inspired by lemmitors at https://lemmy.ml/post/49343381
any guy in it just for women to wear skimpier clothing should probably be investigated.
My ultimate answer is that I feel internally conflicted and don’t know what to think anymore.
I don’t like when oppressive governments are bad to women. But I’m not super worldly so…
Me, a hijabi, opening that thread for all of 10 seconds
I’m sure there will be well-balanced and nuanced discussion from the men of Lemmy on choice feminism and women’s oppression! I’m sure of it! /s
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Well thanks for announcing to the class that you have an opinion that you refuse to share.
Wooo, that very first mod comment on your mod log is enough for me hahaha
reason: Bothsidesing genocide
Fucking yikes, dude
Last time I tried explaining why Jews had to wear a yellow star during the Holocaust with a well balanced argumentation, my comment was deleted; so I won’t try anymore and we won’t have a discussion. I was expecting more from Lemmy
You proved my point, no discussion
But it is a nuanced issue that requires consideration of multiple truths and sometimes contradicting world views.
Yes, something that the men of Lemmy are known for when it comes to discussing these types of issues. Notorious even.
Is the /s not a well known indicator of sarcasm?
we could expect more form our communities, but I know what you are saying
Oh believe me, I’m aware. I’m not the one to constantly disappoint on these topics, I’m just observing what happens here.
This topic would be much more interesting to discuss in a community with more diversity.
Don’t you know you’re oppressed! Please call me a white knight please!
there is such an amazing video by Lady Izdihar that would be extremely relevant but I can’t find it 😔
Lady Izdihar rules.
“I can’t go outside without wearing a head covering.”
“Head coverings are now illegal.”
“Now I can’t go outside.”
This makes the world more fair and equitable.
Here’s a wild idea, instead of making clothing illegal, why don’t we make coercing people into a manner of dress illegal?
I’m having difficulty parsing this. Are you saying “we should ban religions from coercive headgear” or “we shouldn’t ban clothing”? Cause those are contradictory positions and I’m not certain what you’re trying to say (which is probably entirely on me)
We shouldn’t police women’s clothing.
Ban anyone for coercing someone into or out of clothing.
Granted, I haven’t put a major amount of thought into the nuance, but the idea of making it a sin for some people to legally go outside is absurd.
The approach of these laws makes it so the victims of mistreatment are the ones breaking the law.
It’s like making it illegal to be homeless or illegal to have been mugged. It’s fucking outlandish.
Yeah, but that doesn’t really clarify, though. Does that mean that a woman could wear a hijab or burqa under your rule?
If they want to, yes.
My mother was undergoing some weird medical treatment that made her skin super sensitive to UV radiation. She was in full sleeves and a vest and gloves and a hat and facescarf and everything covered everywhere. I sincerely recommended to her a hijab or burqa because it would make going out easier. A couple main articles of clothing, maybe sunglasses and gloves, and she would be fine. Unfortunately the religious element of it put her off too much, but clothes are clothes.
We shouldn’t ban clothing. We should ban the coercion of anyone to wear particular clothing.
There’s no contradiction here.
Exactly. I knew a woman in college who wore hijab. Apparently in high school she didn’t, and her family always treated it as her choice. She chose it because of the racism and anti muslim mistreatment she faced making her embrace it as a fuck you to the mistreatment. It made sense to me, though it saddened me how much harassment she had faced. How she dressed wasn’t my problem, and I was always more focused on the brain under her hijab than the hair.
I dislike such cultural expressions of modesty, and I worry about cultural pressure towards them. They remind me too much of my baptist cousins. But I firmly oppose the government or society intervening in how people dress. So long as every person old enough to choose for themselves is permitted to, my opinions are my problem.
Yes we sit here in our western comfort zone judging Muslims. We think: the women shouldn’t have to cover up to avoid inflaming the sexual passions of men. The men should just control themselves! Meanwhile western women are hammered by the male gaze all day long and assaulted with sexual violence and killed all too commonly. Yet we somehow can’t imagine why a reasonable woman might actually want to cover up, and consider that safer, more freeing. And then we go and ban her cover. It’s just gob smacking blind stupid.
You say that as if covering up made a women safer and not just as much under the ‘male gaze’. Muslim women are also sexually assaulted, sometimes with the pertetrator knowing that she would face more reprecussions than he would if she complained.
I say that as if she knows better than either of us and it’s up to her.
“Who thinks we should go to war with muslim countries to protect their women?”
Hands raised
“Who thinks we should safeguard muslim women in our own country?”
Crickets
“Who thinks we should go to war with muslim countries to protect their women?”
Hands raised
“Who thinks we should go to war with Israel to protect muslim women?”
