Mattel about to launch first Barbie that wears a hijab

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Don’t wear one. Problem solved.

The hijab doesn’t not break any laws, neither do wigs for Orthodox Jewish women, long prairie skirts for some evangelical women, crosses, habits for nuns, etc. As long as it doesn’t violate the law, why do you care? If it’s a clear case of abuse, I agree, lets root it out.

It is. We can consider a hijab covered under both.

Instead of assuming what the hijab means or how it makes women feel, HOW ABOUT ASK THEM instead of trying to impose a narrative on the women who wear them?

This isn’t Iran. And you’re in Austria? That’s not Iran either. Let’s assume that there is a different dynamic at work there than here.

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We’re talking about in the US/Western Europe.

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You’re talking about a billion people. Stop generalizing. Religion can be oppressive or not. A hijab can be imposed or a choice.

And plenty of oppression of women exists in non-Muslim, secular countries. I point you to the avalanche of sexual harassment chargers coming out in the past month or so. Don’t you think THAT is related to the oppression of women? Or do you only care about that when it’s foreign women in countries that we’re bombing?

Jesus, why is this so hard to understand? The world is complex, people!

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For some women it IS normal.

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Yes, “we” always are, aren’t “we”?

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We fucking live here, not in Saudi Arabia or Iran. When the topic of Saudi Arabia and Iran, and their laws come up, we can certainly talk about them. Talking about laws and culture here in America means we can actually work through cultural or democratic practices to make it a better place. I can’t do that right now with regards to Saudi Arabia or Iran, other than vote for politicians that will enact foreign policy that actually pulls away from the Saudis as much as we have from Iran, because they are regional bad actors. The Saudis probably couldn’t be pushing Yemen to the brink of a genocidal famine if it weren’t for our support.

I want the very real people who live here to feel welcomed and accepted, because then they are less likely to feel alienated and excluded.

Do I want women to be abused? No. But if there is abuse, then there are laws to deal with that. And there are plenty of women who suffer abuse who are not Muslim women, but whenever we talk about that, we all get to hear a litany of “NOT ALL MEN” BS, when we never say all men.

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Yes. If I make a category error, regardless of how innocently, I expect people to object, and rightly so. It’s one of the problems of public discourse today that we allow gross categorical errors to shape policy and speech and then handwave any problems or objections away as if we hadn’t just alienated people unnecessarily.

Sincerely accepted. Humans have typing minds; we are built that way. We just have to work around it.

I am 100% with you on that!

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I am assuming I know how it feels to adolescents who, during their adolescence, develop their own thoughts, opinions and feelings about religious matters, that might not be in accordance with what their parents, relatives, friends or society at large expect of them. I presume to know something about this because I was one of those adolescents. Thanks for the lesson on invalidation.
I was switching away from a much less traditional or strict religion, so I can only extrapolate how it feels to those children of Muslim parents. This is not about the devout Muslim woman next door, or about the woman who proudly continues her grandmother’s tradition, nor about Muslim women in general. It is toxic to people whose friends and families might be Muslim, but who still need the freedom to choose for themselves without being forced to declare their choice every time they are seen in public.

So, when you say, “don’t wear one”, the problem is NOT solved. It is not toxic to the person who voluntarily wears it. It is toxic to the people who are expected to “voluntarily” wear it. The hijab is “mildly toxic” in the same way as the urge of some heterosexual men and boys to constantly declare their heterosexuality. It’s hell for those unsure boys who feel dishonest when they join in and excluded when they don’t.

You oppose speech that does not violate any laws and which is completely covered by free speech. I apply the same standard to religions and their customs. I assume you don’t want to abolish freedom of speech, and I don’t want to abolish freedom of religion.

True. This was just a tangential point.

Sagan was a pantheist? Now that’s news to me. Do you have a source?
Personally, I would of course not try to deny the existence of a pantheist’s god, but if you deny everything supernatural and metaphysical, I have to wonder how a pantheist even differs from an atheist who has an appreciation of the world. And I personally don’t want to use the term “God”, which is heavily weighed down with the traditions of the monotheistic religions and of other “supernaturally-based” religions, to denote something great that you, me, we all together are part of. I just call that the universe, because I think the universe is amazing and it is all there is. But if that is all we’re really just disagreeing about words, aren’t we?

