She’s wearing lipstick, you know
Purves and the niqab again. I find I haven’t quite finished with that subject – I find I didn’t chew it over quite thorougly enough. I find that one small paragraph is peculiarly full of matter for contemplation. I find there is more to say.
One: she said it was ‘good to have the student speaking of “ghosts”, and good to have women who had worn the niqab saying it made them feel not only more devout but more private.’ But that’s ridiculous. You might as well say it was good to have the student saying torture is cruel and bad, and good to have other people saying it is kind and useful. Why would that be good? On Millian grounds, because arguments are stronger if they meet opposition? But that’s not what she says; she doesn’t say why; she just says it was a fun evening. It seems to be merely a matter of let a thousand flowers bloom, let a thousand opinions flourish, they’re all good, all interesting, all colourful. But that’s saying anything. If the things people say are in tension with each other, and they relate to actions and rules and laws, sometimes a choice will have to be made, so it’s not helpful to just beam fondly and say they’re all lovely.
Two: she ‘admitted’ a moment of discomfort about encountering a woman in a niqab. Why did she ‘admit’ it? That means she thought she did something at least slightly wrong in feeling discomfort. But why should she think that? Why should anyone? Why should there be guilt about feeling discomfort at seeing women with no faces? What’s not to feel discomfort about? Suppose we encountered someone crossing the road wearing a Tshirt slogan in huge neon letters: ‘Woman is man’s rib and born to serve him.’ Would we feel discomfort? Would we feel guilty and apologetic about the discomfort? I doubt it. If not, should we feel guilty about niqab-discomfort? I don’t think so.
Third: the biggest omission, the one that bugged me: the cheerful man’s ‘She can speak, you know!’ I should have noticed that. No, we don’t know! Of course we don’t know – how would we? She’s wearing this thing over her face that makes it impossible to know, isn’t she; that’s the point! For all we know the lower half of her face has been sheered away and she can no more speak than she can fly. Of course we don’t know. And the cheerful man is being completely ridiculous in pretending there is simply no possible reason to think a woman with a bag over her head might not react just like any other person in the street to a casaul uninvited remark from a stranger – in pretending she’s just perfectly routine and familiar and ordinary and commonplace and just like everyone else except for this one tiny detail that she’s dressed like Darth Vader. And in fact he’s being not only ridiculous but also disingenuous, because the point of the niqab is to ward off contact and conversation, not to invite it and not even to say that it’s difficult but possible – it’s just plain to prevent it. Get real, cheerful man. And then of course there’s the question that Purves should have asked, which is whether this mandate to say ‘Good morning!’ applies to men. But that would have taken her into territory that might cause ‘discomfort,’ so instead (apparently) she let cheerful man buffalo her into treating the revolting medieval nonsense as normal and healthy and fine. Sad.
Ophelia:
The question “whether this mandate to say ‘Good morning!’ applies to men” gets to the heart of it. The niqab is all about sex. It is meant to prevent men unknown to the woman from lusting after her.
All this talk of the woman’s desire for privacy is – pardon the pun- barefaced dishonesty, because people who want privacy avoid public places entirely and no one who wanted to be private & yet go out into public places would ever invent the niqab.
Actually, the niquab is only secondarily about sex.
It is about – excuse the pun – Power.
The power to oppress and marginalise half the population.
How long before the islamic world, or even the non-islamic world finallly gets the message from those nasty evolutionary biologists?
That, in Mammals, the Female is the default body-plan, and males are modifiaction thereto.
The exact opposite of those ex-dinosaurs, the Birds, wher male is the default body plan.
I’m reminded of the mitichondrial DNA findings of 1998-2002 onwards, whixh show that the whole of humanity has less than 35 mothers ( I forget now, without looking it up, if tha actual number is 33 or 28 ), and that “racism” is a pointless and idiotic waste of time.
Paul – If only it had that alleged desired effect (in preventing men lusting and acting on that lust). It has zero affect on mysoginist attacks, which adds a dimension of dishonesty and cynicsm to the – male and female -assertions that wearing it act of devotion, modwesty or sanctity.
And OB, I know I occasionally post flip comments here so perhaps that may undermine the following, but yeah – where was she ? Woodstock ?! Cathal highlighted this dismally inadequate piece of prose on the earlier post:
“I liked best the moments when the dialogue was an exchange of emotion”
Yeah, at a football match maybe, or watching a great rock and roll band. But this is a somewhat weightier subject, isn’t it? It’s so patronising in its superficiality.
I like those politically orchestrated funerals in Beireut with the sad and furious mobs of AK47 owners. The exchange of emotion is FANTASTIC.
Yeah, but she writes really nice parenting books, *How not to be a perfect Mother/Family/etc*. Funny, realistic, helpful.
Libby Purves, that is. In those books, not about religion. Won’t go there. Like her books, though.
Dave, wouldn’t know, not being a parent. I have only just recently upgraded her from irritating Radio 4 purveyor of cloying but comforting burble to highly annoying touchy-feely columnist. She may write well in other areas, but then that’s the Guardian all over though at the moment… desperate as they are to get the growing religious minority share away from their compepitors at the Indescribablypreachy.
