I just saw a segment on television that showed a young Muslim girl talking about her reasons for wearing the hijab. She said that she wears it for her own self-respect. I thought; “Hmmm, so it’s empowering.”
Then she said that it frees her to concentrate on developing internally, rather than obsessing about her appearance. I was like; “Woo, right on sister!”
Then she said; “It also makes me less likely to be a target for sexual harassment.”
Woah hold up stop the presses!
Isn’t that perpetuating the notion that men are animalistic brutes who can’t help themselves, and that women who don’t cover are “asking for it”?
When you start going on about how women’s beauty is “precious”, that strays dangerously into “women are property” territory.
I would never accuse a Muslim woman of being misogynistic because she wears a hijab. I don’t think that putting on a headcovering is intrinsically anti-feminist. My problem is; that particular reason for wearing the hijab doesn’t sound very empowering to me.
I would, however, like to hear other points of view. Is there another way that the “modesty” argument can be construed from a feminist perspective?
Not in my worthless opinion. She seemed simply to say that she perceives herself as safer in her hijab. She added none of the editorial baggage that you added for her. Why not just take her at her word and presume nothing weak or ulterior about her?
Where is she from?
Certainly the final point is precisely an issue. If she’s from the Middle East, the reality is that is indeed the societies’ most common belief. If you don’t cover up, you’re asking for it. Macho.
If she’s a US convert or brought up here, it is still likely to be a factor. Among the religious, I’ve often heard that logic put forward.
Practically speaking, what does that mean? Well, in the US not much since so few Muslim girls wear the hijab as far as I could ever tell. In the MENA region… Well, it’s all well and nice to critique her and wish that macho attitudes putting all the sexual blame on any tensions on women were not extent. But they are, and there are worse issues which need to be addressed before one gets to that level of subtelty.
As for why I am taking the editorial baggage, LIb. Cause I’ve lived in the region, I’ve heard the justifications. Our editorialist is right on. However, on the other hand, it is a relatively minor point among the world of much more serious issues.
I gladly and willingly acquiesce to your well-documented experience in the matter, Col. Thanks for the heads-up, and welcome back. We’ve missed you.
I should note that in re the region:
I’ve known women who don’t believe that they “deserve” to be harassed by men because they chose not to wear the hijab or a bloody tent, but don the hijab (head scarf of some kind) as a prophalactic measure. Better part of valor because unfortunately young men use the attitude to justify beastly behaviour.
I’m glad to say I’ve had the opp to berate some, in their language and idiom which is doubly humiliating.
On the other hand, I’ve known women who don’t wear the hijab although they feel it a religious plus to do so for the same reasons, that is they don’t want to don the hijab out of hypocrisy but out of internal feelings. So as a kinda stick it in the eye of the conservatives, they go hijabless.
It is a strange world we live in.
Agh misspellings. I am cursed.
And thank you Lib. I plan only to post on regional issues as I think I can be helpful.
Collounsbury wrote:
Speaking of which, isn’t the same attitude prevalent in Israel? I.e. that a woman who gets sexually harassed was “asking for it” because she wasn’t wearing, oh, an old burlap sack?
Actually to be frank, the attitude is rampant throughout the whole Med. basin as far as I could ever tell. Of course I am a man, so I’m sure that I perhaps noticed only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Xtian, Muslim, Jew, Druze etc. etc., the majority seem to share this attitude.
Rather goes to show that we can’t simply explain these things through religion, it all gets distorted through the lens of culture. For all that, current interpretation of the Quran --for all that one can IMHO easily achieve more liberal readings-- gives something of a green light to beastly behaviour which hardly helps.
That being said, of course I don’t want to imply that everyone holds such attitudes or perhaps better, acts on them. I’ve had female friends come to visit me in the region and they had fine times on their own --I worked too much to be a good host I am afraid.
kung fu lola, I’m assuming you cover your breasts when you leave the house. Why? It’s your choice, isn’t it? But it’s also the prevailing custom of the society you live in. If you chose not to cover, and were sexually harassed, it wouldn’t be your fault, but you would be very aware that you could reduce your chances of getting unwanted attention by covering when you went out.
I think the phenomenon of Western breast-covering could be an instructive comparison for this debate, primarily because there is no objective reason for it, much like the custom of hijab, and yet we take it for granted as if things could be no other way. If breast-covering were suddenly outlawed, Western women would be as mad as Iranian women were when the Shah tried to force them to abandon hijab. Could we argue that women in the West are forced by outmoded patriarchal attitudes to cover their breasts against their will? Or if not against their will, then against common sense?
Actually, the breast covering comparison is sort of an interesting one. I’m not quite sure that it’s an exact match, though. I work at a place with a “business casual” dress code (i.e., no tie), but if I showed up for work one day bare-chested, I’m sure it would be seen as seriously inappropriate. I might not actually be violating the public indecency laws like one of my female colleagues would, but I imagine I’d be sent home to go put on some clothes. So, there’s a difference between how bare-chestedness is seen for men and women, but it’s not completely black and white–much of the time, men aren’t really socially free to walk around topless either. (“No shirt, no shoes, no service” is not gender-specific.) I think in some Middle Eastern countries, men do wear head coverings, no? If both men and women wear head coverings (but neither sex is expected to cover their faces), then I would say that region simply has different expectations about personal modesty than we do in the U.S.(and maybe also a different climate–shielding yourself from the Sun is simply a good idea in the tropics). If maybe men are a little more free to go without the traditional head covering, that would seem to be hypocritical, but not perhaps any more so than our own society’s rules about going shirtless–frowned upon in many situations for everyone, but considerably more so for women than for men. If women are expected to cover not just their heads but their faces, then that’s clearly going a step beyond what men are expected to do.