Ouch.
I think that is just because somehow, the idea that billions of people are factually wrong is considered astoundingly arrogant, while Christians and Muslims mostly agree that the idea that billions of people are morally wrong for not believing the right thing is just a sign of true faith.
But of course, if you’re an “outspoken” anything, you will probably come across as arrogant at least some of the time…

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Fair enough, but what about the ones who do not feel this way? Are the ones that question their fairh of childhood the only ones that matter here?

Oh please. You were asserting your experience as the ONLY valid one.

Again, you’re assuming that all young women are being forced into the choice, when it’s most certainly not the case.

Which continually keeps being denied in this thread. Over and over again. Somehow, Islam is more toxic, more foreign and exotic, and less prone to choices than other faiths.

But it’s not the topic of discussion here, so let’s have that discussion elsewhere.

Okay, but you seem to be interested in telling women that what they do with their bodies is not their choice… so is the exception what women wear?

Where do you get that? I’m not telling you to shut up, I’m arguing with you about women in hijab. if you feel like I’m shutting you down in this discussion, then you should flag me for it.

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Good lord. I personally know women who identify as lesbian who wear hijab. Your presumptions about people who wear the hijab and about the families of young women who wear the hijab are entirely baseless. You cannot gauge whether someone who wears hijab is fundamentalist or comes from a fundamentalist family by the fact that she wears hijab. You can’t know her politics or the politics of her family by the fact that she wears hijab. You do know that we are not talking about niqab, chador or burkha for fuck’s sake.

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It’s a great debate, actually. Sagan said “The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by ‘God’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying… it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity” which is very much in line with what both Spinoza (pantheist) and Dawkins (atheist) have said. Spinoza explicitly characterized his god as impersonal, and so did Einstein, at times (although Einstein is hard to pin down, too - he seemingly had different views at different times in his life).

I believe Sagan was a Pantheist from listening to his TV show, and remembering his statement that “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” This is a fairly commonplace pantheistic interpretation of the observer effect. But it’s certainly arguable!

This is a criticism often leveled. By Dawkins, among others, although like you he was nice about it. :slight_smile:

I’d say the differences are less dramatic than the differences between a Jain and a Christian, but they are still real. Personally I’ve been a devout Christian, an agnostic, and a pantheist during my lifetime, but pantheist for well over 30 years now. In my opinion, being a pantheist is not only a state of recognizing reality as it exists, but also a way to gain nearly all the benefits of religion without having to accept human dogmas.

I tend to agree with this!

I know it’s my fault we wandered off topic but we should probably leave this stuff to another thread.

Good point. But you know, I’m not 100% certain we’re talking about anything other than a fencing outfit! Does Fencer Barbie’s packaging specifically name her headcovering? I’ll check… OK, it appears that it does specifically reference Ibtihaj Muhammad, who’s of course an African-American woman from New Jersey who chooses to wear the hijab, and is not subject to any religious or government authorities interfering with her right to bare her hair… it’s a fencing hijab. Which is my new name for my own identical garment!

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Now we’re talking. It’s a difficult trade-off.
For personal reasons, I strongly identify with a minority (doubters and ex-muslims) among a minority (muslims and children of muslim families). I might or might not be placing too much emphasis on them. I felt your position was completely ignoring the smaller minority, because you consider the rights of the larger minority absolute and inviolable.

I was not. I was asserting that my experience was a valid one, and that there would be analogous experiences among young muslim women. And I’m saying that the custom of wearing the hijab is toxic to them. Which makes it mildly toxic on the whole, unless you think that the doubter’s/ex-religious experience is completely invalid.

Forced by the laws of logic, not by a hypothetical evil or fundamentalist family. You can only wear or not wear a hijab, and when the daughter of a Muslim family goes to a family gathering where all other women are wearing the hijab, she has to choose whether or not to wear it. One cannot not communicate.

It’s just an analogy. I’m not asking you to have a discussion about a different topic, but to think about that different situation and apply the results to the topic at hand. It’s meant to illustrate how a simple statement of allegiance to a particular group can become toxic to people who are unsure if they want to be part of the group.

