Which will survive intact: muslim culture or women's rights.

I wonder what will happen when the right wing discovers that most 'hardline' muslims will vote their way if they simple embrace them?

"Muslim culture" might survive just fine--but it won't be the kind that screws over half the population of the earth.

Look at these Thoroughly Modern Muslims....and this was back in the 70s....in IRAN:




http://all-that-is-interesting.com/shah-iran

Most UT students didn't get to leave the country--they're still there, they're old now. They didn't choose to go all fundy in their clothing choices, it was foisted upon them. Crazy governments...they should probably butt in less, especially when it comes to "Thou Shalt Not" exercises!

...without an authoritarian enforcing it (although an argument can easily be made for heavily-propagandized individuals, wherein the propaganda replaces the authoritarian), and even then it isn't monolithic so long as a single person resists, which is virtually guaranteed to always occur.

Which one 'wins' is wholly undetermined at the moment and will be for a few decades at the very least (most likely). I'd like to see a much more moderate Islam emerge, but with the rates that people poll in the Muslim world, that's still a VERY long time off. Not monolithic, but absolutely dominant. Now in individual nations we may fare much better (for instance, in America we have a rich history of integrating immigrants; however, that is at threat now because of the Controlled Opposition on BOTH sides, the actual supremacists and the social vengeance warriors), but I think any sort of 'emergent' Islam is still a ways off. I'd love to be wrong though.

Men and women marching together; most woman wore a head covering but otherwise faced the world. And given that Turkey is majority-Muslim country most of them were likely Muslim.

AFAIK. Islam requires modesty. The head-to-toe concealment is a feature of the more fundamentalist groups, who like many Christian fundamentalists would likely be happier if we women just went away altogether (except for the cooking and cleaning, of course, but someone's probably working on an app for that).

in the big city, never mind chador or hijab and manteau, (except for the very aged--they refused to adapt), the bathing suit might be a "two piece" instead of a thong, and the miniskirt might not be a "micro-mini," and you would never be seeing a ton of butt cheek, cleavage or bare arms, but there was none of this "veil" shit in the seventies. Heck, all this hijab in Turkey is (big picture) recent--it never used to be quite so prevalent.

The women in "modern" Iran still had an uphill climb, though--they could bring home the turkey bacon, but they still had to fry it up in the pan, and do the cleaning, washing and ironing too...

...behind for their use.

Soccer star Lira Bajramaj
[img][/img]
http://www.wisemuslimwomen.org/muslimwomen/bio/fatmire_lira_bajramaj/


or Olympic gold medalist Aliya Mustafina


[img][/img]

It was 85+ degrees. Even in my shorts and t shirt I was miserable. I saw so any women dressed in full burqa. Some you could see their eyes, other had netting. I felt miserable looking at them. Later I found out that August is the hottest months in Arab countries and there are direct flight from their countries to Los Angeles. And they come there to cool off.

Later in the rest room I saw one women take off her burqa. She was gorgeous and barely wearing anything! Skimpy shorts and bathing suit top. I asked her she was hot and she let me touch the cloth, it was like wearing a sheet with extra thread count. She said she wear different weight Burgas.

The burqas are for public. They come off at home, and many dress very nicely. As for feeling sorry for the woman in the supermarket, I'd want to know if she was happy with and approved of her situation or not. Many are and do. Conservatives especially no doubt, but also others.

In France they've decided that women who are covered from head to toe, even their faces, are not able to participate as equals in public.

And I think they're right.

Imagine. Two sisters could pass each other on the street and not even recognize each other. In fact, that's probably the point.

It's a great way to keep women isolated and helpless.

that they're victims and that I know what is best for them and they do not. That would be a form of contempt wrapped in delusions of righteous superiority.

That attire is simply an environmental response. This has always been the case. Even men in those countries wrap their faces. Don't people ever wonder why men wear the keffiyeh? The weather there creates the response. This is not in the Koran, and one of the reasons you see varying forms of Islamic attire. It is the environment that demands it.