Crickets
“Who thinks we should go to war with muslim countries to protect their women?”
Hands raised
“Who thinks we should end sanctions so muslim women and their children don’t starve to death?”
Crickets
But don’t you know that being against starving the muslims of Palestine is antisemitic!?
Israel has a right to
genocide, torture & rapeself-defence!truth nuke
I highly doubt many hands would be raised.
That thread was so ew
I’ll freely own the fact that I’m a western, white, woman and can never fully understand the cultural and greater context surrounding the choice as to why a Muslim woman, or a woman of any religion, creed, race, upbringing, etc would desire to wear a piece of clothing that would to me, with my cultural and greater context, be a symbol of my oppression.
The cool part is that I don’t have to understand why she would make such a choice, to support her right to make such a choice.
If you want to support womens rights, you can’t go around trying to restrict us. If you are concerned that women who are making these choices are doing so under indoctrination, coercion, etc, then instead channel your energy into making sure they, and all women, have safe places and resources to address those things.
Absolutely this, agree 100%
It’s also ew that they pretend advertising and propaganda to change minds of muslims wouldn’t work. It totally would. You just need a good campaign specifically targeted to the patriarchs and matriarchs to make more liberal attitudes to clothing fashionable. It would totally work.
And at the same time work against the influence spreading of Saudi Arabia pushing their extremist wahabism schools. That’s where they should use the hammer.
The cool part is that I don’t have to understand why
On most social issues, this is exactly what should be going on in everyone’s head. So many people are about punishing what they don’t understand, but it almost always backfires.
If we wanted to address communitarianism and extremism in secular society we would do better than criminalizing people’s harmless religious expression.
Everyone believes they’re choosing freely, especially when they’re choosing what their culture taught them to want.
am i freely choosing to wear pants or just indoctrinated by the society i was raised in? if i moved somewhere they donald duck it would i assimilate or continue to wear pants?
i know suit guys who will dress up even if they’re not leaving the house and that’s real weird to me but it’s not muddied by being imposed on an axis of oppression or whatever.
Clothing (pants) is very much not natural and indeed only enforced by society. If one knows about various indigenous people around the world, one knows pants are not universal.
I actually, in this heat, would love not to have to wear pants or anything really. I’m naked at home all the time. However, if I went outside it’d be indecent.
That applies to literally everyone and doesn’t justify anything, men are no less or more immune, and the choice should be the one who is or would be wearing or not wearing a given piece of clothing on whether they do or don’t wear it. Neither men nor the state should be taking the agency for women to decide for themselves what to or to not wear.
At best this makes your comment unrelated, random, and pointless, as it says nothing. But we both know you are actually providing cover for the misogynist view that women shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. It’s not exactly subtle, not even slightly, in fact it is infuriating. So please, look deep inside yourself, reflect, and STOP!
They are not deciding for themselves. That’s the point. Although banning is also not the solution either, I agree.
Yes you’re absolutely right, anyone of any gender should be able to wear or not wear what they want.
My point was more philosophical. It is indeed random and pointless, but I find it interesting to think of things like this. You may not find this interesting or read something misogynist into this, which was definitely far from what I meant so I’m sorry for offending you.
Please consider the context and read the room in the future, (or in this case the OP picture for which the thread is about) the time and place of such commentary also changes it’s apparent character. Water under the bridge. 🙃
The room was empty when I got here, so everyone behind me should have read the room
I generally wear what’s most comfortable for me. Sometimes I’ll “dress up” for stuff where it’s socially still “required” like job interviews or weddings, but even that is rare for me.
Yet you don’t wear 16th century Shakespearean clothes to work because you don’t live in 16th century England
If they were available and comfortable, I might. Where the hell am i supposed to get them?
oh my friend! Evangeline’s (the costume store in Sacramento) just reopened! I can’t speak to comfortable but I can speak to where.
I live on the east coast, so I’ll just stick to the stuff I can get locally. It’s comfortable.
Edit: Thank you, though. If I ever find myself in Sacramento, I’ll have to look the place up
I actually had a few gowns in such a design. They were very fun to wear!
You must be at a boring workplace, we have several goths and one lady who daily wears renaissance era clothing and is big on renaissance fairs and medieval combat.
If it’s not a health and safety risk, who cares. I mean flip flops and a budgie smuggler are not appropriate to wear on a factory floor.
my favorite job, favorite boss, our dress code was “if you can get here without getting arrested it’s fine”. the day i showed up dressed like i was going to the beach (because guess what i was doing at noon) the boss came back and said “okay, new rule, if i have a client coming in you need to at least have pants and shoes on”
please don’t talk like you know me
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Women need the agency to decide for themselves, and not have the decision made for them by men, or the state. The only way any clothing is really oppressive is if it isn’t a choice, and in that way “not being allowed to wear” is the same as “being forced to wear”. It seems like you are defending the choice being taken from women under the mask of pretending to support the choice being given to them, by pointing to something not even being argued about as the covering mask, like a strawman.
