Excuse me while I rage all over the place
Sarkozy Says Burqas Are Unwelcome in France at the Wall Street Journal online.
WHAT. WHAT.
"The burqa is not welcome on French territory," Mr. Sarkozy said. "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity."
The veils are "a test for our civilization," Mr. Gerin said in a telephone interview, adding that his goal is to "liberate these women."
WHAT THE FUCK.
I
I DON'T EVEN.
Do Scrippsies remember that article we read back in core, with Franz Fanon? About Algerian resistance to French colonialism via donning the hijab?
This is just...the stupidest revisiting of patronizing Western Otherization, ooh the Brown man is oppressing the Brown woman, so we, the heroic White men (and women, I've seen so much in that particular wave of the feminist movement that drives me batshit) are going to liberate them! Okay, yes, in certain societies (Hello Taliban!) women are forced to wear them, facing the moral police and I am definitely not advocating that sort of cultural relativism of oh, they do that there and it's their culture so it's okay. But if a woman wants to go with her preference for modesty? To me, you might at well mandate regarding mini-skirts (and my high school had, but then, that's school.)
I'm not that articulate, so if anyone else wants to have a go at this, please do. *flaps hand*
WHAT. WHAT.
"The burqa is not welcome on French territory," Mr. Sarkozy said. "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity."
The veils are "a test for our civilization," Mr. Gerin said in a telephone interview, adding that his goal is to "liberate these women."
WHAT THE FUCK.
I
I DON'T EVEN.
Do Scrippsies remember that article we read back in core, with Franz Fanon? About Algerian resistance to French colonialism via donning the hijab?
This is just...the stupidest revisiting of patronizing Western Otherization, ooh the Brown man is oppressing the Brown woman, so we, the heroic White men (and women, I've seen so much in that particular wave of the feminist movement that drives me batshit) are going to liberate them! Okay, yes, in certain societies (Hello Taliban!) women are forced to wear them, facing the moral police and I am definitely not advocating that sort of cultural relativism of oh, they do that there and it's their culture so it's okay. But if a woman wants to go with her preference for modesty? To me, you might at well mandate regarding mini-skirts (and my high school had, but then, that's school.)
I'm not that articulate, so if anyone else wants to have a go at this, please do. *flaps hand*