Heather claims that A burqa ban is a symptom of racism, not secularism, nor feminism. She's completely full of shit.
She's presuming that the burqa itself has absolutely no direct material effect on women's well-being. This is obviously false. Anonymizing and desexualizing women has a direct negative effect on their well-being. Second Heather ignores the effect of non-governmental coercion: she assumes that when there's no governmental coercion on some category behavior, we can therefore conclude that any behavior in that category is an individual's uncoerced choice. This is again false. Third, she assumes that if racists affirm some statement, then affirming that statement marks one as a racist. This is a logical fallacy.
Indeed, by believing that not-quite-fully-human brown women would "voluntarily" anonymize and desexualize themselves, an action that fully-human white women would consider profoundly oppressive and fundamentally objectionable, Heather reveals her own racism.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
2 comments:
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You are getting beyond weird about this. Calling me a racist for instance for suggesting that women might be able to make their own choices about dress?
ReplyDelete(Aside, why do you assume that (a) Muslim women are "brown" and that (b) I'm not :-)?)
Let me spell out the implications of a burqa ban - French muslim women arrested in the streets for unseemly dress......
Hmm, this sounds a bit like Saudi Arabia.
Oh, except, EVEN in Saudi, the arresting police aren't representing a majority group in a society where muslims are subject to daily ethically-based attacks.
But, it's all for their own good really.....
You really are missing the point.
ReplyDelete"Indeed, by believing that not-quite-fully-human brown women would "voluntarily" anonymize and desexualize themselves, an action that fully-human white women would consider profoundly oppressive and fundamentally objectionable, Heather reveals her own racism."
You need to re-read that. You have assumed that no brown women willingly wear a burka because you assume no white women would.
Men and women are subjected to all manner of cultural pressures in how they dress. Not all white western women choose to display their sexuality in an open manner and not all brown women choose to wear burkas.
You are advocating the removal of the choice as if it is a good thing.
No matter how much you rant and insult people, this is madness.