being veiled

[piranha]

pulling this comment across from a locked discussion elsejournal of jack straw's recent request that muslim women remove their veil when interacting with him.

somebody else said: dressing is a continuum, but for some women taking off the veil is like being naked (yes I know that is loony religion etc but still...)

my reply:

a completely different angle, not actually directly related, but this wording made me think of it:

in a society that's becoming progressively more fascist, where people are being surveilled without their direct knowledge in more and more places, where more and more of our private data is being collected by people who're not likely having our best interests at heart, i am coming to think that walking around veiled/hooded might not be a bad idea at all.

because yes, showing my face to people who might abuse being able to identify me could be worse than being otherwise naked.

that leads me to think it's not all that loony for a person who feels protected by hijab to feel that unveiling her face is akin to how we would feel being asked to remove our clothes altogether -- the face is much of how others identify us, many of our emotions show in our face. the veil is a shield.

some western women don't go out without make-up. they feel that they don't have the "proper face on" without it. that, too, is a shield of sorts, isn't it?

why should our face that gives so much away be exposed to total strangers? it's a cultural thing that we think it ought to be. and then make arguments about how "natural" that is. :)

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

You know, if I were a Muslim woman I might well comply with his request -- *if* he were willing to first comply with the famous desert custom of eating a sheep's eyeball. It is a delicacy reserved for the guest of honor, after all.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The veil shouldn't be given special treatment (either extra respect, or extra condemnation) because of being a religious symbol.

When two people need to interact, and their different cultural practices or even personal tastes means that one of them needs something to be comfortable, and that thing makes the other uncomfortable, how do we reconcile the two? I don't think there's a simple general answer; I think we need to work it out on a case by case basis. F'rinstance, if one person has a serious anxiety disorder, and can't be out in public without their therapy animal, and another person has a serious allergy and can't be in the proximity of the animal, how the heck do we decide (ethically) which one of them we exclude from the gathering?

[kightp.livejournal.com]

We don't. They do.

And your illustration isn't quite analagous to the matter at hand, because what a person chooses to wear or not wear - for whatever reason - generally doesn't put others at any risk.

To be fair to Straw, he's talking about interacting with Muslim women when they visit him in his capacity as a physician, and he seems to be bending over backwards to make clear that it's a request, not a demand. And he has fairly good arguments to explain *why* he wishes they'd do that.

I think it's a reasonable request - as long as he's willing to treat those who say "no" exactly as he would if they said "yes."

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

If it's a request to his patients, how did it become international news? Did he post a notice on the wall of the clinic and someone alerted the media?

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Because (a) he's Jack Straw and (b) he's talking about it publicly, I imagine.

[ailbhe]

No, an MP's surgery is a kind of drop-in meet-your-MP session where you can raise issues which concern you, like the state of the road outside your children's school, or illegal wars, or the fact that you can't get onto a hospital waiting list, or the lack of family-friendly music festivals in the area.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, talk about two countries divided by a common language! Thanks for correcting my misapprehension. Given that, I'm not quite as sanguine about Straw's request.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, that is pretty much my attitude -- we work it out on a case by case basis. i don't think much of one-size-fits-all rules.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I just thought it was rudeness. To compare a veiled woman to something as impersonal as a letter is to say that only the gaze validates one as a person.

What about the value of holding a meeting because the woman in question gets to see HIM? Doesn't that count?

How comfortable would he be with violating his personal standards of decency and modesty? Only the very severest forms of veil mask the eyes, and that's where we get a lot of our information on how people are reacting. The nose and mouth are much more under concious control.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i could see it if he actually mentioned something about diagnosis -- seeing the face can actually help with that under certain circumstances. but not everyone comes to be diagnosed, and i don't think that is his line of thought. it's all about his cultural assumptions and other people living up to those.

i find that i can make human connections just fine without seeing the other person at all; i've made good friends entirely over the net, without ever having seen them or even a picture of them. surely he can learn to deal with a veil if he has the entire person in front of him.

[ailbhe]

The skinnydipping bishops come to mind. Was that Jerome K Jerome?

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

that reference whooshed right over my head. elaborate if you like?

[ailbhe]

Some bishops were skinny-dipping on the canal and a boat of local schoolgirls on an outing came by. Three of the bishops immediately covered their genitals with their hands; the fourth covered his face. Because that's how he could be recognised.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

why should our face that gives so much away be exposed to total strangers?

Exactly. I find the idea that we have the right to demand to invade someone's privacy, short of a life-or-death emergency, deeply offensive.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

thank you for actually commenting on what i said, instead of on the link. :) sometimes i ponder to not actually link, *snicker*.