Due to the fact that I am not Muslim and it would seem as cultural misappropriation if I were to use it, but in the summer I would prefer to wear the niqab.

We were just talking about this in another thread.

...stupid.

Modernize and have your physical appearance judged to death, or stay with the veil and have people mock you.

When I'm out and about.

You'll get used to it.

It aggravates me to see women dehumanized, even if they're doing it to themselves. And walking around in what amounts to a body bag to cover your 'shame' or not 'tempt men' or whatever is certainly dehumanizing.

That said, I'm on the side of people can wear what they want.

Last edited Sat Nov 28, 2015, 06:17 PM - Edit history (2)

because of how they dress.

I don't know how you managed to have never seen anyone in a hijab before, why it should be so remarkable or upsetting to you. Growing up in homogenous communities leads to intolerance. I'm grateful that I live in a heterogenous community where I see people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, including veiled women, every single day. I would hate to be the kind of person who even thinks like you let alone finds it acceptable to write something like that.

and whether women in the US choose to wear them is for them to decide, not me or the OP. I will admit that the Muslim women I interact with most often do not wear niqabs, though I do see them on occasion. I don't believe I've seen a burqa in Mpls, but I doubt I'd stare if I did.

Especially the old school ones, that consist of a mask that drops over the head and is a separate garment from the lined chador that together are referred to as chaderi in some parts of the region.

Hijab and manteau have taken over with the young women there, and if they had their way they'd dump that look, too. A lot of this "choice" is a result of cultural bullying. Left to their own devices, this shit would go by the wayside. It is male authoritarians who continue to divide women with false "good" and "bad" labels--and of course the "bad" ones are like the ones illustrated just below.

Yes indeed--surprise, surprise--the Morality police are ONCE AGAIN back on the streets arresting women for being too "on trend" with their costumes. Just this past week.....








Rouhani was no magician--he still answers to the Guardians, and they aren't happy with all those uppity women daring to express themselves by wearing modest clothing while going about their business...such a waste of resources. Perhaps they should send those authoritarians with their vans in search of some of the rapists who are trolling around the city attacking women... smh!

That whole patriarchy thing but whatever...agendas

A lined, black polyester blanket that creates its own "climate of sweat" underneath. The thing is a portable sauna.

It absolutely sucks and it sucks that now--only JUST now--divorced/widowed women in KSA can get an "Identity card" so that they can be regarded as "Head of Household" while they STILL cannot drive a damned car. They still have to prove their case to a judge, but there's a crack in the tile at long last.

They are about five hundred years behind everyone else, though--they need to get moving. And as for the rest of the world, they can't rest too smugly on their laurels, either.

My Muslim friends seem to think it's very extreme. Of course the Muslims I know are immigrants, or children of immigrants

I work with two Muslim women (Iranians by birth). They are very cool. They smoke cigarettes and are very progressive in their politics. Very nice people.

The younger ones (under 40) typically practice their own version of Islam... which is to say they believe in it, but also break all the rules (eat pork, drink liquor, etc).

They are pretty modernized in their religion, as I am in mine. No need to go around praying every few hours, or arguing about religions. They just want to stay here, as one of them puts it, "to avoid going back to that hell hole". The older ones are a less modernized, or at least try to appear that way.

The ones I know are every nice people

thanks for putting that together.


Cher

It was remarkable to me in that it was something I had never seen before, I thought I made that clear. And , hey what makes you think I'm intolerant? I love cats and dogs equally.

Just because you" see veiled women, every single day" does not detract from my opinion that it casts them in a second-class role. Fuck that shit.

"I would hate to be the kind of person who even thinks like you let alone finds it acceptable to write something like that"

You will never, ever think like me - of course, you can write all the bitter, self-centered things you want.


[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

Some people support patriarchy while denouncing it.

I dont like that hobby, either. But some people do.

If the woman is freely choosing to wear the niqab, that's her business and no one else's.

