Now that all the discussion about using anonymous and censorship seems to have died down, I want to address something of considerably more importance. And BTW, Joan Walsh a month ago considered dropping anonymous and before she did gave everyone a chance to weigh in on the use of anonymous. Anonymous users made a good enough case for her to decide to keep it. How about sending a letter to the editors instead of discussing it here where subjects of much more importance are being discussed, i.e. journalistic cowardness and oppression of women?

Early on Kaybee you said:

“Personally, I see the whole thing on a spectrum ranging from seeing some modesty as increasing the power and dignity of women, while seeing forced heavy and limiting clothing as quite oppressive. The choice is to be that of the woman. If it is not her choice it is oppression.”

Time magazine had a disturbing article by an Iranian mother who’s parents emigrated to America in the 1970s and who was living in Tehran since 2005 and witnessed a dress and censorship crack down that certainly was not most women’s choice. Here are a few excerpts:

On a sunny day earlier this summer, I took my 8-month-old baby boy Hourmazd for a walk in the foothills of Tehran's Alborz Mountains. Families and young people crowded the tree-lined path ahead, chatting leisurely and snacking on crepes and barbecued corn. As I pushed the stroller along, a policewoman in a black chador blocked my way. She fingered my plain cotton head scarf, pronounced it too thin and directed me toward a parked minibus. It took a full minute for me to realize that she meant to arrest me. "I've been wearing this veil for over five years," I pleaded. "Surely it can't be that unacceptable?" My husband soon caught up with us and began berating the policewoman for harassing a young mother. The commotion drew the attention of a bearded superior officer, who came over to inspect me. "The problems are not few," he said, frowning at my sleeves, which fell a few inches above my unsteady wrists. He ordered me to sign a ta'ahod, a commitment that I would not repeat my mistake. "Now go home," he said. "Go home, and don't come back."

When I moved to Tehran in 2005 to work as a reporter and start a family, life was difficult but bearable. The country my parents had left behind for the U.S. in the 1970s was on the mend. The economy was poor and the pollution stifling, but if you asked most Iranians whether things were better than in the past, most would have said yes. Although the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that year had prompted worries that the regime would enforce social strictures with renewed vigor, the suppression never materialized.

In the past few months, however, Tehran has become a different place. Convinced the U.S. is seeking to destabilize their Islamic system through economic pressure and covert infiltration of political life, the ruling clerics are retaking control of the public sphere ahead of next spring's parliamentary elections. "The more threatened the hard-liners feel, the more paranoid they will become," says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert and professor of political science at the University of Hawaii.

Things began falling apart in the spring when authorities raided neighborhoods all over the city to confiscate illegal satellite dishes, Iranians' link to the outside world. The police swooped down on our building early one morning, kicking the devices down with their boots. Two of my neighbors, using their mobile phones, recorded footage of trucks carting off the dishes, only to have the phones confiscated as well. My 6-year-old nephew wept, desolate at the loss of his cartoon channel and angry that we had not called the police. "But the police were the ones who took the dish," I explained. "It was against the law." He naturally wanted to know why we had been breaking the law in the first place. This led to the sort of complicated discussion one hopes never to have with a young child--all about how we break the law at home while pretending to observe Islamic codes outside. In recent years, the gulf between public and private life in Iran had shrunk, a happy development, especially for parents, who saw their children more willing than at any time before the revolution to spend their lives inside the country. But talking to my nephew, I could almost feel the gap being stretched wide open again, and the thought filled me with sadness.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1657824-1,00.html

Kaybee I am not Muslim or a woman, yet women having to live under this kind of oppression greatly saddens me and causes me to believe that behind it all are power-hungry, oppressive males who use religion, politics and mental intimidation to have their sadistic way.

Please open yourself up to the possibility that modesty and honoring women while it may be a worthy religious goal, is being used to impose a personal and group horror show by far too many of your male leaders.

To sum up all this excellent discussion:

Never underestimate the power of seduction or the seduction of power.