File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0111, message 73


From: "Malcolm Thompson" <mac_thompson-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: IMPRISONED BY THE VEIL
Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 04:44:26 +0000


this article is all well and good (well, not really), but honestly: couldn't 
we do without the racist, sexist, "oh, those muslims threat *their* women 
sooo poorly", ignorant anti-veil statements? if this article isn't giving 
with one hand and taking away with the other, i don't know what is. and, 
btw, i do, and it is.

>IMPRISONED BY THE VEIL
>
>The Taliban regime is infamous for rigid gender laws that govern
>everything from the kinds of shoes women can wear to a ban on
>appearing in public without a male escort.

unlike, say, western capitalist cosmetic regimes - anti-fat, anti-hair, 
anti-comfort, anti-privacy, etc. i have a hard time saying which is worse: a 
regime in which women are forced to hide their bodies and suffer egregious 
punishment if they don't, or one in which women are required to display 
their bodies and suffer egregious punishment if they don't (or, for that 
matter, even if they *do*).

i can hear the chorus of "oh, but it's different (worse) there, and only an 
idiot couldn't see that." oh well, y'all don't know the women i do, and the 
systematic harassment and violence they receive whenever they don't conform 
to gender expectations (which, incidentally, is far worse when they are 
unaccompanied by men). go figure.

fuck that racist shit (as they say),
mlcm

--
"I labour to be brief / And become obscure." - Horace, *Ars Poetica*

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