I believe everyone here would agree with the following statement:
Telling women what they can and cannot do is anti-feminist.
In fact, it seems to me that that axiom is, at its base, the core of feminism and gender equality. It really doesn't get any simpler than that: a woman can do what she wants. But, Jean Charest and the Quebec government believe otherwise, and it has been pissing me off for some weeks now.
It started a few weeks ago when a Muslim woman was asked to leave a government sponsored French language exam unless she removed her niqab (that's the full face covering, as opposed to the hijab.) Other cases include a Muslim woman wishing to be looked after by a woman at a public health centre, and a man refusing to be served by a female employee at a public health centre wearing a head-covering. And now, the Quebec government is enacting a law that would bar face covers from all government buildings, whether on employees or customers. (A good history of the law can be found in this article.)
Now let me say something: it would make me happy if women didn't wear clothes dictated by their religions. I think fairly often it's probably someone else, male or female, who's deciding what the woman is wearing. The Charest government, however, is couching this law in bullshit terms of gender equality. Charest: you are tellling women what to do. By framing it in terms of freeing women from oppression, you're making the assumption that women are incapable of thinking for themselves, and that they have no agency at all in the decision to wear a veil. If a woman wants to veil herself, a woman can veil herself. If it's a symbol of her submission to her husband or father, well, that's a damn shame, and I hope she'll rethink her decision and position, and assert her right to be stand on equal ground. If it's a symbol of her own religious convictions, well, that's great, and she has every right to uphold those convictions so long as they don't impinge on anyone else's rights (which, when they involve an individual's clothing, they don't.) And if it's a symbol of something else entirely, whatever it is, that's her goddamn inalienable right.
I can see no reason whatsoever for a woman in a niqab to not be allowed to take a French exam. I can see infinitesimally more of a reason for a woman to not be allowed to request service from a female employee, since that would slow down general service an ever so little bit, but with equality in hiring laws, she could easily be allowed to wait until the next female employee is available. And that asshole who refused service from a veiled woman? Yeah, he's an asshole. I can't think of how the veil make services rendered by the woman any worse. When she says to say "aaah," does this guy need a goddamn demonstration? The goverment shouldn't be catering to assholes.
Thoughts?
Posts
I haven't really been following the issue, though I heard something on the radio about the French class incident the other day. Maybe unsurprisingly, it was framed not as an issue of feminism, but of immigration, cultural, and assimilation politics. To be perfectly honest, as the whole veil issue has been replayed over and over in Quebec and France and the Netherlands and elsewhere over the past few years, I've always thought of it in those terms--of white politicians telling Muslims (and incidently, a few other religious groups) what they can and cannot do in the public sphere--rather than in feminist terms, of male politicians telling women what they can and cannot do.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where I'm really going with that other than the fact that I was surprised I'd never thought of it with that kind of framing and that, yes, that is probably because I don't respect the broads much.
Also, why has Lion not commented on this? Why has no one been virtually thrown through a window yet?
Ignatieff came out yesterday and said that he supports the ban, which is even more aggravating.
ReplyDeleteBen, you make a good point when you say that there are both feminist and ethnic angles to this question, but they both end up in the same place - French Canadians, who have vociferously and sometimes violently defended their cultural freedoms and heritage, coming down way too hard on a vaguely offensive yet ultimately harmless cultural practice. It's just totally ludicrous that Canada as a country works hard to promote multiculturalism and acceptance for immigrants and yet Quebec a) gets to cherrypick what kind of people they accept to keep French alive and b) forces this kind of mindless stuff on them.
It's definitely also an ethnicity issue. I was actually arguing with Scott about this once and managed to convince him of something political - which, if you've ever argued with Scott, you will know is very rare - on the grounds that as a libertarian, he can't tell Muslims what to wear, regardless of how much he hates brown people. Needless to say, it was quite fulfilling.
ReplyDeleteIt just so happened that this time it was explicitly framed as a gender-equality issue - there are no major world religions that require men to cover their faces, therefore no woman can cover their face in the name of religion. It almost sounds plausible when you look at it that way - women have more rights, i.e. the right to veil themselves in the name of God, than men, so they shouldn't be allowed to do it. But then you realize that's idiotic.