Letters to the Editor
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Hair Is a Private Part
I'm not sure why some people freak out so badly over the fact that to some people in come cultures in come religions or in some places Hair is a Private Part.
Yes, for women and not for men. Much like breasts.
If we're talking hijabs we're talking about "covering your hair".
You know how some women will not wear low cut tops and others will? (Are there no women who CHOSE to wear turtle necks, or are they being horribly oppressed?)
If someone's kid wears something too low cut her parents may freak. If she changes when she gets too school and they find out they may freak. They may say people will think she's a slut. They may say they're ashamed. etc. etc. etc.
Try this, every time you read "hijab" think "skimpy top".
Then think of the girls you knew growing up who's parents were strict about what they wore. Then think about the women you know now who tend not to flash their clevage. This is not that tricky.
Now, think of one of those women showing up in some tiny tank top. And think of her Father murdering her for it. Is the problem the tank top? Or the Father?
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remarkably productive thread
generated by Ms. Clark-Flory eliciting our conflicted, largely avoided, and dis-integrated orientations around personal autonomy, culture, family and religion.
Summary: it’s not about articles of clothing per se, and the opportunity for factions with pre-existing agendas to charge each other with hypocrisy, misogyny or cultural bigotry is a sideshow.
What’s that leave? Just this – our discomfort with facing what meaning could be freely constructed for what it means to freely choose in the face of the pathologies of Family, Culture, and Religion.
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what gray?
I think Clark not so cleverly avoids the issue at the heart of the murder, and much of the real controversy surround the hijab. Of course one might argue at a broad socio-cultural level that the wearing of the hijab is intrinsically oppressive towards women. That is the origin of the practice and the underlying assumption behinf the notion of covering ones head and or face stems from a view and position which at it's origin conceives of woman as beings that either because of a need for humility or the notion that they are property must shield themselves from the gaze of others. But, this having been said, the black and white view of the hijab is perhaps too strong. The covering can be seen as a cultural religious symbol, much like the the yalmuka, which expresses a certain individual woman's own religious and cultural sensibilities and to critique that choice from a western or other such perspective seems overly arch.
However, this concern for individual cultural expression clearly does not apply to the case of the murdered girl in Canada, or millions of women around the world. There the issue is not the abstract notion of the hijab as oppressive, but the actually threat and use of violence to force women to wear the veil. This practice is the essence of patriarchy in its raw and brutal form. It is this practice that cries for redress. It is cheap and easy to try to avoid the issue by focussing upon the hijab by women who choose to wear the veil. This fails to address the millions of women who are forced to wear the veil. This abuse of women has been largely ignored and underplayed by Western feminists, who often use multi-cultural blandishments to conceal this neglect. Clark's response, alas, is par for the course in this regard. It's well and good that she doesn't want to see the world in black and white (how nuanced!), but ignoring the plight of woman who are being horribly injured for not wearing the hijab or terrorized into to doing so doesn't count as a mark of moral sophistication. It is rather craven and hypocritical cowardice.
If Clark thinks that such abuses are ok, she should argue why they are. If she thinks, as any reasonable human should, that they are not, she and other feminists and persons of all stripes should decry such vile and coerced prescriptions.
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Okay this is my position not that anyone cares
The hijab does not exist in isolation. It exists as part of the patriarchal tribal system.
We do not live in a patriarchal tribal system, for which I am grateful.
I like being a modern individual, not defined solely by my family, and I recognize the role that our political and economic system play in validating my existence and my rights outside of my family.
This is not how much of the world lives. In much of the world, the tribal system still is very strong and it performs a lot of functions that aren't performed by financial or political institutions in those countries.
It is a social and economic system unto itself.
Am I "against" that system?
I sure as hell would be against that system if it were forced on ME.
But I'm not going to advocate forcibly liberating tribal women from their tribal cultures, because I wouldn't have anything to offer to replace what the tribal system does.
Am I going to give them a modern government and a modern capitalistic economy?
That's what it would take to make the concept of living outside family rule realistic and feasible for them.
So it's pointless to "be against the hijab" -- there's a whole social and economic system attached to the hijab, and you're not going to get rid of that by protesting the hijab.
Social and economic evolution have their own time scale. It's not my job to force other cultures to evolve at a time scale that pleases me.
On the other hand, we have rule of law in this country, and if you're going to immigrate here -- you'd better be prepared to make SOME kind of peace with the concept of a modern individual.
America is not a tribal country. This is a country of modern individuals, for better or worse.
If you want to live in America as a tribal person -- you'd better realize that you're choosing a country that modern individuals built.
Modern individuals will be judging you should you end up in the justice system for practicing tribal law in this country.