Letters to the Editor
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Well....Ummmm...Ms. Clark-Flory..????
Dear Broadsheet,
So, "I know, I know..the images featured in the video are mistakenly of burqas, not hijabs"?
Well, if you KNEW, why didn't you take the time (which couldn't be much at all) to change the pictures? You could run the video...a few hours later, maybe?
Perhaps this "vlog" had already been posted before you noticed the error? Well, you could take it down (as Salon did rather quickly when you encountered readers' disgusted reactions to your "Look how stupid Anna Nicole Smith Was" video, which was posted the morning after she died). In this particular case, you could put the video back up again after fixing the mistake.
In college, did you hand in papers and write across the top "I know I wrote 'Austen' all throughout the paper, but I meant 'Bronte'. Please still take my paper seriously. I worked really hard on it"...?
The great irony, of course, is that Broadsheet, given its general tone and propensities, would jump gleefully and self-congratulatedly all OVER this sort of plain-dumb and/or plain-lazy mistake if it had occurred elsewhere.
sincerely,
David Terry
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Sometimes force, sometimes choice, sometimes negotiation
Some Muslim women who wear hijab (and I myself do not, btw) are the first women in their family to do so, and their parents may in fact have opposed their decision to do so. Some do so for religious reasons, others because it's become chic and fashionable (in South East Asia it's often worn with short sleeves, in many countries with tight jeans - it doesn't always add up to "modest dress" although of course that's what it's supposed to be).
Others are pressured or forced to do so by their families, communities and/or governments.
And other Muslim women don't wear hijab even though they would like to, because they're worried about discrimination and harrassment. Or they do wear hijab even though they'd rather not, because their families are more willing to allow them to study or work if they wear a headscarf.
In my experience, the majority of Muslim women in the west who wear niqab (face covering) are converts. I don't agree with their politics (they often support very conservative religious parties) but they are certainly not being forced - they are very noisy about why they want to wear it. Muslim women covering their face in Muslim socieites are in different circumstances to converts, of course.
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It's curious..
Curious that some feminists think that the full panoply of makeup, corset, pushup bra, $300 shoes and etc are necessary in our culture.
I've long since come to the conclusion that many women in our society dress for other women and not for men.
I can recall reading an article in a "women's" magazine some time ago about what clothing men find sexy. Jeans and a tee shirt was in the top three if I recall correctly. I suspect this is true since I'm a man and jeans/tee shirt is an outfit I find sexy.
The woman who dresses in the "full panoply" is *asking* to be treated as a sex object by deliberately and artificially enhancing her sexual characteristics.
Those who are comfortable in their own skin do not need the enhancement that both male and female "fashion" demand. It seems to me that is the reason that many men find jeans/tee shirt sexy, it shows that someone is comfortable with themselves and is likely to be someone relatively easy to get to know and get along with.
If you wish to be accepted for who you are, then be who you are.
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Invention of the pretzel
I think the pretzel was invented by Western liberals defending the violent supremacist misogynstic ideology of Islam.
Or maybe it was Twister.
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sane points of view
I think the view espoused here is the only sane one. It is extreemly wise to be wary of the imposition of values, particularly as that misguided M.O. has driven a great deal of bad foreign policy, while still maintaining your beliefs about what is and isn't opression. The solution is not producing your version of freedom and exporting it to the world, but that is not a reason to forget your own stances. Which is not relativism at all, its a situation of holding complex and sometimes competing viewpoints such as A) patriarchy is oppression B)the west imposing its view on the world is oppression. Neither of those things are relativist positions, but they do conflict with each other. If you think that equals relatavism, then A) you don't understand basic logic, B) willfully or not, your mind doesn't seem to be open to grasping the complexities of living in the modern world. A good work by a philosopher that attempts to grasp this line, between complexity and relatavism in the concern for others is Kwame Appiah's Cosmopolitianism.
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What would Pierce do?
American philosopher Charles Pierce suggests appraising arguments by asking how one's behavior would change if one adopted either position.
Many of us are confusing hijab with the force some families use to keep it on women's heads. We already have laws against domestic violence, so declaring that using physical force to mandate the hijab is wrong changes nothing in our behavior.
If we confine ourselves to hijab itself, as Tracy Clark-Flory carefully did, then how would our behavior as Western feminists change if we agreed that the hijab is oppressive?
An answer here might be found by looking at the behavior of those non-Muslim Westerners who believe hijab oppressive. Is their behavior, as opposed to merely their words, any different from those who decline a position on hijab? If reviling hijab as a non-Muslim Westerner entails no alteration in one's behavior, it is not worth arguing about.
If anti-hijab non-Muslim Westerners want to continue the argument, they should explain how our behavior would change should we adopt their position.
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feminists can't win on this one
It's fascinating to me what a no-winner this topic is for "feminists"--whoever they are. Who, exactly, are you talking about when you say "feminists" have no right to tell you what to wear on your head? On the opposite side of the spectrum, who are you talking about when you complain "feminists" are doing nothing to help Muslim women? First of all, where is this cadre of powerful, vocal, high-profile feminists who could apparently be having such a felicitous influence on the lives of their oppressed sisters (or else are constantly, brutally foisting their superficial middle-class values upon them)? Feminist organizations, where they exist, are chronically undermined, underfunded, and persistently ridiculed and deemed irrelevant in the greater public sphere. It is a constant struggle to get our voices heard, let alone effect some kind of change.
All that your average disenfranchised feminist of today can do when she hears about the oppression of other women is speak out against it. When there's a question as to whether or not that oppression exists, we discuss it and hash it out, just like what's happening on this thread (and are promptly lambasted for being 'indulgent', 'equivocal,' 'morally relativist', etc--but Jesus Christ! At least we're trying to figure it out, which is more than a lot of people can say). The anonymous schoolteacher whose post I think was very honest and heartfelt says:
"I don’t want to say that all Muslim women are oppressed but, when Muslim women are oppressed, feminist organizations are not interested, thank you very much."
With all due respect, this isn't fair. I remember when Bush used the treatment of women under the Taliban as justification for his war, all the right-wing pundits got behind him and, for good measure, used it as an excuse to slam "Feminism" as well. Why hadn't "the feminists" been all over this? It was up to the Bush administration to look after women in Afghanistan, whereas white, privileged middle-class "feminists" clearly couldn't care less! Well, that was bullshit, but most people didn't know any better than to believe it, because most people don't actually pay attention to what real feminists are doing, writing and reading about. I'd known about the Taliban years before 911. I knew about it from reading Ms. Magazine, for christ's sake. It's very easy for people who pay no attention whatsoever to feminist media to make assumptions with regard to what "feminists" do, or do not, care about. These people keep painting "Feminism" as some kind of monolithic, powerful institution with wide-ranging influence. It's not. It's on the fringe, and getting fringey-er every day. Yet somehow this disparate, disenfranchised, disregarded coalition of like-minded souls is expected to take the weight of the world on its shoulders and then is blamed and further ridiculed for ineffectuality when it can't bear up.