But then I feel the same way about women who choose to wear bikinis on the cover of sports illustrated.

is a way to blot out the woman. To make her invisible. So invisible that even her sister or best friend wouldn't recognize her on the street. To turn her into a shadow.

I don't see how any feminist could support it. It's a way to diminish women's public presence. To erase them from the public world.

As a feminist, I don't understand how another feminist could condone it.

When the US-installed government forbid women from wearing veils, and women even had them ripped from their face when walking in public. Would that make you feel better, to ensure Muslim women dress to make you and the rest of the American empire feel comfortable rather than choosing their own clothes? I have no doubt that would be the case for many here because if there is one thing that unifies Westerners it is their sense of superiority and contempt for the peoples of the Global South.

What I condone is women making their own religious and sartorial choices. I don't tell you what to wear. Muslim women don't tell you what to wear. What makes you think you have a right to tell them what they are allowed to wear?

The woman referenced by the OP does not live in a country where she is forced to veil against her will. She lives in the US, where she is allowed to dress as she damn well pleases. Outside the US, many Many muslim women around the world have made clear that they do not see their rights hinging on clothing choices, that they do not see veiling as a source of oppression. In France, women are forbidden from wearing headscarves. Would it make you happy if the US passed such discriminatory laws here, if the First Amendment were overturned to accommodate your discomfort with visible signs of religious diversity?

The outrage is not about that woman's rights; she lives in the US, a country that does not require she veil. She has every RIGHT to choose to veil. Yet you insist she be denied that right because her dress makes you uncomfortable. Don't pretend for a minute that feminism justifies or requires you to impose your preferences for dress on another woman. It does not. It gives you no right to look down your nose at a woman wearing a veil any more than it justifies calling scantily clad women s...ts. The outrage is a function of ethnocentrism, not feminism. There is no version of feminism that gives you control over Muslim women's lives. Military empire might give you and other Westerners the power, but never the moral right.

There are women who are killed in honor killings, and girls and women forced to undergo FMG. Just because a woman is in the US doesn't make her free. Not if she is under the thumb of her male relatives and prevented from interacting with outsiders. And that is what the head-to-toe, face-covering burqa does. It makes a woman invisible outside her home.

Women in France are NOT prevented from wearing headscarves. However, in the public sphere, they are not allowed to wear burqas. No one, not just a woman, is allowed to wear clothing that fully covers the face.

I think the French cultural practice is preferable to that of the Taliban and the Saudis who prevent women from interacting with others on an equal basis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/world/europe/france-moves-to-clarify-the-rules-on-full-veil-and-burqa-bill.html

The so-called burqa bill — which also bans the wearing of masks, balaclavas and niqabs, which cover the face — went into effect in 2011 and does not forbid the wearing of the hijab, or head scarf. Those who conceal their faces, whether at a museum, opera or public garden, face a fine of 150 euros, or about $192, though officials said the law had not been fully enforced, in an effort to minimize tensions.

who dess in Western fashion. Your objection is not about that. It is an objection to a mode of dress that makes you uncomfortable. A woman could be forced by family members to dress in ways that you wouldn't bat an eye at, but that doesn't concern you because what you object to is the outward sign of religious difference. You assume a veiled women is abused, when she could very well have chosen that dress, while another woman you know who dresses in Western attire could be having the shit beat out of her regularly. You've obviously never had a conversation with a Muslim woman about veiling or read what Muslim feminist groups have to say on the subject. To do either would require respect.

The headscarf is in fact banned in French public schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_conspicuous_religious_symbols_in_schoos
It's not a prohibition on fashion scarfs but Muslim head scarves. A blonde, French girl could wear a Channel scarf that covered as much of her hair as the Muslim scarves do, but that would not be prohibited because the purpose of the law is to impose cultural conformity and discriminate against religion, the very sort of discrimination you insist I impose on every woman I see in order to be a true "feminist." I will not become a bigot to satisfy you. The world has far too many already.

