In this case, it’s more about making sure children are properly educated in order that they may make better choices when they reach adulthood.
Or, to view this another way, the concept of theft is a cultural construct as is the concept of ownership. Yet, if my defense is that I was only exploring the world free from cultural expectations I can hardly claim abuse when I’m arrested for theft. Cultural expectations are real and raising a child to ignore them places the child in harms way. Society will not accept people who operate outside the boundaries of acceptable societal behavior. Fair? No, but it is the reality of living in a world where there are other people.
I can’t agree with you here. Having to wear clothing your parent deem acceptable is not abuse. Real abuse happens every day and I wont minimize the suffering of the abused by comparing them to children who want to wear what they want to wear.
I feel you’re wilfully ignoring the core of the point here, which is really about the parents requiring things of their kids that is not the mainstream norm in our society. What about if the parents required that the kid wear a full body cover with just slits to see out of? Or perhaps a shirt that declares a particular affinity to a political party? I think either of those is at best morally dubious but both are legal. The abuse is when it really is a requirement, and that happens far more often than you might believe.
To argue the kid should just suck it up because they had the misfortune to be born into a crappy culture is morally vacuous. In a school in a liberal western democracy, a kid should be free to adhere to the mainstream norms of a liberal western democracy, because those cultural norms are better than the backwards norms of many repressive ideologies. I totally reject the notion that different cultures should be respected just because. They should be judged according to well established common humanity (a humanity that evidence shows again and again to be common across all peoples).
sigh I clearly misrepresented my point there, which is about parents that require their kids to sit outside the norms of a liberal western democracy in opposition to the wish (expressed or otherwise) of the child.
As an atheist and someone who believes strongly in personal sovereignty, I have sympathy for your position but the idea that the state can force people to live a secular life is contrary to the basic human right to practice the belief system of your choosing and to raise your children to honor those beliefs without state interference excepting cases of substantive abuse.
The societal norm of the liberal western democracy in which I currently reside is one that expects a belief in a higher power. In some states, that belief in required to hold office. If I were to accept your argument, then I would have to consider myself as an abusive parent for raising a child as a secular atheist. Atheist are largely shunned and condemned by my liberal western democracy but I cannot agree with your position that raising a child an atheist is abuse simply because it is outside the social norm. I also think that the state has no business in telling me whether or not I can raise a child as an atheist even though that child will be shunned and pressured by the majority to conform to a theistic view of the world.
Searching quickly, I find no references to kirpans and French schools. Do they really deny them in the public schools there? I know in both the U.S. and Canada Sikhs have managed to win court battles on that subject.
To be absolutely clear, my views on the consequences of this issue extend precisely as far as the policies of the school, no further. I am not advocating the state have a mandate beyond that which they are already given.
I also suspect you’ve never required anything of your child regarding your secular views. In my experience, most people brought up in such an environment (regardless of the views of their parents) also end up pretty secular.
I assume you’re based in the US (given that’s the stand out unusual case as regards religion), which has very strict rules about the role of religion in schools. Should they have different rules on this in school? The principle there of separation of state and religion is very well established and is arguable one of the central tenets of the founding principles, so to suggest it isn’t a cultural norm would be somewhat flawed. In fact, I can’t think of a western liberal democracy that doesn’t have a very strong cultural respect for the notion of secular governance.
Sure, in theory, you are correct. In the real world, it’s a different story. What governmental session does not begin with prayer? How many of our law makers insist this is a christian nation? How often has creationism been taught as fact? No, my experience is that a secular government is not the societal norm these days. The number of ‘out’ atheists in politics is quite low for a very good reason. The local societal norm insists on a theistic viewpoint and ‘gods’ laws.
That sidebar notwithstanding, I remain in favor of a secular government but no interference with belief or insistence on secular people. Just because I’m an atheist, doesn’t mean I don’t think you have the right to religion or the right to express yourself and your belief. Mind you, I think the uniform concept is so much B.S… Amazing thinkers have come from schools with no uniform and serial killers from schools with them. Uniforms represent to me a brand of authoritarianism that chills me to the core. Authoritarianism was, at one time, deemed detrimental to the education of young free minds.
I can understand that, excepting that the norms of the liberal western society are to be inclusive of the views of both while respecting the parents wishes with respect to the child, within limits.
At least in theory, if not always in practice, hence the example in the subject of this bb post wherein a state within a liberal western democracy appears to do otherwise, when really it’s just a bad decision made by a low ranked administrator on a questionable basis.
This skirt (but without any slit, and down to the ground) is almost identical in pattern to what my daughter wore to high school the other day. She got lots of compliments! No one told her to go home and change.
You’re right- it doesn’t necessarily mean shorter; it could also mean tighter, or more transparent, or more flowery and feminine, any of the western secular styles designed to make girls look pretty and sexy.
