(Untitled)

[shweta_narayan]

We had a lovely day with kirizal  and voidmonster  yes'day, but I want to note one negative aspect for it just so the data's out there:

At dinner, I got stares and dirty looks from a number of the other patrons.  I believe it was because I was wearing a WarmThing on my head, and it may have looked like hijab to the incredibly ignorant and xenophobic.  (I was also

Comments

[txanne]

Yes yes, please draw lots!!! :-D

[shweta_narayan]

:)
Working on that!

[shweta_narayan]

Thanks, dear. It... went, after I'd posted, which is more than I'd managed before. Hopefully today it will go better.

[sovay]

Best with the drawing, which sounds like a great improvement on stupid passersby.

[shweta_narayan]

Thanks :)

[scriitor]

Are hijabs a rare sight out that way?

I don't know what a WarmThing is (Google guided me to 288,000 results for retching), but I do remember Sikhs being assaulted and killed in the days after 9-11, because of their turbans. By then I'd been living in this town long enough, a town with 200,000 people and 40 languages, where hijabs are everywhere and burqas aren't so rare, that I was amazed by the ignorance and hate put on display by those acts.

I don't know, as an outsider I mightn't be well attuned to recognising the subtleties, but even then, in that vengeance thirsty atmosphere, such acts weren't tolerated by the establishment. Because it undermined the legitimacy of their policies, of course.

And now? Again as an outsider, it seems to me that that sort of ignorance and hate is being promoted more and more by political factions, not just the fringe but the simply out of power, as a useful scar tactic and vote grabber. Eh.

[scriitor]

Ahem. Scare tactic.

[shweta_narayan]

Are hijabs a rare sight out that way?

Not that rare, but not common.
And yeah, the level of blithering ignorance does spread the danger out...

Most people's fear-driven knee-jerks are xenophobic and reactionary; this is what the US far right is built on. Ignorance and fear aren't just what they promote; it's what they embody.

(For the most part, Republican = far right, Democrat = center right, though that varies of course.)

[scriitor]

So Obama isn't a Marxist? Fox News coulda fooled me

[kirizal]

May I join you on that cranky bench?

Cranky on your behalf, of course, but also cranky at myself for failing to notice.

[shweta_narayan]

I didn't notice it happening either at the table, dear. It was on the way to the loo & back that it was really, creepily, evident.

And I don't think I even said anything about it till we were almost home; I have a tendency to shut down over things like that till I've processed a bit.