If women were choosing to wear hijab with out the cultural, familial or state pressure you’d see women doing exactly that from other parts of the world where Islam isn’t enforcing it, you don’t see that because it’s not a free choice being made, acquiescing to pressure isn’t actually a choice.
With or without culture it is not your decision to make O Enlightened Savior!/s This thread is so full of poorly hidden sexist and racist nonsense that it is sickening. The western world is not the savior of the world, it is it’s oppressor, and the oppressor’s feigned concern while it eye’s those resources of the oppressed licking it’s lips, can only be inauthentic from such a position, clean your own house before trying to use the level of cleanness of someone else’s house as some kind of excuse.
Wherever you find Muslims in the world, you will find someone wearing hijab. If you punish women for wearing it, you are not better than those who punish them for not wearing it.
It’s extremely rare outside of countries that don’t enforce it, the Muslim women I know who still choose to wear hijab are from strict families. I have quite a few Muslim friends, most of whom are women, most of whom are not hijabis and don’t support the practice as public policy and find the pressure to wear it when they go home to be extremely uncomfortable. There’s a reason they feel that way, there’s a reason Muslim women who emigrate tend to stop wearing it, because they were pressured to do so it wasn’t a free choice. Is it 100% obviously no but frankly the exception proves the rule here
Do you think it’s possible that Muslim émigrés might feel social pressure in their new homes not to wear a hijab? I’ve heard quite a few women say they wear it for themselves as an expression of their faith. I can’t very well discount that possibility. Of course there are all sorts of social and familial pressures (and norms) that we all face. Many of which are largely taken for granted by those affected, even me and you!
But what if… it is? It very much could be, just like nuns clothing.
LOL. Yeah, the catholic church has never been oppressive. Wow.
That is actually what i wanted to get at 😅
It is a type of clothing that many women consciously choose and desire to wear. Some countries mandate it, but it is not much less rational than a mandate to cover chest and genitals in christian culture countries.
Really wish I had that lady izdihar video right now… dude’s as confident as he is wrong…
there are plenty of muslim countries that ban burkas/some of the other extreme coverings, all anyone in the west should need to know to support it
Lol that thread is a cesspool but I’m glad in classic lemmy fashion, its not shadow banned or locked.
I don’t want to add more fuel to the flames but it’s a case example of why I don’t take the EU seriously when it comes to free speech laws or claims of “secularity”.
France and UK were out here blocking Bosnia from arming itself during the genocide carried out by Serbia because they didn’t want a muslim country to exist in Europe.
feddit banned luigi and pro gaza content because it’s apparently illegal to discuss those topics in Germany, as if an internet forum talking about foreign news needs to be regulated by the government.
It’s not as bad as reddit, but there are some seriously god awful comments on that post trying to justify poorly disguised ethnic filtering laws.
What a rabbithole to go down.
I agree no one should have the right tell someone else what to wear, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a tool of oppression in other cultures
You have no idea about other cultural norms and attires. Is the western man being oppressed when he has to wear a tie and suit to the office in order to keep his job? Do we free him from this oppression by ostracizing him or making it illegal for wearing a tie?
You know, this is a fair point, but there’s a few differences.
Not all jobs require a suit, there’s a lot of choice (you could get through life never wearing one). Its also only required during working hours. Not around the clock. Women have been killed over these expectations. Its not the same.
Women have been killed over these expectations
Is that really what you think muslims support?? Can you not conceive of people wanting to wear a hijab?? And even if not, why is it so hard to accept that it’s just a fact when they say it??
I can conceive of an individual woman wanting to wear one. However every woman I have known who wears one does because she must if she is to follow her religion and her society’s norms and her family’s dictates which would indicate that she doesn’t actually have the choice not to. I tend to believe that Muslim woman have a choice when they choose not to wear one because they often face abuse from other Muslims.
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“they” are just a gray mass to you aren’t they? “They” clearly aren’t individuals in your eyes but a cudgel to wield against west asians under the pretense of human rights. Hundreds of millions of women all the same to you because they arent european…
Oh, sorry. Let me try that again. Hijab wearing women are forced to wear hijabs because their religion calls for them to be killed if they’re not wearing a hijab, some hijab wearing women would like to wear a hijab but other hijab wearing women would prefer not too, although they’re still forced to if they would like to stay alive.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/iranian-singer-sentenced-74-lashes-191112823.html
Hijab wearing women are forced to wear hijabs because their religion calls for them to be killed if they’re not wearing a hijab
this is just wrong.
