Revisiting anti-woman culture

A couple of weeks ago I wrote of Bikinis and Niqabs in response to the wildly disproportionate debate in the House of Commons and Canadian society over a woman's legal challenge to wear a niqab in a Canadian citizenship ceremony.

I wrote the article and considered the topic purged from my internal database of things that are rubbing me the wrong way. This works most of the time, but on occasion something comes up and I need to take a second run at things.

So let's go back to the niqab debate. Stephen Harper said we are right to reject the niqab. "Why would Canadians, contrary to our own values, embrace a practice at that time that is not transparent, that is not open and frankly is rooted in a culture that is anti-women."

Ignoring that the man praising transparency, openness, and pro-women culture has temporarily entered some kind of opposites-day twilight zone for re-election purposes, he's the one who created the federal Office of Religious Freedom and he's the one singling out one religion as anti-woman.

On the former, he should have given consideration to a federal Office of Freedom from Religion if he was going exclude certain religions, on the latter, let's talk about hypocrisy.

The arguments I've heard against the niqab typically include coercion and/or brainwashing. These women are being forced to wear these garments by their family or their significant other and if they say it's their own choice, it's because they've been brainwashed or otherwise oppressed into doing so. 

It couldn't possibly be because they wanted to, because Islam.

When I wrote in the B&N post, one thing I advocated was to learn about other religions as an outsider. It is something that Harper should do. It is something everyone should do.

I read an article today about a religion in which women were forbidden from any form of higher office and the ones who chose to devote themselves to their god locked themselves away from the world. These women are only permitted to leave their compound with special permission and only for special occasions or specific reasons, like medical appointments. Inside the compound, there is a designated visitation area, walled off from the rest of the compound and the women are permitted converse over a half wall or through a metal grate with their visitors. When it comes to work, it's piecemeal labour creating trinkets or foodstuff and performing custodial work in exchange for food and board.

Oh, and they wear black uniforms that conceal them from head to toe, which separates them from other women in the same living conditions in first world countries who wear orange.

These women were in the news today, because of their exuberant fawning over their male figurehead.



If religious freedom is a right in this country, it is a right for all people of all faiths.

If that freedom is only granted to specific, preferred, religions it is no right at all. It's a class system.