What you’re not getting is that the religious injunction against sexy clothes is on purpose. It’s not just some random thing, like, ‘hey, Muslim women (and the Amish, Mennonites, conservative Jews, and nuns, and . . . ) are required to wear long, decidedly chaste skirts, what’s that about?’ Seriously, do you not come into visual contact with any Muslims or conservative Jews in your city? The style of skirt IS noticeable for being not sexy in the context of a society where everything they sell to women is supposed to be attractive to the male gaze. And this is where that old line ‘Your body is a battleground’ rings true: women must walk a tricky gauntlet between too sexy and not sexy enough just to get through the day in society.
Take the story about the 5 year old who couldn’t wear the sundress to school because it was too sexy, or France’s prohibition of the burkini on beaches, or the glaring fact that 100 and 200 years ago western women were severely limited in the activities they could do because of the obligation to hide their bodies. Those (usually men) in power are constantly clamoring on about your body your body your body your body and provocation and rape and asking for it and birth control and whether it’s okay to wear that, if a tattoo makes you slutty, if you’re allowed to work in an office without makeup or with natural grey hair (usually no), if no bra is allowed at the gym, if you can wear that, your body ad infinitem.
And western men and boys just don’t have to face that kind of pressure just to go to school or work. As the father of the 5 year pointed out, (white) men and boys can pretty much just go to the nearest store in their price range, buy what’s being promoted and be considered appropriately dressed for success. And when their family members buy for them, using the same strategy of store-stock-price-and done, they can just wear the fucking clothes to school or work. It’s not this drawn out and delicate search for things that meet the dress code but don’t make you look weirdly chaste (provocatively chaste, would say this French school).
Fact- most teenagers depend on their family’s money, time and permission to get clothes.
Fact- if their family believes in these chaste clothes, they might have to wear them (or like many do, go up a couple more levels of difficulty to acquire money and sneak out to shopping centers and get the sexier secular clothes, and hide them and find a place to put them on before school where nobody will see and bribe or intimidate those neighbors or family members who would rat them out to their parents and hope that they never ever get a dress code violation like most girls do because it would be family smack down time).
Conclusion- there is a ton of extra work still involved in getting a basic education for girls and women (and for men of color who face a lot of prohibitions on the clothing considered fashionable in their communities, as well as for genderqueer people, for trans people, for gay and lesbian people) that your average white Frenchman or American guy doesn’t have to deal with. So, when the school refuses to let a young women study in a conspicuously chaste skirt, and requires her to navigate all the family fallout in order to wear more secular (sexier) clothes, just to get the basic education required by law in order to work on the books, even in the most menial jobs, it is overly complicating her life, and it’s about how much skin and shape and sex appeal is the required minimum and forbidden maximum in order for people called female to exist in public.
True. The problem I have, and it is as much a problem with BB as anything else, is that this issue is pretty nuanced and the sensationalist headline clearly misses that. It’s not clear to me where the line is but I think it’s important to discuss it.
No it’s not. Secularism is the position that faith should not be part of public policy but only part of someone’s personal conscience. It is, with regard to specific religions, anti-religious. That is not the same as secular.
Which is overkill.
Fuck the French Constitution, then. You say that like I should give a shit. It’s a piece of fucking paper.
You realize the United States was secular before the French Republic existed and yet we haven’t had to ban religious dress for children in schools, right? You can have a secular system without forcing your citizens to conform to some third party view of appropriate dress in the name of secularism. That doesn’t sound like a truly pluralistic and free society (and, yes, I’ve been to France more than once).
I’m an atheistic Zen Buddhist but I’d never consider outlawing religious dress in the name of secularism while still pretending people were free.
I like “You’re all free to dress how you want unless you’re religious. If you are, you must dress your children how we allow you to in the name of freedom.”
I’m going to hold my breath waiting for these “secular” countries to repeal all of their religiously-based laws on entheogens, nudity, sex, and marriage.
One of the interesting elements of this is that if anything, the law would mainly have been intended to discriminate against Christians when it was first written. On the other hand, head coverings and longer clothing are common in many areas of the world - someone wearing a head covering and long dress/skirt could be from any one of dozens of religious groups. Here are some Coptic Christians in Egypt:
Most Western Christians don’t look that different from their secular counterparts though (possibly a bit more modest, but not in a way that stands out much), so it looks like the effect nowadays overwhelmingly discriminates against non-Western religious women, or women from more conservative religious groups in general.
Are Sikh boys allowed anywhere if they are required to wear turbans?
And my understanding, from what I’ve been told by other people from France, is that this particular conception of secularism is controversial, particularly in how it’s applied to young women in public schools who are Muslim.
