Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1113 Editor's Choice: 106
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Not a bad idea
[Read the article: Men, guard your genes!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Most basically, though, are we to assume that producing a sperm or an egg from a flake of skin would be as simple as anonymously dropping off some bodily detritus at a local lab?
What if it was? That would be awesome. Nobody would need to have sex for reproduction anymore, if they didn't want to. Men could all get vasectomies and still be able to produce genetic offspring. Women could have the children of the men they admire but would never (or could never) sleep with.
Yeah, you'd probably want to tag the DNA of the artificial gamete so that it could be easily shown that the child wasn't descended from the father in a legal sense. Technology capable of producing reproductive cells from otherwise differentiated tissue would easily be able to do that as well.
Sure, unscrupulous women could find illegal genomic chop shops that would leave the marker out for an extra fee — but that would presumably be an option that could only be afforded by women who were wealthy enough that sneakily trying to obtain child support would either be moot or counterproductive.
And think of the new avenues for scandal and soap opera!
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Warlord and Anonymus on threats to secular society
[Read the article: Does freedom to veil hurt women?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Warlord:
Symbols matter
The symbol of the veiled women in a theocratic patriarchal society is poweful and transformative but not in a good way
Thanks again for your thoughts. Is Turkey really a theocratic society? Or even that vulnerable to theocratic takeover? It's always seemed to me that secularism in Turkey has a vitality of its own that is hard to extinguish.
Veils taken voluntary really has little more to recommend than one imposed, its women voluteering to be subjugated by religion yet again....
All religions are subjugation. Even their adherents agree, though they may choose to use the term "submission" instead. Is a devout Muslim woman who wears a veil any more subjugated than one who doesn't? Or than a Mennonite Christian woman who wears skirts and a bonnet? Or a Mormon woman who wears strange underwear and covers herself from chin to toe (instead of head to toe)? Should all of those practices be prohibited as false consciousness?
Anonymous:
It may be that a western weakness for multiculturalism, especially that of traditional "victimized by colonialism" socieities, a greater sense of responsibility in the west for western secular dictatorships and an obsession with women being "forced" to show too much rather than too little skin may cause westerners to UNDERESTIMATE the danger and the appeal of traditional authoritarian religions.
Or it may be based in a more pragmatic observation that repression engenders martyrdom, and that when subcultural forces are free to manifest themselves they tend to weaken and integrate rather than oppose and destroy.
Secular Turks just might know what they are dealing with better than you.
That may very well be! And American Christians who complain that they're under attack at all times by wicked secular globalist forces that must be stopped at all costs may also know better than I.
But I reserve the right to disagree.
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Kasimira on sly suggestions
[Read the article: Does freedom to veil hurt women?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I imagine that such a system would be "separate, but equal."
One could similarly characterize the defense of bans on religious attire as protecting a "peculiar institution" from indecent commentary by unwanted outsiders.
Whether or not that would alter suspicions of my being the Archbishop of Canturbury (I assure you, those who know me in person have no doubt on the point), it remains an uninteresting game.
What is more interesting is that you seem to be suggesting that opposition to such bans must be based in notions of "cultural sensitivity," whatever that means; on closely-argued theological principles; or only by legitimizing the crimes and lunatic pronouncements of bigots and fundamentalist weirdos. Or perhaps all three simultaneously.
For one thing, I don't really care what justification anyone might make for wearing a burqa. It doesn't matter if it's theologically sound or not, any more than if it we were discussing black hats and beards for Hasidic men. They want to do it, it does them no egregious, invasive, or irreversible harm, and that should be the end of it.
Similarly, what a bunch of reactionary Muslim troglodytes might say on the subject has no bearing on the issue. Nor do the actions or self-justifications of Muslim rapists. It's of the essence of liberal society that we are all accountable for our own actions, not our beliefs, and equally so whatever ideology we may claim has, or has not, sanctified them.
In other words, a man saying he raped a woman because she wasn't the right kind of Muslim means only one thing: that he's a violent sex criminal. The rest of Islam isn't responsible for his actions, any more than the English are collectively responsible for Anglican pedophilia.
Finally, as I wrote earlier, cultural sensitivity doesn't enter into it. In the United States, there are Muslims who swear legal oaths on a Koran, Jews on a Torah, and Quakers who decline to swear at all. This is not some overaccomodation or namby-pamby "p.c." conceit — indeed, far from representing a threat to secular civic life, it represents something fundamental to it. I know of no case in the US in which a woman wished to remain veiled while appearing to give testimony, but I see no inherent reason why she shouldn't be able to.
Indeed, succeeding in making it possible would be a high achievement of the secular values that are (one hears) so in danger these days from evil-eyed Orientals.