You know that women can't even ride in the front seat of a car in some countries, right?

"discriminate against religion".

Wow. Just wow.

is abusive.

I object to women -- to people -- being required to wear facial masks for any reason. For example, Elizabeth Smart was forced to wear a similar outfit by her kidnapper, and it helped him to conceal her in plain sight for a year.

The issue with me isn't headscarves in school. It is the burqa - a head to toe covering that makes it impossible for a woman to participate as an equal in the public sphere.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/opinion/03iht-edeltahawy.html

NEW YORK — I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.

We must not sacrifice women at the altar of political correctness or in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.

As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, “The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.” It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.

Yet his words have inspired attempts to defend the indefensible — the erasure of women.

Some have argued that Sarkozy’s right-leaning, anti-Muslim bias was behind his opposition to the burqa. But I would remind them of comments in 2006 by the then-British House of Commons leader Jack Straw, who said the burqa prevents communication. He was right, and he was hardly a right-winger — and yet he too was attacked for daring to speak out against the burqa.

SNIP


Soad Saleh, a professor of Islamic law and former dean of the women’s faculty of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University — hardly a liberal, said the burqa had nothing to do with Islam. It was but an old Bedouin tradition.

SNIP

There is likely social pressure to wear it, so I kind of understand. But it's hard not to see that women haven't advanced as much in those cultures. Harder for them to object and change things, too, in many of those countries - it could lead to jail or worse.

being able to live in a society as a human being and not as something to be covered, controlled, and disappeared? How about that intolerance? You have anything to say about that?

Your privilege tells you that its a mode of dress, not an aspect of another culture's patriarchy. You should go live somewhere in the Middle East for a while and see what you can learn about what the cultural expectations of women are: it might change your mind.

to what Middle Eastern feminist groups have to say rather than determining that you get to decide what liberation means for them?

FYI, the woman reference was in the US, not the Middle East.

Last edited Fri Dec 4, 2015, 08:35 PM - Edit history (1)

It is ironic that you can not see your own privilege. I suppose that is why it is privilege. I hope that you will recognize it someday. Go there and you might learn, but only if you keep an open mind about the situation.

but the 'check your privilege' cliche makes you sound adolescent and undermines your good points.

perhaps that post came from someone living in "Smalltown, America. I find it curious that, since you seem to be bragging about living in a "hetrogeneous community" you would use the word "hate" when referring to another human being? I wouldn't very much like to be the kind of person who could look in the mirror and see you looking back at me.

Culture is separate from the person...like religion or ideology.

>>Damn any culture that considers itself entitled to pass judgment on entire peoples<<

I think people are entitled to be human. To notice a naquib when they've never seen it before in their normal surroundings is not unusual. It's a natural human reaction.

>>Growing up in homogenous communities leads to intolerance.<<

That's a false generalization.. growing up in a homogenous community leads to ignorance of other cultures but not necessarily intolerance.

It does not exist separate from a people, and people do not exist outside their culture.

Or do they acquire it as they grow up?

Traditions and customs are culture. Do you believe the custom of wearing a naqib is rooted in a person's DNA?

If a person adopts a cultural custom, that person is consenting to and agreeing with the custom by choice. If it's a choice how can the culture and the person be one?

If I say I don't like the car you drive is that saying I don't like you?

I live in an area with a high Muslim population. High population of lots of people really. I didn't know the difference between a hijab and a Niqab so I had a Muslim friend explain it to me. The littlest girls were not covered and were running around like any other children. (I've also seen groups women wrapped in beautiful, modest Saris, also out walking) The diversity is beautiful, in the US these women are not coerced by anything but their culture and their faith.

I see them working at the drugstore, I work closely with a nutritionist who wears the hijab, I see them driving cars. I see them laughing. I saw them at the OneBillionRising feminist rally/organization where their stories brought me to tears-- what they wore or didn't wear did not protect them from violence.