Is the western man being oppressed when he has to wear a tie and suit to the office in order to keep his job?
Suits are expensive and unnecessary. Some people (i.e. autistic) might have sensory difficulties when they wear them. If someone is vegan, most suits aren’t so it further restricts what they can wear and they have to worry more about differences in look due to the stricter dress code. Fortunately, being restricted only while working certain jobs isn’t as bad as being restricted in all public spaces.
Do we free him from this oppression by ostracizing him or making it illegal for wearing a tie?
No
But is he being oppressed?
Yes
Alright! So we agree that ostracizing people or making it illegal for them to wear what they wear is not going to lead to a more free society?
I already said that
Then I don’t know what you were trying to say with your original comment other than agreeing with me?
Brown people culture bad amiright?
I absolutely did not say that, nor do I believe that in the slightest
It’s like making it illegal for women to wear makeup and thinking you are “freeing them of cultural values originating from patriarchy.”
I personally would like governments to NOT force a specific gender to look a specific way.
I think all adult women should be able to wear whatever they want.
Americans scrapped Roe vs Wade but think bikini = equality
This is goofy. Not one of us can wear whatever we want in USA (and many other countries). All sorts of rules on dress.
Dress codes for restaurants (jackets and ties required)… dress codes for schools (uniforms)… dress codes for jobs (uniforms)… dress codes for gas stations (no shirts, no shoes, no service)… dress codes for banks (can’t cover your face or wear sunglasses)…
This is a false issue, used to inflame the dumbest among us. Sadly, it still works.
Right, so why all the pearl-clutching over head coverings?
Perhaps because the other dress code constraints are for more universally accepted reasons while the question of things like the hijab/niqab are tied to an inherent contradiction within one of the standard political camps, disrupting the placement of the (un)acceptability line. Wearing a uniform is a sign of responsibility. (If you wear the fuel station attendednts’ uniform, you are responsible for the fuel station, etc.) Wearing a minimum quality of clothing is related to the service provided. (Showing up to a black tie restaurant in board shorts and flip flops ‘lowers the tone’ of the restaurant, which is often more the product being sold than the actual food. In that kind of restaurant, you are paying more for the exclusivity of the space than the chef’s produce.) However, Muslim women’s headjoys are more fraught because they simultaneously occupy two symbolic spaces, one as a symbol of Islam itself, which is coded as evil by one broad sector of politics and, because of that, something to be protected by the opposition, but the other as a symbol of Muslim patriarchy, which has the exact opposite coding by the standard broad political binary. Resolving the hypocrisy would require abandoning one set of symbols or the other and taking a position currently held by the opposition. Most people aren’t willing to do that.
Dress codes for restaurants (jackets and ties required), dress codes for gas stations (no shirts, no shoes, no service)
Now this is goofy… comparing a private business telling you what you’re allowed to wear in their business versus a state mandating what you can or can’t wear? Come on, man…
dress codes for schools (uniforms)
We have all sorts of extra restricted rights for children. They don’t have a lot of rights most adults do in public schools. Free speech is greatly restricted… should the state then extend these restrictions to the wider public because it happens in public schools for children?
Calling this idea goofy when making a false equivalence that should be dispelled with a 101 level understanding of government is the soul of throwing stones from a glass house, dude.
There are definitely arguments for restricting this kind of thing, but this isn’t one of them, this is just silly.
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If you mean it how I think you do, then you very much deserve it.
What do you think is the intolerance here that one needs to be intolerant of?
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So you’re just openly advocating for being intolerant of Islam?
why should one be made to tolerate an idealogy that says all who don’t follow it should face eternal conscious torment?
It doesn’t though? Famously non-muslims can get into heaven by living a virtuous life?? I had so many muslims tell me that it’s all good we pray to the same god, or that in the end it’s up to the all-knowing and merciful judge. People who say shit like you have so obviously not spent time with muslims it’s bonkers
i’m an exmuslim out for a drive with my muslim family as i type this. that’s something only for people who never heard of islam.
this is also not considering what falls under the umbrellas of vices and virtues
Idk what to tell you, I grew up in a muslim majority country and this is my experience with Islam. I have never met someone who said “all who don’t follow it should face eternal conscious torment”. No sorry I have, “fellow” christians…
If you’re one of those people super against hijab, do a say, duckduckgo image search for “women in headscarves”. You will see many cultures represented. They aren’t all Muslim, even. Which ones are ‘bad’ and which ‘good’? Would you also ban Orthodox Christians/Jews, or Hindu women from covering their hair? Rasta women?
