Let’s leave aside the fact that a hijab is an item of clothing and thus can’t oppress anyone.
What makes a hijab any different than the snood that Orthodox Jewish women wear? Plenty of fundamentalist Christian sects have strict codes of dress for women. I went to school with a little white girl who wore long dresses straight from Little House of the Prairie, due to her family’s fundamentalist Christianity. Was she oppressed? Are Sikh men oppressed because they are expected to dress a certain way? What about Orthodox Jewish males? Or Orthodox Muslim males?
It is obnoxious that so many conservative American men are beating the “Hijabs are oppressing women!” drum when our own country has never elected a female head of state. Many of these conservative American men belong to religious denominations that encourage misogyny. Many of these conservative American men still cling to old-fashioned notions of gender that actually do oppress women. The Bible says nothing about high heels and makeup being an essential requirement for women’s dress. But a shitload of conservative American men expect women to conform to this look to get their stamp of approval. How is this attitude any different than a Muslim dude expecting “his” woman to wear a hijab when they go out in public?
Would I personally want to wear a hijab? No. But I don’t personally want to wear high heels or makeup either, though I have been pressured to wear these things to conform to certain environments and their standards. If I were in a predominately Muslim environment and it was expected that women wear a hijab, I probably would conform to this custom and I’d probably get used to it after awhile. I don’t think my rights would be infringed upon, unless you think being expected to wear clothing in general is tantamount to having one’s rights infringed upon. I have to dress in “business-casual” at work. Am I being oppressed just because I can’t wear daisy dukes and flip flops? I have to cover my tatas when I go outside. Does this make me a victim of oppression?
Why should hijab-wearers be convinced they are being oppressed by a bunch of conservative white guys who think “feminism” is a bad word and that the world would be better off if women went back to being happy housewives? And if conservative white guys don’t have a problem wearing a hat or a waving a flag that others find symbolic of hate and oppression, why should Muslims be any more responsive to criticism? How does a conservative square the hypocrisy laden in this statement: “I can wear my symbols because FIRST AMENDMENT! But your symbols are anti-freedom so you shouldn’t wear them, you evil terrorist you! I KILL YOU NOW.”
Do conservatives really not see the contradictions here? If you can but they don’t bother you, can you explain why?
Conservatives are full of shit. This is just another attack against Muslims that the Right thinks can be turned against the Left for failing to stop the oppression of women. It’s all bullshit, no substance to it what so ever.
I think of hair as a lot like breasts–in some cultures, treated as a strong secondary sexual characteristic that may need to be concealed, and in others as no big deal. I know damn well that I’d be uncomfortable going topless at the beach and that doesn’t seem misogynistic to me. A hijab is on that same spectrum.
That said, I am pretty uncomfortable with groups that pressure/require women to cover their faces in public. To me, that seems to be qualitatively different–it prevents women from fully interacting with the world and restricts their range of opportunity. I don’t know what to do about it–I’m not in favor of laws that force people to expose themselves–but it’s not the same sort of thing as a hijab.
I agree that the niqab (face veil) is inherently oppressive and anti-woman. To blank out the face is body horror to me. The khimar (kerchief), on the other hand, is nothing strange in cultures the world over. Think how many fashionable western women have worn headscarves (e.g. for cruising in convertibles) with no connection to Islam. Like the Jewish tichel, the Muslim versions can be really pretty. I share MandaJO’s qualitative distinction between the headscarf and the face veil.
I was under the impression that hijab did not cover the face. Still, clothes don’t oppress people, women can wear what they want, and this is not a real controversy, it is just made up by right wing hate mongers.
Anything that societal pressure of any kind requires Category A to do that Category B needn’t do is presumptively oppressive in my view.
That goes doubly when:
The categories are sex or gender based
The requirements relate to superficial matters of appearance or dress that should be left to individual choice
What is required is based on notions of sexual purity, such as modesty or chastity
Violations are subject to real punishments, whether legal or social
Of course I would never interfere with an individual woman’s choice to cover her hair or face should she choose to, but so long as that choice is made in conjunction with a pervasively misogynistic system such as Orthodox Judaism or Islam, I will have my doubts that the choice was really made freely and I will strongly feel that the practice helps perpetuate inequality on our society.
Of course, conservative Christians should look to themselves while accusing another religion of perpetuating misogyny and inequality.
It depends. Are the wearers wearing it solely, or mostly, because of social pressure to do so, to maintain a religious and cultural tradition just because “that’s what women are supposed to do?” If so, it’s maybe not exactly “oppression” but certainly an example of women being pigeonholed into a gender role that they might not want. If a woman takes it off in public while her husband or father are around, are they going to disapprove, and make that disapproval known? If so, then yeah, it’s an example of women being pressured to conform. In that particular case.
If a woman is totally cool with wearing it, is proud of wearing it, and does so because she thinks it’s the right thing to do - because SHE thinks it’s the right thing to do, not just because the men think it - then hell no it’s not a form of oppression. People are free to make their own choices. Religious belief is a choice. Practicing a form of modesty, whether out of religious belief or just for its own sake, is a choice.
