Btw I HAVE walked a mile in a hijab / abaya - having spent a week in KSA for business and where it was required by law. It sure wasn’t empowering. It was highly oppressive and restricted my movement. It made me realize / reinforced how fortunate I am to be American, and how important separation of church and state are as guiding principles.
Now, wearing a hijab in the US doesn’t have governmental force behind it so it can serve as cultural insight. I enjoyed seeing difference color hijabs in Egypt where women could express their own personality by their choice of colors, how they wrapped it - almost like a fashion accessory. That’s a completely different feel from how it felt in KSA where it was black and the religious police had every right to bother you if it didn’t meet their scrutiny.
I think how one takes this exercise is different if one is thinking of the baseline as “govt mandated” versus “personal choice.”
If a bunch of nuns started “Walk a Mile in Her Habit” to help convey that the life of a nun isn’t just prayer and isolation but involves leadership work, I think the response would be different because we all know choosing the habit is indeed pure personal choice.
Your opinion. The examples were pertinent to the point I was making: that different isn’t necessarily bad just because it seems unusual to you. And nobody is praising Saudi Arabia for anything. I know first hand how horrible Saudi can be, I don’t need to be told.
What we can do is stop assuming that ** all ** who wear the hijab are forced to do so. As with all things, some do it by choice, and we should respect people’s choice. This, I think, is part of what the event is about.
^Yet, funny how the US doesn’t seem to be bothered by it much in KSA while we see the need to get involved in some other oppressive regimes. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
@pizzagirl “I think how one takes this exercise is different if one is thinking of the baseline as “govt mandated” versus “personal choice.””
This does make a big difference.
The problem in the US is the third category where women and girls are forced/coerced to wear it by a family and culture that mean that women and girls have no choice. In my opinion, women and girls have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness too.
In my opinion, no one should be allowed to assert that members of their culture have the choice to wear whatever clothing they want to, while they are also working to prevent women and girls in that culture from having that same right through pressure, coercion, and power. I think it should be illegal for family members to pressure, coerce or require women and girls to wear it. That would go a long way toward empowering muslim women.
"I think it should be illegal for family members to pressure, coerce or require women and girls to wear it. "
By this same reasoning, it should be illegal for a Jewish family to “require” their son wear a yarmulke. Or for a Catholic family to “require” their 7 year old daughter wear white and undergo first communion. Or for that matter illegal for me to tell my daughter she ain’t wearing that string bikini at the pool or my son that he needs to put on a suit and tie to go to grandpa’s funeral. There is a huge distinction between adults and children on this dimension and it confuses the argument to talk about both.
BTW in Saudi Arabia little girls don’t wear abaya and hijab and just dress like modest girls elsewhere.
For reasons unrelated to actually watching the movie or play, I recently rewatched the opening of Fiddler on the Roof. The play opens with the song “Tradition”, and I think that the daily life of the various groups in the town are actually germane to the discussion we’re having, since they’re a fictionalized but still based-on-reality slice of life, so: [“Tradition”, from Fiddler on the Roof](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nwj8nAYEM4).
If I learned nothing else from a decent amount of coursework (and a little fieldwork) in anthropology, I certainly learned that we all have our traditions that seem a bit off, and often coercive and oppressive, to those outside our cultural group.
This is a problem for discussions like this one, because they often boil down to “Your coercion is different from my coercion, and therefore wrong!” Of course, left unsaid in this is that if the speaker came from the other side, there’s be something from the other side to point to as clearly and obviously wrong, as well as the fact (and yes, I said “fact”) that while some in the targeted cultural group may agree that there’s something wrong in what’s being pointed out, not all will (and some of those who do see it as a problem may see it as a worthwhile tradeoff, as well).
TL;DR: To everybody in this discussion, your cultural presuppositions are showing.
“By this same reasoning, it should be illegal for a Jewish family to “require” their son wear a yarmulke.”
I don’t agree because, as far as I know, a yarmulke is not a tool used to oppress, isolate, and control females or anyone else. Neither are any of your other examples.
I would even be okay with an age of 17 or 18. I think it definitely should not be allowed to continue after 18.
Also if these rules are unacceptable, then we need to be sure at walk-a-mile-in-her-hijab day that it is clearly explained to all students that these girls are afforded no rights to choose what they want to wear, but are forced to wear this “curtain.”
In the ultra-Orthodox Hassidic Jewish community, an 18-year-old who wasn’t willing to follow the code and wear extremely modest clothing before marriage and ugly, unattractive clothing after would be completely on her own.
And if she didn’t marry before age 20 and quickly start producing children, she’d be considered an old maid.
"This is a problem for discussions like this one, because they often boil down to “Your coercion is different from my coercion, and therefore wrong!”
