Veils

[andrewducker]

While recognising the rights of people to wear whatever the fuck they like, my general reaction to women who choose to wear facial coverings is much the same as it would be if black people chose to wear symbolic chains on their wrists.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

My feelings exactly.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Not quite sure what you mean, unless you're being knowingly provocative. To do the latter would be little more than a deliberate reminder of historical oppression. But not all Muslim women feel wearing their veil identifies them as victims of oppression; many see it as a liberation, freeing them from the male gaze. Surely analogising the two is not all that appropriate.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

I believe this is called "bling".

[andrewducker]

The only reason to need to be free from male gaze is if that gaze is oppressive.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I congratulate you on your cultural insight.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

The central legend in my faith features torture and execution; many people chose to wear an image of the device used. My reaction to the symbols people choose to wear is mild.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Funny, you hit the nail on the head: that's precisely why it creeps me out.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Which is often why they willingly wear the veil, to save them from having to decide every time a guy looks at them "is this man oppressing me?". I'm all for veil-wearing if it's what Moslem women prefer to do, but I've never heard of blacks willingly wearing chains on their wrists as something that connects them with their racial history, or as a deliberate reminder to whites, or merely as a fashion statement. Widening the point a little further, Jews don't go around wearing the Star of David in such a way that it's only meant as a specific reminder of the Holocaust to everyone else. Veil-wearing is not a self-stigmatising act or a declaration of victimhood.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Sure: that's your privilege.

Now imagine there are some extremist Christian fundamentalist groups out there who demand that people don't just where a discreet crucifix, but carry around a three-foot-high piece of wood, on their back, at all times. In particular, they insist that women carry such crosses around. And they take to intimidating or beating up women who don't. Not carrying your crucifix is taken by their followers as a sign of godlessness, and godless women are Asking For It, so the usual shit ensues in rape trials and elsewhere.

There are other countries where these extremists are making life such a misery for everyone that even non-Christians are hauling their lumps of dead tree about: if you don't, you can be beaten up on the streets or worse. There are non-Christian women, moslem or jewish or atheist or whatever, who've been murdered for not carrying their crucifix at all times. The extremists make no bones about their ambition of spreading their practices to the entire world.

Men, of course, may carry crucifixes, but they aren't expected to go the whole nine yards, nor are they beaten up for not carrying one.

Now. Is this symbol's significance private, or public? And does it apply to the wearer as a matter of choice, or is it an imposition?

[fjm.livejournal.com]

As dougs points out... a crucifix?

But I've worn a pink triangle in my time. It was a very powerful and liberating symbol for me.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Interested. In what way did you feel it was liberating?

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Agreed, wholeheartedly. No argument at all. I make that choice, I have that privilege.

The original post was about people who choose to wear these symbols, and it's the original post to which I was addressing my comment.

A religion which makes demands about the symbols of religion, which imposes those demands on others, where it's done to the extent where it's unhelpful, makes no sense at all to me. Give me a religion which values the underlying concepts instead (such as, in my case, recognising the love of God and reflecting it in the way that my life is lived) and it makes rather more sense to me.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I don't know, having never been in the situation myself. But I thought, what if someone suddenly told me that covering my breasts was a symbol of oppression, and that now I was no longer able to wear any clothes from the chest up. I would feel deeply uncomfortable at being forced to go bare in public, especially in the presence of men.

I don't know for sure, but I can imagine that some women would feel the same way about face veils. Except perhaps with even stronger feelings about it, since veils are mixed in with religion as well as cultural expectations.

I think that if it's really oppression we're concerned with, then it should be a free choice and not an order from above. Yes, it will take more time to catch on, but I think it would be a kinder transition.

(To be fully accurate, I think that your analogy to slave chains would be more accurate if you said that black people _immediately after they were freed_ continued to wear slave chains. Because women who wear veils have actually experiened the oppression that the veils are thought to symbolize, which makes them more than a simple fashion statement.)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

why is looking at someone oppressing them? even if it is looking on them with desire?

but...

sigh, sometimes I can think that it might be nice to take that out of human interactions, but then we'd not be human. We wouldn't be alive.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

It said "fuck you", You can say what the hell you like, I'm still me, I like me, and you're just going to have to work it out for yourself".

I used to counsel and the advice I gave people was "never begin the act of coming out with sounding apologetic, it gives people an opening..."

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Do I get a certificate?

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Certificate of Achievement LJ Cultural Insight Board This is to certify that drjon has satisfied the board that the levels of Cultural Insight on display are such that congratulations in the form of a comment in reply are a suitable level of reward.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I shall treasure it always.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I've known others who have worn the pink triangle when coming out, but being rather unpoliticized they were indulging in little more than a fashion statement, or at best an early self-conscious attempt to mark themselves out as 'the only gay in the village'. They were also not, AFAIK, Jewish, which leads me into sensitively asking would you have considered extending this "fuck you" to wearing a yellow star, identifying you as gay and Jewish? Or would that have been historically politicizing your coming out to an unnecessary degree?

The point I have issue with in Andrew's opener is the equating of a real act of choice with imaginary declaration of victimhood. I worry that the whole nationwide veil debate is slipping into a massive Daily Mail editorial and is blurring that line, identifying people as victims of cultural oppression when that is clearly not how many veil-wearing Islamic women feel.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The untidyness in the situation is that not all Moslem cultures are that out of control about veiling. If some women want to wear burkas in countries where they wouldn't be abused for not wearing them, I'm not sure that it's reasonable to blame them for supporting the places they're not living in. A burka is cloth--it doesn't give details of what the person wearing it is thinking.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Shall I be the first in this thread to point out the wearing of a crucifix and Christianity being comparable in this context?

I think the real point is that the veil is something that sets up a barrier. Wherever there are barriers between cultures, there are usually people too lazy to try and overcome them and integrate. The inability to read someones body-language also makes for lack of trust. Try covering your mouth when talking to someone and see how soon those around you start wondering what you're talking about and if it's them. The hiding of something usually inspires people to be paranoid.

Actually, on a related matter, does anyone remember the old Army adverts on TV where it asks how to gain the trust of the guy in the village with the only clean well? (Answer was to take off your sunglasses so he can see your eyes as this is a sign of trust...)

[ripperlyn.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go with the 'deliberately antagonistic' vote, as the question you're posing doesn't acknowledge any of the many factors that contribute to a woman's choosing to wear a veil.

Where my issue comes in is when the choice is made *for* a person as to what parts of their body they may or may not show. And Jack Straw's behaviour, which I suspect is what you're talking about here, is no less oppressive than individuals or regimes that make wearing a veil a requirement for women.

In the end, it's all about choice.

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

People don't wear huge great crosses that cover their faces though, do they?

Well, except football fans.

[mirukux.livejournal.com]

why is looking at someone oppressing them? even if it is looking on them with desire?

i wonder the same thing, which is why i see that kind of reasoning as a form of defeatism.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

So long as you realise that's your reaction. Where I have a problem with this debate is where people (Mr Straw, for example) take their reaction to a thing and extrapolate that to whether a thing is a good thing or a bad thing without any reasoned argument inbetween.

I am an athiest and would not wear a facial covering. I think those who advocate women wearing facial coverings may sometimes operate with motives that have little to do with observance of religion. I therefore think women who wear them are mistaken on one and may be mistaken on two counts. But I accept that they know more about their religion than I do, they have a right to wear what they like, and to do so without unreasoned abuse.