It was the Times and I am stupid.
‘The niqab is all about sex.’
Sure as hell is. I find it a total turn on. I am lustfully drawn to niquabis, and the little minxes know it. I can see it in their eyes.
I have lately noticed an increasing number of ladies walking with their faces covered in Montreal. I’ve been wondering about the reason why I even notice it, the way I do not notice teenage girls baring their midriffs and sporting skimpy skirts and skimpier tops. What is it about my inability to see the face that creates a certain mental nudge, a silent withdrawal.
Emmanuel Levinas’s thoughts about the Face and the “other” have been somewhat helpful:
A face expresses feelings, moods, inclinations, all those attributes that define one’s character and uniqueness. Human visual sense is the strongest. First, we perceived the human face, then comes the verbal accordance of a name. I, as I encounter another’s face, can respond to what I see in her face.
For Emmanuel Levinas, the face is the place where ethics begin. In Ethics and Infinity, conversations with Philippe Nemo, he says:
“There is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without defence. The skin of the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute. It is the most naked, though with a decent nudity…. The face is meaning all by itself…it leads you beyond.”
In Face to Face encounter with the other, she signals to me that she shares with me human frailties and vulnerabilities. Naked and needy, the face makes a demand upon my care, my concerns, my dependability. For Levinas, as much as I can understand him, the face-to-face encounter is the undeniability of the other’s autonomous self. To which I respond. It makes possible an exchange. When a face is covered, the encounter cannot take place. There is no recognition, no transaction of good will. The cheerful man tried to offer an alternative to the visual. But his suggestion wishes to substitute spontaneous accessibility (of the visual) with an exerted form of selective reciprocity (the audible). When you say “good morning” to a faceless stranger, It’s like a gamble: you might or might not get a reciprocal greetings. The veiled face makes relationship harder, if not impossible.
A woman’s veil hiding her face prevents friendly exchanges between her and others. Dooms her to an isolation, except that of her closest family. It prevents women from independently and freely forging strong social ties with women who are outside their immediate circles, which may lead them to seek out solidarity in the agora of talking and interacting with the “other’. The veil, a-priori, thwarts the passage from the visual to the verbal. It thwarts free association and expression. It controls.
In my opinion, it’s all about men taking extreme measures to keep their women under strict discipline and virtual confinement. Since they cannot in good conscience forbid them to leave their homes (Taliban-style), they make them as secluded as if they were confined to the home by minimizing their opportunities for establishing any sort of spontaneous exchange outside it.
contentious centrist at http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/
“I have lately noticed an increasing number of ladies walking with their faces covered in Montreal.”
Yeah, I know, Montreal is one those cities that can be a bitch to get off your face.
Sorry.
Bristol is good for getting off your face.
It’s not all bad news. Yesterday, on returning back home after dropping my son off at school, I managed to say ‘Good Morning’ to my next-door neighbour, even though she wears a burka when out of the house. A small victory.
Oddly enough, if she wore a niqab, I wouldn’t be sure it was her and thus unable to say hello. Just another reason to hope that the burka doesn’t catch on.
I’ve been wondering about the reason why I even notice it (the veil), the way I do not notice teenage girls baring their midriffs and sporting skimpy skirts and skimpier tops. What is it about my inability to see the face that creates a certain mental nudge, a silent withdrawal.
If you hadn’t noticed them, you wouldn’t have written about them. ;-)
Is it the inability to see the face, or is it the fact that it is so unusual?
For some women, veiling is a way of saying they don’t want to be judged by their physical appearance. It’s a reaction against those skinmpies.
“If you hadn’t noticed them, you wouldn’t have written about them. ;-)”
Yes, well, but isn’t that explicit and implicit in my comment?
As for your other suggestion, then no, it’s not the unusualness of it. We encounter many unusual visions, people, faces. Maybe there is something about us that does not like anonymity. And the niqab makes women anonymous, unknowable. It blocks even the beginning of a relationship. Think about whose faces are usually covered: executioners, Hamas jihadists wearing suicide belts in public rallies, the Evil Empire’s soldiers on Star Wars. Why are their faces covered, masked? The intention is to dehumanize them, turn them into mere objects, not recognizable human beings, even if they do have the general shape of a human being.
The niqab erects an alienating barrier between the woman behind it and others. There are many ways a woman can make herself less noticed by men if modesty is her intent. And are there no rapes and sexual molestations in devout Muslim countries where practically all women are covered?
A note on noticeability:
Context is important here. Go to a country where all women are covered up and none will stand out. That rapes still occur is because the men know what it is they’ve ordered covered up. That kind of full body covering stands out where the rest of the women are dressed differently. The wallflower in typical Hollywood fare of fífty years ago didn’t get asked to dance because she had glasses and a frumpy dress, not because she was got up like Mrs. Ayatollah. If the women who don’t want to be noticed, or the men who decide they shouldn’t be, cover up like that in Western society, they’re not going to achieve their aim. I’m sure a talented designer could come up with a fashion that would avoid both controversy and being noticed, if that were really the aim. But, the way things are, most strategies adopted to hide women are attention-grabbers.