Your analogy fails because I am not like you. I don’t coerce or oppress my kids, and certainly don’t do anything that acts to oppress a group they are a member of, of anyone else.
“some in the targeted cultural group may agree that there’s something wrong in what’s being pointed out, not all will (and some of those who do see it as a problem may see it as a worthwhile tradeoff, as well).”
I agree that some will, and some won’t. However, just as Muslims and other minority groups have legal protections, so do Muslim females, even if they aren’t the majority.
Additionally, if Muslims have the right to oppress/coerce female Muslims, then the door is cracked open for other groups to oppress Muslims. That will not be good for anyone.
Much2learn. Here in the US. Not Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. But here in the US.
What is the difference between cultural pressure to wear a hijab in (certain) Muslim communities and cultural pressure to wear a sheitel (wig) in certain O-Jewish communities?
Two questions here, @Much2learn:
[ul][]How precisely do I coerce or oppress my children in ways that you don’t?
[li]You do realize that culturally-based norms are most often invisible to those who are participants in them—so really, how would you know that you don’t coerce or oppress your children?[/ul][/li]* Of course, I agree with you that I certainly do coerce/oppress my children, just like all of us. I make them do things/prevent them from doing things in ways that infringe on their freedom—just as everyone else who raises children does. That’s part of the nature of the enterprise, after all.
There were NO cultural norms you made your kids adhere to, much2learn? You never once insisted they dress a certain way, attend a religious service, etc that they would have rather not done?
@dfbdfb “How precisely do I coerce or oppress my children in ways that you don’t?”
I don’t know. You asserted that you did, and that I did too: "Your coercion is different from my coercion, and therefore wrong! " I am saying that this is not a case, because I do not coerce my kids.
“You do realize that culturally-based norms are most often invisible to those who are participants in them—so really, how would you know that you don’t coerce or oppress your children?”
Ultimately I think the issue is whether religious liberty to coerce/oppress trumps the victim’s personal liberty. Is oppression of a group okay in the name of religious freedom? I don’t think so. Remember that if you have the right to oppress/extort women and girls may give others the right to oppress you.
I suggest that a simple test would be that if it the behavior would be oppressive for a person of another religion or a store owner to do to you, then it is probably also oppression if you do it to your 18 year old daughter or wife. In this case, I am guessing that if a store owner told Muslim men that they will be served unless they wear a burqa, that would be oppressive to you, if so then I think that it is also oppressive for a Muslim man to do it to a Muslim woman.
It makes it very difficult to teach students to be accepting of all groups, when some of those groups are oppressing their own members. What if a student who asks, “Why it is wrong for people in the majority to use their power to control and oppress Muslims, but it is fine for Muslim men with power to use that power to control and oppress Muslim women and girls?” How would you answer that?
I didn’t give my kids an option whether or not to go to Hebrew school or have a bar/bat mitzvah. Wasn’t that coercion?
I don’t like a hijab any more than anyone else, but parents of all stripes “coerce” their kids into religious lessons, music lessons, certain styles of dress all the time. We “allow” this in the US because we believe you are free to raise your children how you like unless it’s an issue of physical safety.
@Pizzagirl “I don’t like a hijab any more than anyone else, but parents of all stripes “coerce” their kids into religious lessons, music lessons, certain styles of dress all the time. We “allow” this in the US because we believe you are free to raise your children how you like unless it’s an issue of physical safety.”
Okay, I like that. Then I would say:
First, it is not accurate to claim that this ends at adulthood. In many families the adult Muslim women are controlled/coerced too. They do not have enough power to have a choice. Therefore, I think that it makes no sense to discuss the issues with children unless it is resolved for adult women.
Second, I don’t think the safety issue it limited to physical safety. Child and spouse abuse can take many forms.
Third, I still like the idea of wear-a-hijab day, because I want Muslim girls to be respected at school, but I continue to think it is unacceptable to present wear-a-hijab day, as if wearing one is great, when those clothes are being used to control and oppress women who do not wish to wear them. I would pose this question again: if a student asks, “Why it is wrong for people in the majority to use its power to control and oppress Muslims, but it is fine for Muslim men with power to use their power to control and oppress Muslim women and girls?” How would you answer that? I think it is an honest and important question.
Fourth, thought experiment. I find a KKK gown/robe and capirote to be offense because of the KKKs history of oppressing AAs and Jews. Would you argue that nevertheless, white supremacists have the right to send their kids to school in white gowns with swastikas and be respected, as long as it is not physically harmful? or is oppressing races more offensive than just the usual ongoing oppression of women? Perhaps it is that I just misunderstand the KKK because their culture is different? Would it be reasonable to have wear a KKK robe and capirote day and not mention the oppression that it represents? I don’t think so, but I have the impression that you may disagree.
