Nouvelle intrusion en maillot couvrant à Grenoble
A “burkini” protest in Grenoble:
Muslim women in France are disobeying the rules at a local swimming pool by wearing burkinis.
In a protest inspired by US civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, they bathed in suits covering their entire bodies – apart from the face, hands and feet – in the city of Grenoble on Sunday.
The Jean Bron swimming pool is among many in France that ban burkinis.
Leave Rosa Parks out of it. It’s not the same thing. Banning a garment is not the same as banning people.
After changing into burkinis, the Muslim members of the group were told by lifeguards that their swimsuits were not allowed.
Despite this, they entered the pool and bathed for about an hour with members of the community, many of whom cheered and applauded them for doing so.
It’s complicated. Banning the garment means banning women and girls who feel required to wear the garment, whether because they think their god requires it or because their male relatives force them to wear it or something in between. On the other hand permitting the garment works to normalize it and perhaps increase the pressure on other women and girls to wear it.
Burkinis, a mix of the words “burka” and “bikini”, are marketed to Muslim women as a way for them to swim in public while adhering to modesty edicts.
And that’s just it, isn’t it. What are “modesty edicts”? Why do they govern what women can wear but not what men can wear? Why do women have to swim in yards of cloth while men don’t?
But banning it seems coercive too. It’s a very yes but no but issue.
(Note that the French don’t call it a “burkini.” It’s not clear why the BBC does.)
My daughter wears a burkini. She hates sunscreen. She is Muslim, I am not (I am an atheist). I don’t make her wear anything she doesn’t choose, and neither does her mother (also Muslim but so liberal it’s ridiculous—-a fitness instructor and comfortable in any amount of clothing from zero on up). So, I agree: yes but no.
I wish everyone was as free to do as they liked as we are. But they’re not.
There’s coercion in the other direction too, if only in the sense that it’s pretty much impossible to find a swim suit for women that doesn’t make for painful self-consciousness.
I remember when I was in school, and we were required to wear dresses. Those dresses were to have hems no more than 6 inches from the floor. We were in Maine and could not wear pants in the winter, though we could wear longer dresses.
I was not allowed to wear pants to school until 7th grade, and our school didn’t allow girls to wear anything but matching pantsuits until I was a sophomore in high school.
Needless to say, I come down on the side of maximum freedom to choose what you wear. I don’t have to approve of it; that isn’t my place. But I find the burkini, and the burqa in general, to be problematic. I suspect no women would choose to wear that if they weren’t compelled in some way, whether by their society or by their belief in a God who says “women shall not show their hair”.
On a separate but related topic:
I have read a lot about the issue of bans on religious clothing in schools, which most people say is anti-Muslim in intent (I suspect it is). I personally don’t think a ban on religious clothing is a bad thing, as long as you make it all religious clothing (and anti-religious clothing should be included, too. My atheist t-shirts would not be allowed, either). The reason has a lot to do with where I grew up. Religion was nearly mandatory, except they gave lip service to recognizing that the Constitution didn’t allow that, so you would be allowed to believe what you wanted, as long as what you wanted fit with the dominant belief – Southern Baptist. We had devotionals in school over the loudspeaker for many years after that was declared illegal, and mandatory prayer in the classroom. From what I have heard, they are still herding the children into assembly for prayers; I heard this from someone delighted with the practice (my father) and participating in it. When FFRF contacted them, they denied it, but of course they would, wouldn’t they?
So, back to clothes. The moment you put on a cross, a yarmulke, a pentagram, a burka, or a t-shirt saying every knee shall bow (or saying this is what an atheist looks like), you have labeled yourself. You are going to be subjected to the policing of the other children if what you are wearing is the “wrong” religion. I see this happening, I know it is happening, and I feel powerless about it because children are allowed to wear whatever religious items they wish (though in the school I grew up in, wearing the “wrong” religious items would get you sent home, and probably still does). Children can be extremely cruel to those who are the “wrong” religion. I know. I didn’t grow up Southern Baptist, and I experienced all sorts of hatred and contempt from my fellow children, even though my parents believed nearly every tenet of Christianity in nearly the exact same way. My parents were fundamentalists, and they enforced it strictly, but we happened to be Disciples of Christ, so…wrong. What if I had been a Jew? I didn’t think much about it growing up, because I didn’t think there were any Jews in our school. That’s because the Jews didn’t dare to be openly Jewish – I know that now, and have talked to some of the Jews in our school. One girl was Wicca, and was driven out of town.
My students frequently wear religious jewelry and t-shirts to class. Huge crosses or aggressively threatening t-shirts telling people who don’t agree with them that they will bow or burn. These an make me feel uncomfortable, especially as a science teacher not knowing what I will face when I get to, say, evolution or the age of the Earth. I often suspect students of wearing some of it for that very purpose, hoping to let the teacher know they will not put up with godless materialism, and that they are prepared to be ugly (maybe even violent. That hasn’t happened so far, thankfully, but ugly confrontations have).
In short, I am very torn about the concept of religious clothing. I would like to see it not worn in schools, because of the nature of cruelty and children. But at the same time, I know that without burkas, some girls would not be allowed in school. It’s a difficult, double-edged sword. School uniforms was one answer to those problems, but people insisted on having religious exemptions to uniform rules, and these were granted, so it made no difference. Parents still insist on their children having markers of faith, and children still insist on policing piety.
Religion really does spoil things, doesn’t it?
[…] a comment by iknklast on Nouvelle intrusion en maillot couvrant à […]
Iirc, not so long ago, men and women competed in swimming with full bodysuits. What’s the difference?
I see the difficulties in normalising burkas and similar, and I completely reject the idea of people wearing such in ‘solidarity’ with muslims (or worse yet, declaring it a symbol of feminism!)… but in the end, I come down on the side of not banning garments. Partly because it’s just a garment (even if it is also a religious symbol) and what the fuck is a government doing telling people which garments they can wear. Partly because it’s a religious symbol and government regulation of religious expression rarely ends well.
And also partly because, as maddog1129 mentions, it is only a little more fabric over and above swimsuits that are considered perfectly acceptable. It’s a narrow difference, and making that the basis of legality purely because one is linked to an oppressive religion does not strike me as an effective way of protecting people from said religious oppression.
Of course, there are clothing prescription for Muslim men. Covering the legs to below the knee, covering the arm to the elbow (I think), and the odd one that insists on conspicuously shortened trousers—’floods’ in effect—so as not to display excessive fabric use. But these aren’t inflicted on women to demonstrate their status as property; so of course no one really thinks about it.
There are parallels with the trans ‘thing.’ Real life Muslims face all sorts of racial and religious hostility. AND share the same label with vicious jihadi maniacs. Any discussion of either group is hemmed around with restricted expression and desperate censorship.
Holms @ 6 – Yes but I’m not sure regulations at municipal swimming pools really count as government telling people what to wear. Municipal swimming pools do have to have some regulations about what the swimmers can wear in the pool, to avoid bringing in a bunch of contaminants. You don’t want people wearing the shoes they’ve been walking around in for hours, for instance.