I also agree that banning head coverings, or even full facial veils, is different from repealing laws which mandated them. I don’t think anyone should be made to wear a head covering, but I don’t think anyone should be forced to not wear one either.
And as far as that goes, Western (or more specifically American) attitudes could probably use reforming as well. Perhaps we should amend “public exposure” laws to make everyone’s chests equal. This still wouldn’t mean female office workers would be walking around topless, any more than male office workers do now. But should we be more accepting of things like that on a beach? Probably. For that matter, our attitudes about total nudity for both sexes at beaches and the like are probably pretty silly. (And all that said, I’d feel very self-conscious walking around nekkid in public, and while I wouldn’t harass anyone, I’d definitely notice a topless woman in a way I wouldn’t notice some male construction worker or whatever who’d taken his shirt off–I’ve been very well-conditioned by my society’s rules for this sort of thing.)
Israel? Home of the bare midriff and the pierced eyebrow? I see you haven’t met many Israeli girls, tracer.
Sure, you’ve got idiot judges and neandathral men in Israel, just like everywhere else. And yes, the country is about 5-10 years behind the U.S. curve in PC/sensitivity. But you’re talking about a society as varied as yours - we’ve got our bible-thumpers, we’ve got our hedonists, and we’ve got everything in between.
You know, the Arabs don’t call Israel a “Western” incursion for nothing.
I’d just like to add that the vast majority of the Israeli population is secular and does not cover their head. This goes for both males and females. While in Orthodox enclaves, it may be considered “immodest” for women to be out without their shoulders or head covered. For that matter, it may be immodest for men to be out like that as well. But, the Israeli Orthodox, when out on the street in general, would be wasting their time to criticize secular women or men for being immodest. Let me also say that there is a significant amount of “machismo” in Israel as compared to the US, but I think it is no worse than Italy or France.
I wouldn’t read too much into her particular statement but the most fundamentalist muslims…like all fundamentalist religious people…believe that if a woman doesn’t conform to their particular strictures of modesty then she is partly to blame for the rape.
http://islam.tc/ask-imam/index.php
There may be a proportion of women who voluntarily wear the hijab but I’m a little skeptical about whether or not that group outnumbers the group that is more or less FORCED to wear the hijab. I remember reading an interview with an Iranian woman of very poor status that turned to the interviewer and talked about how she would love to just feel the sun on her head for once. I also think that an overwhelming majority of women would rather not be wearing the burqa. My cousin’s wife is a muslim (we’re hindu) and she absolutely refuses to put it on her head.
The Quran states that modesty is a virtue for both men and women, and asks that all believers “lower their gaze”. There are people who feel that this should apply only to women, but their views have no backing in the Quran. Furthermore, in most countries where women are veiled this is a cultural, and not a religious, practice. It existed in these areas before Islam and among non-Muslims.
In Pakistan, for example, village women tend to drape their shawls over their heads when in company. This is part of an age-old tradition. However, city-dwelling women mock and deride the custom of hijab, which is seen as antiquated and extreme. There is a very small minority of Pakistani women who veil themselves. Some of them actually developed the habit in Western countries, where Muslim women see the hijab as an external sign of their faith and believe that it identifies them as belonging to the Muslim community.
When a well-known Pakistan actress performed in a play ridiculing the hijab, a girl wrote in to a local newspaper to criticise her. She said that the actress, being a pretty woman, should know how men stare at young girls and how immodest and “dirty” it makes the girls feel. The hijab, she said, forces men to be modest by shielding girls from their gaze. But why should Muslim women be responsible for the virtuousness of Muslim men?
Sexual harassment is quite common where I live. Men hang out in large groups on the streets ogling girls, trying to engage them in conversation, groping them and sometimes physically assaulting them. The tighter the girl’s clothes, the more make-up she wears, the more likely they are to notice her and to interfere. I don’t know whether this is because they feel they have more chance of getting somewhere, or because they feel that she is asking for attention by dressing the way she does. The hijab proclaims that its wearer is not interested in the sexual advances of strange men. It effectively shields one from an immodest gaze. There is another way to do that - to stay at home. I am glad to know that I have the power of removing myself from the attention of those who seek to torment me, but it does not make me feel particularly empowered.
Are nuns’ habits basically the same thing?
Basically the same thing as what, Libertarian? Nuns who wear the habit (and make no mistake about it, if you see a nun in habit today, it is because she chooses to wear it) wear it in honor of Mary, who has her head covered in all the pictures you see of her. Presumably, Mary covered her head in accordance with the customs of the Jewish community where she lived during the time that she lived there. Many Orthodox Jewish women (and men) wear something on their heads even today according to the traditions of their communities. Muslims too. So if that’s what you mean by “Is it the same thing?” then I’d say that it’s similar.