Hijabs and other head coverings are a more common sight, the niqab was jarring in its rarity. I live in an area that's largely Muslim.

Then again, you can't really tell who is or isn't Muslim around here by the way they dress. From what I can tell, most Muslim women around here wear nothing covering their heads at all, and there are quite a few non-Muslim women who wear scarves indistinguishable from Hijabs over their heads for head protection in bad weather or as a fashion statement.

No one gender should be allowed to tell another how to dress.

hire uniformed goons to beat them on their ankles with long sticks if they see any skin pr hair showing from the 'wrong' places.

Nothing in the Quran dictates any kind of cover, even headscarves. Men and women are simply told to dress modestly.

It's simply cultural, designed to erase women from society. It's utterly misogynistic and relegates women to second class status every second of their public life

That's what I don't like about certain Middle Eastern cultures.

So sad that Iraq and Iran were once some of the most progressive.

But we screwed that up perfectly.

Sorry my bad, the eyes were exposed. It was a niqab.

It was even more unsettling because her eyes were covered by netting. And she was following behind her husband in the ladies department, and he was the one dealing with the female clerk.

And later on I started to think. Imagine living in a place where every time you went out, all the women were dressed that way. You wouldn't recognize your own sister unless she was with a man you recognized. And even then you might have to guess which of "his" females he was with.

What a great way to keep women isolated and helpless.

P.S. Yes, we used to have to wear something on our heads in Church, just as men were required to take hats off. And Jewish men still wear something on their heads when they worship. But coverings on the hair never prevented people from identifying each other.

...American males.
"Who's on the phone?...No, you can't go to the store alone...You were looking at that guy, you whore. You can't wear the outfit. No, I don't want anybody coming over to my house (Not HER house).

I see these pricks a lot. I wear dark glasses and I see them sometimes walking down the aisles with their wife (property). I notice their eyes are always scanning the males in the aisle/store to make sure nobody is looking at HIS property.

Creepy, sick, insecure fucks.

Anyway, that's how I feel.

but to wear that crap in public is demeaning to the women. No way around it.

in a grocery store here in NYC in Queens. Possibly in other more Arab neighborhoods e.g., in Brooklyn it's more common. Otherwise, headscarves are all over the place and also an occasional woman covering her lower face. Also some women wear headscarves and a long coat dress. I like their headscarves esp. the ones with lots of lace trim.

When I saw the woman in a black niqab I was just about floored. She was tall, had a baby strapped to her back and was wearing gloves - in July.

right on Madison Avenue in the 60s. A niqab. I have zero problem with head scarves but anything that covers the face is only trying to disappear that person. I find them repulsive and think anyone who supports women having to wear them are misogynist assholes.

They do their thing just like the rest of us I guess. I do admit to feeling weird when I'm around them, like you said a culture shock. But I also feel bad for them for having to wear the niqab. I never get that "down" feeling when I see other muslim women wearing the headscarves (I've seen some stylish hijabs on some very stylish women), I guess it's cause I feel bad that they're being forced into wearing it around others who don't cover themselves that much.

I dunno it's not my place as a man to comment too much on what a woman wears, but I still think it's sad nonetheless.

there are many many many variants of this dress, from what you described to what amounts to a glorified headscarf. I live in a "publix" area, and I see many many variants. The Birqua is the full on, ninja like cover, which most Muslims do not use.

"PUBLIX" is a grocery store - as opposed to public area. I assumed that Publix was a well-known grocery chain, my apologies.

what I meant to say is that I live in the area where Publix is, as opposed to (insert NE grocery chain here). Every Publix I go too seems to have someone in a hijab (though almost never in the full on Birqua)

It simply hard not to assume the woman is oppressed

I get the idea that many are wealthy and living it up under all that cloth!

