Unmasking oppression

I see the French have come up with another good idea: banning the burka.  It seems consistent with their current national mindset.  They have, after all, banned all religious symbols in schools and even though France is a country with a large population of observant catholics, they do seem to have the right idea in the main – that apart from in church on Sundays, if you have to do religion then you do it privately at home, like stamp collecting or cake baking, and you shut up about it.


So a woman in pubic in a burka runs contrary to that.  The surprising thing is how many people whom one would have thought would object, seem curiously silent, or at least mealy mouthed.  If it’s an ethic custoim, apparently, it’s racist to criticise it.  No western democracy would stand for the idea of seeing women in public wearing handcuffs and keg irons, with signs round their necks saying “My husband can rape me with impunity.  My husband may assault me with impunity.  My husband may abandon me any time he wishes.”  But for some reason when they do wear this sign, i.e. the burka, the liberals vanish, the feminists find something else to occupy their thoughts.  I find it mystifying.  A woman in Somalia was sentenced to be flogged for wearing trousers.  I would have thought that the protests from the west would have been deafening. But no, just a grumble or two.  For those of us who are revolted by this, it’s very frustrating.

Pat Condell says it much better than I can.
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Comments

[Tina Marie]

Thanks for posting this. I am also astonished at the silence from the west on this horrible treatment of women and wish there was something more I could do to help.

[J]

I once heard an interview on NPR, in which the westerner asked the middle eastern women about this, and the middle eastern woman said, 'we don't care about the head scarfs. What we care about is the war. And the education of our children. And poverty.' The issue of the scarf is a big one to feminists here, but not nearly so much over there.

But the head scarf isn't nearly as oppressive as the burka, and the countries where the burkas are worn are much more radical and anti-women. So I'm not equating the two, just mentioning a program that your post reminded me of.