the actual effects are going to be so entirely counter to those goals that I can only assume that there is some other, unstated goal at work here. I’m pretty sure Marley hit the nail on the head when it comes to what those real motives might be.
There is no difference at all… It is heinous abuse of basic human rights for the state to force women to wear a Burqa in public, it is a heinous abuse of basic human rights for the state to force a women NOT to wear a Burqa in public.
That is about as bigoted and misogynistic a statement as you can get. What you in effect are saying is muslim women (and ONLY Muslim women, not Muslim men, or non-Muslim women, who are apparently strong willed and intelligent enough to make their own decisions about what to wear) are feather-headed and weak-willed and can’t make their own decisions about what they do and do not wear, so the state needs to step in to protect them from themselves.
I started the thread because of a woman recently being told she cannot swim in a “burkini” in a public pool. cite For what it’s worth, the woman in question is a native French citizen who converted to Islam which undercuts the idea that she’s being forced to wear a burka by cultural pressure.
I guess I’m wondering at what point something that comes from the patriarchy becomes diluted enough to be common use. Let me try to explain…
Even our own, somewhat patriarchal culture, has historically restricted what women wear/do. Obviously we don’t get dressed in a vacuum. If women had never heard of high heels, would we suddenly decide to try fashioning them? Whether we’re talking about a woman who wears short skirts because she wants to attract male attention and feel sexy or a woman who tries to cover up cleavage to be taken seriously, doesn’t everything come from our culture at some point?
Now, obviously there’s no Big Brother sending our memos–this is what you are to wear, this is verboten. But our ideas come from somewhere. Eventually, hopefully, there won’t be anyone telling Muslim women that they MUST wear a burqua or cover up as much skin. But even after that point, I’m sure there will be some women just doing it because they feel like being modest. Or because it’s what they know, what they’re used to.
At that point, will it be sexist/patriarchal for them to wear the burqua?
ETA: I read about the burquini and was actually going to post about it as well, but I forgot.
To be honest that is much less dodgy IMO, especially if the pool in question is run by a private company (none of the articles I saw mentioned whether it was or not).
For a private company to say no long legged/armed articles of clothing in their pool is acceptable, and its just acceptable for Muslim patrons to say “screw you then” and take their money to the pool down the road.
For the state to ban women from wearing particular religious clothing using the force of law is not.
I’ll admit I can’t find an explicit statement that it was a government owned pool. However I have read that it was a government regulation which prohibited the burkini so I think the point of ownership is moot.
I’ll also point out that the regulation in question prohibits people from swimming in their clothes and has been declared as a neutral hygiene regulation. I feel this is a very weak argument - people are obviously wearing clothing in the form of swimsuits in pools. So some government official made the decision that a burkini is an article of clothing that does not qualify as a swimsuit despite the fact that it was designed for swimming.
Patronizing as it may seem, yes I DO think that we have to help the poor Muslim women and protect them from themselves. Well actually no, from their religions.
The other alternatives to not banning the burqa is worse, so even though the husband might beat the wife/confine her to the home/send her back to the old country, it takes a stand by the French government that such misogyny will not be tolerated. I feel its perfectly fine to fight a paternalistic religion with paternalism if the paternalism has the effect of reducing the former’s paternalistic rules. Islam isnt about to change its thousand years of history and tradition, but if all Muslims decided the burqa was bad and did away with it, the French could overturn the law in a week.
Sorry, how is not taking that stand worse than a woman being beaten by her husband? And how does taking that stand prevent anyone from being abused? More to the point, how do you morally justify a supposed anti-abuse law that punishes the person being abused, and not the abuser?
But, in practical terms, it wouldn’t simply be tolerated in such a situation, it would be increased. In some cases, certainly, making a point can be a very valuable thing, even at the expense of some, but in order for it to do so it needs to eventually have practical effects.
If anything, I think that proclaiming one thing while, visibly, the effects are worsened will undermine not only the claim but the people making the claim. If you take a stand on an issue, yet in the background actually make the situation worse, not only will that particular stand over time become sour, the next time you step up on an issue, people will be less willing to trust you.
I’d argue that not only would it have negative practical effects, it could easily have negative intangible effects, too, both for the issue and the French government itself.
The problem isn’t the rules, though. If the problem were the rules, the solution would be simple; do this, and ban all other unacceptable rules. But the problem is the mindset, the viewpoint, not the rules. A person who believes his wife should wear a burqa, who is willing to force the issue, isn’t going to have their mind changed by this. If we pass laws forbidding racist language, that doesn’t mean that we no longer have racists; it just means we’ve eliminated the outward appearance of it. And when the holder of the views and victim of the laws are not the same person, it becomes yet more of a problem, because that victim now has to pick between running afoul of the laws or the other person.