She's American and has not been Muslim her whole life. I think she changed her religion for her husband. It is unsettling for me in a way that just a headscarf isn't. I'm not sure why.

and a niqab is not. It's trying to disappear a person and should be completely unacceptable to any sane society.

there is a Muslim feminist in one of my college classes who defends the wearing of hijab as liberating. She explained to our class that it sends the message to men that she is a human and not a sex object.

I also found this blog post which espouses a similar viewpoint, this time specifically about the niqab:

https://medium.com/aj-story-behind-the-story/for-me-niqab-is-a-feminist-statement-13ca2fc2fe9a#.krvmnpx2nn

What about the bikini? Is that a garment of empowered sexuality? Or is ours a culture in which women value themselves so little as people that their only recourse is to make their bodies baubles for men to admire?

I would argue that both the niqab and the bikini can be used both to devalue women and to empower them, depending on the context and the intention. Therefore I would argue that it is unfair of you to assume that the woman is being subjugated. It is quite possible that she was dressed as she was of her own volition.

"encouraged" to wear a niqab.

Choosing to become a nun is a much different choice than what the culture norm is.

I don't see it as equivalent at all.

Nuns' habits just kind of became fossilized for several centuries. The changes made to modernize were an excellent idea.

I'm not Catholic, but the last time I went to an interfaith women's retreat I got to know a 60-ish nun wearing slacks and a print blouse as her daily garb. She was a social worker, and quite an interesting woman.

I've never had a problem with women (or men) wearing the dress of their home country/culture. Indians and many others dress so colorfully that the Indonesian Muslims that turned up here in our university town were kind of a jolt, as the women wear beige. Beige veils that show their faces, beige robes that cover their bodies. Very blah.

When I was in London a couple of years ago,there was a strong ME presence, but with a generational difference: teenage girls in modern Western styles accompanying older women (presumably their mothers) wearing head to toe black robes.

When hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans poured into the US a century ago, the women were considered very backward because they wore shawls and headscarves, but very quickly their daughters did not, and none of their granddaughters would have been caught dead in such an outfit.

You can't compare that to the women in the Middle Eastern countries who face DEATH if they do not wear what is forced upon them by the cowardly men in those countries.

the bottom line is that they just freak me out. I would probably feel the same way if fundie chrisitians walked around in all white with only a slit for the eyes as well. It's just creepy.

you cannot tell me that is not misogynistic bullshit

shopping in my neighborhood. Usually they progress from niqab to abaya (face uncovered) to hijab (head scarf) and some even ditch that after a while. They're nonpersons when they're in the niqab, which I suppose is the aim, although they'll tell you it protects their skin from desert sun, which we have in abundance.

I grew up RCC and survived Catholic school and I remember the humiliation of a piece of TP bobby pinned to my hair because I'd forgotten the damned hat (again!).

Patriarchal religion is always aimed at burdening women with unnecessary crap because males can't be bothered to control themselves.

And they wonder why I left.

...for why men have to uncover their hair when going into a church and women have to cover it? Girl cooties? And a piece of toilet paper? God would rather have someone have a piece of paper on the head meant to clean your butt than to be bare-headed?

My husband is a recovering Catholic.

and it's always covered in the most extreme of Abraham's religions because it's so distracting to males.

Go to Temple some day. In conservative temples, there's always a basket of yarmulkes in the entry way for men who forgot theirs or non Jewish guests. Women leave their hair uncovered.

I'm not a man, so I don't know. Are men really as weak-willed as that? Wouldn't most men like to think of themselves as stronger than that? Or even to BE stronger than that? I would be insulted to be regarded as not able to control myself.

so they create a bunch of stupid and inconvenient rules to control women.

There was a woman in our grocery store one day dressed like that. She and her husband were really tall and I think k they were from Somalia.

It is kind is disconcerting to see someone dressed like that. We have lots of Muslim women here that wear long dresses and scarves. That's common here but not the all over completely covered black. That has to be do uncomfortable in the summer.

seriously, WTF

If it's her choice to dress like that then oh,well.

