Feminist Looking Glass

Ever since President Sarkozy and other members of the French government proposed a ban on the wearing of burqas in public places (for instance, see this June 25 Economist article), I had not been able to decide on whether I agreed with the proposal.

On the one hand, although Sarkozy made some comments that tried to ground the proposal in women’s rights (he called the burqa “a sign of subjugation … of debasement”), this was clearly an anti-Muslim and anti-Islam action and was not about women’s rights, since, for example, it was reported that the action was being taken because “mayors of cities with big Muslim populations report a steady increase in numbers, due not to immigration but to its adoption by French-born women—often from North African countries where the burqa is not traditionally worn” and that the French are considering the ban because they are concerned about a “spread of hard-line Islamism in the heavily Muslim banlieues.”

I am against any act that discriminates against a group solely because of its religious or cultural beliefs.  (Although I should note that, as an atheist, I have no use for any religion.) But on the other hand, I see the issue in terms of women’s rights and equality.  Certainly not all Muslim women wear burqas and, therefore, it is only small groups of people who choose to enforce the wearing of them.  Moreover, although some women claim that the wearing of the burqa gives them certain freedoms, I see the issue solely as small patriarchal groups enforcing their will on women.  Thus, to me, it is mostly a cultural issue and it’s hard for me to believe that, if there were no cultural (patriarchal) pressure to wear a burqa, any woman would choose to wear it.

Importantly, my blog collaborator Emily and I could not agree on the issue.  And I should also note that the position of President Sarkozy and others in the French government is contrary to that taken by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo: “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit—for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”

Now, after reading today’s excellent article in the Huffington Post (“Ban the Burka?  You Bet!”) by Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers, I know my answer.  Ms. Rivers has convinced me.  The French government should follow through on the proposal and should ban burqas in public places.

Ms. Rivers’ article makes so much sense that I simply offer these following quotes from the article:

There is a huge difference between the headscarf that women wear to proclaim their religion and the burka. Unlike the headscarf, the burka completely obliterates a woman’s individuality. It makes her a grey shapeless mass of fabric, among other such masses. A woman in a burka perceives the world around her, because a small slit is provided for her eyes, through which she can peer out. Tellingly, though, her mouth is completely covered. The symbolism is shriekingly obvious. In public, women must be silent. The public sphere belongs to men.

It is the same dictum that in the west kept women out of the ballot box, out of the university, out of the courts, and out of the legislature for centuries. When early suffragists chained themselves to public buildings, it was to protect their public powerlessness. Their opponents protested that women were already “queens of the home” and that going into the ballot box would sully their feminine purity. The burka, of course, is about purity–and about power.

Some women -even feminists–decree that the burka should be a personal choice. Some women, in fact, claim that they are set free from the unwanted stares of men under the burka. That freedom, alas, comes at a price–assent to a system that subordinates women in the public sphere and relegates them to purely domestic power. Feeling comfortable on the streets in a burka is too high a fee to pay for one’s own oppression, however unfair this seems. (Of course in countries where women are beaten if they appear in public without a burka, they have no choice but to wear it.)

The burka is a symbol of the male power to compel women to behave in ways that speak of men’s right to own female bodies and to restrict female action. It’s in the long line of dreary cultural artifacts that include foot binding, chastity belts, female circumcision, honor killings, concubinage, and the sex trade.

Western democracies have the right to insist that immigrants shed cultural practices that violate human rights, even when those practices are thriving back home. We don’t allow indentured servitude, the selling of children into sexual slavery, the right of a man to beat his wife, the right to keep girls uneducated, honor killings, bride burnings, assaults on homosexuals, or fatwas that instruct people to main or kill anyone who is seen to have insulted religion.

The burka, though not as severe as the above, restricts women’s ability to function in a non-domestic role and symbolizes submission and inequality. It needs to be consigned to that trash heap of history, along with many of those other cultural traditions noted above that are mainly about female subjugation.

The sooner the better.

Finally, Ms. Rivers also states that “Sometimes, cultural symbols that are about male power and female submission can be transformed so as to lose their patriarchal power.”  I think that thought confirms to me that the French should follow through on their proposal to ban the burqa.  Many people will see the French action as simply an anti-religion and anti-culture action.  And no doubt there will be large protests.  However, if the French ban is seen as a women’s rights issue, it can help to lead to a lessening of patriarchal power in other places by showing that it can be done.

Thanks, Ms. Rivers.  As you say: “Ban the Burka?  You Bet!”

Filed under: International, Race/Ethnicity, Religion Tagged: | Ban, Burka, Burqa and Other Veils, International, Religion, Sarkozy