An Argument With Too Much Left Out
It’s odd to discover that sometimes readers know more about what I’m doing than I do. I’d actually forgotten that I’d commented on the hijab-headscarf-veil issue all the way back in October, but Socialism in an Age of Waiting reminded me.
The issue of Muslim girls wearing, or not wearing, hijab in state schools in France has given rise to extensive comment and debate all over the blogosphere. We’d cite as the most interesting discussions so far the posts, and the comments, at Butterflies and Wheels, where Ophelia Benson has been blogging about it, on and off, since October and at Harry’s Place, where the debate was taken up in December partly in response to the news that “a government-appointed commission on secularism [had] recommended drafting a new law banning all conspicuous religious symbols from French state schools”.
Why so I have. What a terrible memory I have to be sure. I wonder what else I’ve been blogging about that I’ve forgotten. Monetary policy? Weaving? The Crimean War?
Then SiaW link to another discussion of the hijab issue, saying it cuts through the knot – which I find odd, since the post in question leaves so much out. There is this question, for example:
There are fashions that annoy the hell out of me, but by what possible logic are headscarves more offensive than, say, big hair? Is there any way in which headscarves are more oppressive to women than mini-skirts?
Yes of course there is. What an absurd question. There is no equivalent of the Taliban or the religious police of Iran forcing women to wear mini-skirts by beating the shit out of them if they don’t. There is no real, literal, physical, violent, bone-breaking coercion of women to wear short skirts. There is that kind of coercion of women to wear the hijab or the chador or the burqa. The problem with the hijab is not that it’s ‘offensive.’ (That’s a sub-topic I want to go into some day – another branch of the translation problem – the way people hear ‘offensive’ when offense is not the issue at all and no one said it was. Odd, that.) Or that it’s ‘annoying.’ Read or talk to some women who have lived through a transition from not having to wear the nasty things to being forced to by violent packs of men. Talking about annoyance and offense just trivializes the issue, but it’s not damn well trivial.
And the rest of the post is along the same lines. It ignores far too much to be useful, it seems to me. I agree that there are problems with the ban; that it may be counter-productive, that it violates the freedom of some people, that in a sense it discriminates against Muslims. But there are also problems with the absence of the ban, as I said last month. A discussion that just blithely ignores those is a bit beside the point, I think.
Sarcasm? That’s not sarcasm. Not at all, it’s a perfectly literal question.
I’m not being evasive, either. I addressed that particular passage because I thought it needed addressing. And I’m not using it as a pretext – I addressed it because I wanted to address it. I’m quite serious about the ‘offensiveness’ thing. I see and hear that response often – in fact I think that tends to be an evasive tactic, though probably not consciously (which probably means it isn’t, really): I think people translate certain reactions into terms of being offended when that’s not what’s going on, and I think that derails real discussion. I’ve known it to happen more than once.
You’re right I didn’t address all of what you said. Because I wanted to address part of it.
All religions ‘bother’ me, but Islam more than others, because of its record when it comes to women. I think its record is worse. Rape laws, for example. Marriage and divorce law. And yes, the dress code.
You want something other press reports about men assaulting women. Er – sorry, no can do. I haven’t been an eye-witness to any. I have read many press reports, for instance on the ‘Ni Putes ni Soumises’ group who favor the ban, which is one reason I think Chirac and I are not the only people who have this opinion. The founder was raped herself, and told by her schoolmates that it was because she didn’t wear the hijab. But if press reports are merely anecdotal and you want more than that, I can’t help.
You may be right about the ban. Or you may not. It seems to me you have too much certainty about it, and that you’re ignoring some factors – such as the women of Muslim background who want it.
“There is this question, for example:
“There are fashions that annoy the hell out of me, but by what possible logic are headscarves more offensive than, say, big hair? Is there any way in which headscarves are more oppressive to women than mini-skirts?
“Yes of course there is. What an absurd question. There is no equivalent of the Taliban or the religious police of Iran forcing women to wear mini-skirts by beating the shit out of them if they don’t.”
Actually, there is an equivalent.
Maternity wear.
Some girls and women are violenty forced to wear those too, after all. Forced to marry against their will by their families, forced to have unprotected sex by their husbands, and forced to remain pregnant by de jure or de facto lack of access to abortion…until they can’t fit into anything else but maternity clothes. And meanwhile some other women wear maternity clothes of their own free will.