But if she has to dress like that then I wish that she finds a way out of it.

when they face being ostracized by their family, church, friends, community, I wonder just how much of a "choice" it can be

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3338058/University-Missouri-Assistant-Professor-charged-violently-grabbing-14-year-old-relative-hair-dragging-school-not-wearing-hijab.html

I haven't ever talked to one of those women. I don't know how they really feel about it.

I'm generally against religious fundamentalism though and any indication of it I find unsettling, not matter the particular religion.

Many of the mosques in the US are Saudi-funded, preaching the most repressive version of Islam. Niqabs in the Publix are one result.

I think Dems should not be too PC about this issue. We have to talk about the elephant in the living room, women's rights should not be determined by religion in our country.

In my original OP I was giving my impressions, my at-the-moment, my cultural shock in seeing a woman covered from head to toe, wearing even gloves in a stark, black drape with only her eyes visible. Do you think I should have asked her obvious male "escort" for permission to talk to her? If I approached her directly would I have an intruder, a trespasser, a violator of her space? What consequences would she suffer if she talked to a male without permission?

That "project your judgment" is , IMHO, uncalled for and rather shallow.

It's too early on a Sunday morning for you to ask me to think? Get back to me around 5 p.m. EST. Your specifics are detracting from my generalizations - a sign of a weak argument when you draw conclusions citing "university professors" and "couples" in "western fashions" - whateverthefuck that means.

back when Christie Todd Whitman was governor. I anted to yell at her, "You're in New Jersey! The governor is a woman!"

Even my Autistic self has enough social graces not to conceive of actually doing such a thing.

And given the demographics of Jersey City at the time, it was likely that she had not yet become naturalized. The mayor at the time was a conservatroid repuke, Bret Schundler, who piled up votes from the brownstones and luxury condos across from NYC and an unholy alliance with the African American churches. That proved to be enough, because most of the rest of the city consisted of immigrants, relatively few of whom had become citizens and thus eligible to vote. Social graces aside, I did have the pleasure of calling Schundler a pig to his face one morning as he was working the PATH train station as I was headed into NYC.

...when there has probably been more than enough of that.

But I find it difficult to read that mode of dress as anything but oppressive.

No identity, no face, no voice.

People say they welcome all kinds of diversity in our country, but then they also want to cherry pick which parts of their culture they like and which they don't. Doesn't really work that way anymore. Most new immigrants hold tight to their cultural identity and values, and don't view it as conflicting with their life in the US. Its important to remember the shock some of them feel at our way of life as well, but they adapt and so will we. We just had one city in Michigan become the first Muslim-majority city in the nation. Culture shock is normal and to be expected for both sides but we'll learn to live with it like we always do. Or, you can vote Republican.

NEVER, NEVER I SAY

Hell, I love diversity. Love it in food, culture, dress (except for the theme of this posting). What I can't stand and will never abide is any culture that subjugates and - because of "tradition" - places a class or group in an inferior position.

For example, I don't like the Indian culture of untouchables but understand it's historical and traditional roots.

Yes, I agree that time will pass and this too shall pass away - but it doesn't mean I have to like it and have a positive reaction to it. I guess I'm not as liberal as some.

I have never seen a man here in either Europe or the US that wears a thawb. NEVER.

It's patriarchal crap and it doesn't belong in the Western world.

END. OF. STORY.

or which parts fit in western societies and which do not. And we have outlawed religious and cultural practices we find objectionable.

FGM is cultural in many parts of African and Arabian societies and outlawed in western societies.

Nudity is cultural in many parts of African and Aboriginal societies, outlawed in the west.

We do tell women what they can wear in public (I can't testify topless in court as a woman for example) and we make value judgements about religious dictums we want to see in our public squares every day (no ceremonial butchering of animals in Central Park).

Why this misogynistic garment, deliberately designed to erase women from society, somehow deserves special hands-off treatment I do not understand.

This has nothing to do with being a republican and everything to do with being a progressive feminist committed to equal rights for women.