I’m guessing there are a lot of Muslim women, and Pentecostal women, and Jewish women, and Amish women, who prefer to wear certain religious garments and who are proud to do so. I’m also guessing there are a lot of them who wish they didn’t have to wear them, but do it out of fear of being ostracized or worse. Hell, there are probably Jewish men in Brooklyn who wish they didn’t have to wear the black coats and hats, but they do it anyway because of familial pressure. This stuff is just a part of life, part of the choices we all make to belong or not belong to certain groups…I don’t think it rises to the level of “oppression”.
The full burka or niqab getup completely obscuring everything but the eyes (and some cases even covering them with a barely-translucent cloth) is another story…I think that’s wrong, and absolutely a form of putting women into a lower status. It’s also problematic for a society that expects peoples’ faces to be visible (and no, I don’t think that expectation is unreasonable.) It would be fucked up if I went around in a black robe and a mask in public, and “it’s my religion” wouldn’t be an acceptable justification for it.
The way the word is commonly used nowadays, it’s synonymous with kerchief. Originally in Arabic ḥijāb meant a screen, curtain, or room partition. The word occurs in the Qur’ān as a metaphor for sunset: “The sun went behind a ḥijāb.” Its only other occurrence in the Qur’ān is an order for the Prophet’s wives to speak to male visitors from behind a ḥijāb. In this case it totally means a curtain. Somehow from the latter usage the modern sense of the word has been spun out to where it just means a kerchief or similar head covering. So, to make a long story short, you had the correct impression.
ETA: The actual word that the Qur’ān uses for kerchief is khimār. It appears in the plural form khumur. For some weird reason modern Muslims have substituted the word ḥijāb. That’s all I know about it.
To me what’s a problem is, on one hand, expecting women to be insulated and separate from the rest of the world. And on the other, that there are no similar restrictions for men. But I have a problem with those two things (together or separate) no matter what form they take: the niqab is just a more-visible expression of that gender-based oppression than others such as not allowing immigrant wives access to anything which may facilitate learning the local language.
I don’t feel that articles of clothing oppress women. But they can be a sign that women are being oppressed. And that goes both ways; women being told they can’t wear a hijab, a niqab, or an abaya can be just as oppressive as women being told they must wear them.
I didn’t read the (presumably conservative) article linked in the OP. I do think that, at some level ALL of the various religious oriented female coverings (shapeless body dresses, full face coverings, etc) are oppressive, not just those used by some Muslims. The fact that women are often the ones fighting for the things doesn’t change that, IMHO. I recall a friend of mine who did some volunteer work in Africa. He was telling me that, often, in places where female circumcision still happens it’s the young girls female relatives who are urging her, or even forcing her to have it done. So, that’s not oppression, right? Her own female relatives…often her mother, aunts, maybe grandmother…are the ones urging her to get it done, and they are female, so males aren’t the ones forcing it, so no oppression…right? I say…wrong. Just because the women have been so indoctrinated that they think they want it, doesn’t mean there isn’t any oppression.
I get that there is an issue with this. What if the women in question really, honestly DO want it (to fit in with their friends, family, society, whatever)? Yeah…that’s a tough one. It could be oppressive to stop them, as happening in some European countries, and force them to not be able to wear what they want too. Life is…complicated.
(No idea if any of this has much to do with the articles linked in the OP. If not…sorry about that. Carry on)
I’ll join in with the gang that thinks there’s a world of difference between covering your hair and covering your face. I do think requirements that women cover their faces are oppressive. But I don’t see any harm in a head scarf. Like someone said, some societies (including mine) require women to cover their breasts, others, their hair. I don’t see any real difference in the amount of oppression involved, and think both are fine.
I see women wearing head coverings that completely cover their hair all the time, and they seem like perfectly ordinary people who are engaged with society, just like their menfolk.
This is pretty much exactly what I think, and really well put. Any pressure of any kind like that I see negatively, and someone being punished - whether physically or through an excessive (and yes, this is highly subjective) level of shunning or other social retributive actions - is far worse.
And yeah, as long as the person exists in a society and system where that is pervasive, I view claims of it being voluntary suspicious; I have doubts that a person in such a society is capable of making a free choice on such a thing. Of course, that goes into the question of what a ‘free choice’ on such a thing even is, so that has some issues there as well.
Requiring women to wear a hijab is oppressive. Women choosing to wear it on their own (for whatever reason, including “that’s what’s done in our culture”) is not. It’s not always possible for an outsider to distinguish between these two cases.
This is an active issue in our society now. There are men who want to wear women’s clothes and be treated non-discriminatorily. And of course in the recent past women have fought to wear trousers and be treated equally.
It’s the difference between wearing a snood or a yarmulke and being forced to have a Star of David visible on your clothes all the time.
Also…I think it’s also a matter of not knowing the difference between a “hijab” (head scarf) and a “burqa” (full body covering).