Reply With QuoteI don't think you understood what I said. You are seeing matters as a question of absolutes, without nuance. Never a good thing.Originally Posted by Mo Britain less Europe
No. I would ask them to go where they don't make people with normal bathing costumes uncomfortable. Nudists go to nudist beaches, non-nudists go to non-nudist beaches. Peeping toms can go f uck themselves. It's not my fault their archaic anti-woman religion forces them to wear these inhumane outfits.
I can't walk into a mosque in a thong, why should they walk onto a beach in a sack? They don't want to be looked at, don't go to the beach.
Reform the middle-ages restrictions, don't encourage them with a phoney relativistic liberalism.
I don't think you understood what I said. You are seeing matters as a question of absolutes, without nuance. Never a good thing.
There is a lot of space between regressive relativism and absolute readings of every situation. I think it is dangerous and highly problematic for any organisation, especially the state, to rigidly prescribe what somebody ought, and ought not, wear. If you are doing a public job, in a public place, then its fair to make restrictions on grounds of secularism (Laicite in France) not to wear a veil for example. But, somebody going about their private business in public to be restricted from wearing what they choose is absurd. As for your examples, there is no reason to go to Mosque in a thong, but as far as I know there were no specific stipulations about required attire for the beach, until the local authority decided to make a random one. I would hazard a guess that the decision was not based on the concern for Muslim women's freedom!
The instances of skin cancer in Muslim countries must be minute.wd the Muslims.
Of course it isn't the biggest problem. However, it is an attempt to undermine muslim men's control over their womenfolk by making it clear that the law will not tolerate it. It is an attack on a clear symbol of patriarchal oppression and thus on the whole system of oppression that is inherent to Islam. As things stand, Islamic women's bodies are controlled by Islamic men. This is an attempt to wrest that control away from them and thus undermine their social control.
Your argument presupposes that these women have entire agency over how they dress. They do not. By conditioning, coercion and threat they are forced into this ridiculous garb from the time they hit puberty to allow their families and later their husbands to control them. An entire culture is busy keeping these women dressed like this and the only agency with the power to help these women escape these bonds is the state, which by its nature can only do it by heavy-handed means.
The fact is that these women's bodies are a battleground in a war between western, liberal culture and regressive, patriarchal Islam. Of course we all would wish that these women would simply be allowed to dress as they wish, but as things stand, they are being forced to dress a certain way by the regressive, patriarchal Islamic culture. If it's a binary choice (and it is) between that and being forced to dress a certain way by western culture, I would prefer the latter.
Up to now we have allowed Islam to retain often brutal control over its womenfolk and not insisted upon our cultural norms. As it becomes clear that Islam won't compromise, that is changing and the west is starting to wake up to the fact that if we don't insist on our way of doing things, we will be washed away.
Of course armed men forcing a woman to remove clothes makes for bad optics. We all agree that it is not desirable to force our norms upon people, but if those people refuse to assimilate and that refusal becomes problematic to the point of violence and terrorism, then no choice is left. To quibble about the optics of the situation is to miss the bigger point.
Last edited by Burney; 08-25-2016 at 08:36 AM.
Make no mistake: there is nothing 'liberal' about tolerating an explicit symbol of female oppression by men on our streets. We can call it liberalism, but it is in fact nothing but cowardice and a refusal to stand up for our values. A woman in a burka might as well be being led around the streets on a leash by her husband - that is the reality and that is what we tolerate in the name of liberalism. And we disingenuously console ourselves by pretending that it is her 'choice' - as if that choice had ever been made freely.
a/ Their 'choice' is not being freely madeWould you legally force women to go topless on a beach, even if it might reflect your personal aesthetic preferences? Or would you respect their choice to wear what they choose? This isn't about face-covering, which is a completely different matter.
Nothing wrong with this outfit imo:
OTOH there is to my mind definitely something wrong with a law that forces women to take off their clothes.
b/ There is everything wrong with that outfit, as it is emblematic of a regressive, violent and dangerous form of Islam that is currently killing people all over the west.
1. How do you know?
2. Don't be silly.
1/ I know because I know how the strictures of Islamic society work in relation to the male domination of women. Did you not notice the way that the Taliban and ISIS on taking anywhere over immediately insist on extreme clothing restrictions and an end to education for women? Do you imagine that's just a coincidence or do you maybe think it might be part of a pattern of extreme systematic social control of men over women within Islam - of which ridiculous garb like this is just one manifestation? Any woman telling you that she's wearing this because she wants to is simply a victim of the extreme social and religious conditioning of her culture. To find out how 'free her choice was, ask her how her menfolk would react if she turned up to the beach in a bikini.
2/ Nothing silly about it. These garments are simply an attempt to normalise a backwards thread of Islamic thought whose roots are exactly the same as those that currently feed global Islamic terrorism. Making that link may make you uncomfortable, but it's true.
:throwsinarandompicture: :walksawaywhistling:
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