Imagine you, European woman, traveling to an African village for anthropological research, write a story or participate in a development cooperation project. Upon arrival, I suggest that if you integrate, you must use the local dress, which involves carrying his bare chest. How you'd react? Would not it be a stick? Do not vindicate your right to live with that community with respect for the difference? Something similar may be what an immigrant feels when he urges Muslims to take off the veil.
The comparison is not mine but the professor Jorge Magfud, who poses in a opinion article published in Gara. All comparisons are odious, and I dare not defend it, but I think an interesting and stimulating challenge to rethink the hyper-worn veil debate. Caution: do not speak of the burqa, which I think is another story which we'll talk another day, but the scarf covering the hair only and not the face or body.
know my opinion: the veil is not the problem but the symptom. Machismo is a universal problem that hampers humanity. The same problem assumes some symptoms or other in every society: for example, anorexia and traffic accidents in ours, the stoning of adulterous women in Nigeria, the selective abortion in China ... It seems sterile enter compare which of these realities is more dramatic or press to a greater degree to women. It seems more practical to recognize the global problem and address it to wear off with him all the symptoms. Perhaps it is utopian, but what I think. And what is important to understand the veil as a symptom and not as the problem is that it prevents those who decide to take crush. That is, once again, the responsibility and the concept as a Christian who is to blame may lie with women and get into the contradictory dynamics of victimize and blame the same time.
When we listen to a European parliamentary Arab and Muslim faith say that the veil frees the hands we took the lead and we have a horse Stockholm syndrome. However, what you are saying is that because in their culture (male) is given a great eroticism to the hair feel if the output sexualized. In our culture (male) breasts are one of the most sexualized. Therefore, if we lived in that African tribe topless, feel that men do not look at us more than the boobs.
Not the same root? In both cases, a patriarchal culture keeps women sexualized reduced to objects of desire (not subject) to the delight of the male gaze. In one case, the desire is concentrated in the hair, and another on the tits. Of course it is discriminatory that Arab women have to (or at least be educated to) cover their hair in public. But so is that Western women have to hide her breasts. Imagine another situation: popular food in the village festival in August. 40 ยบ in the shade and then men began to take off the shirt. To see who is the handsome man who dares to get in bra, do not tell you because of boobs. And why not? Because we are the daughters of Eve, the temptation personified. To teach is to provoke the male breasts.
As I said, do not compare. There are women murdered for daring to take off the veil. What would happen to the woman who goes topless on a pilgrimage? You cross out the crazy, cool, humiliate and harass you. Moreover, in this society are heard comments (more or less convinced) and that: "And then they complain that there are violations, if they are dressed like whores!". The level of repression varies from one transgression to another but, again, it seems more fruitful to recognize all the faces of machismo without insisting on measuring what is more dramatic.
Otherwise, it will almost always look more dramatic than those experienced the others. We always feel more free. We need to hold the burka burka as the need to cling to botox and bulimia. It is only human, I guess.
In the picture, a scene from Persepolis, film (and comic) essential to reflect on women in East and West.
(This post is dedicated to take, with whom I have had an interesting discussion before encouraging me to publish it. Comment, cute!)
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