This would not be the first time that there are trade-offs between things that we would like to be universal, inalienable rights. But we cannot always have our cake and eat it, too. Saying that the right to wear the hijab is inalienable is just one possible trade-off.

Sorry, I did not mean that, I’m not accusing you of shutting me down.
I meant to say that you’re treating the right to free speech differently from freedom of religion.
I’m saying that you (like me), do not consider all opinions to be equal and deserving of equal respect. (Don’t tell me you respect all political opinions equally :wink: )
Yet in the case of religion, I think you are arguing for equal respect for all religions and religious customs.
I was trying to make the point that my approach to freedom of religion differs from yours, but is quite similar to your approach to freedom of speech.

Yet I remember making none of the presumptions you accuse me of making. I just think constantly-worn conspicuous religious symbols are mildly toxic. It’s not about whether Muslim families are more or less fundamentalist than adherents of other religions.

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Your presumptions are evident in numerous statements that you’ve made about Islam. How about we just go back to the question at hand and we agree that the retail of Hijabi Barbie will not bring down Western Civilization, or even cause harm to individual children. My problem is that some of the people in this thread sound like Republican candidates in the U.S. demagogically running against sharia law.

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OK, then I’ll play the same card. If fact the star of David has been used to single out my people yet I’ve never seen a fellow Jew flip out about another Jew having that symbol on clothing or jewelry. Wouldn’t bug me if Mattel did a Orthodox Jewish Barbie with a star of david or with her hair covered.

Does not compute, sorry.

You should meet this muslim lady friend of my wife, I’m sure that would be fun to watch. Well, fun for me anyway.

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Are you sure you’re not confusing me with someone else in this thread?
Please point to where any such “presumption” is “evident” in my statements.

In fact, I hardly even made any statements about Islam at all. I disapprove of the custom of the hijab in particular, because it is a constantly visible sign of religious allegiance, and I disapprove of such customs because of my own experience with leaving a different religious group. I know from personal experience that any custom involving a constantly visible sign of religious allegiance would have made things harder for me.

No, it will not bring down Western Civilization, I have never said that. There are nuances between “OMG this will bring down Western Civilization” and “It’s great that this fine custom is affirmed as part of our culture”.

Please assume that I’m capable of some nuance. Straw man arguments get us nowhere.

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Okay then! I agree it’s a difficult trade off.

You said you were raised Catholic, yeah, and you’re Austrian? Do you think that Atheists suffer the same kind of prejudice as Muslims in central Europe, right now? Are their laws outlawing the building of structures for atheists, or entire political parties that have grown up in response to an influx of atheists fleeing a war? And I agree that being a someone with a minority belief (or non-belief) in a family can be alienating and hard to deal with, as I’ve had that experience, living in the deep south with very religious family members. But I also understand that it’s not quite the same now as it is for people who are a minority religion that is being targeted for various kinds of social discrimination.

For me, the point of a secular society is not so everyone can be moved towards atheism, but it’s so people can freely worship or not, unmolested from the rest of the world. For me, religious (and others kinds of) diversity and socially and cultural acknowledgement of such diversity is a sign of democratic health and well being. If people feel excluded from society and we have elected officials who actively agitate against one group or another, is a sign of a serious problem with our democratic processes. The whole world seems to be in that problem now.

But the logic is internal, and I feel you’re again making assumptions about internal dynamics of a family.

And I don’t understand this, either? What do you mean, she can’t communicate? There are plenty of families who don’t communicate at all, religious symbols aside. Plenty of families who work out good communication strategies and are better for it. That’s a universal, I’d say, having little to do with the family faith.

I agree. But again, that’s not even a problem limited to a religion. Literally any group of people can become toxic. It’s a people problem, not a faith problem. And I’d argue that this too goes back to the health of a society rather than to a particular adherence to a faith.

But once again, women and our bodies are the battle ground, as if men don’t think we’re full human beings. Women get rights, too, it doesn’t just stop at men. That means that women get to decide if they wish to dress conservatively. Full stop.

I don’t think I am, though. I see them as very much connected. You get to be openly an atheists, but you also have to acknowledge the religious speech that you might not like.

But I do. I’m not saying you need to think the hijab is good or bad, or that you have to all of a sudden share the view of women wearing the hijab. I’m saying you don’t get to make that decision for others. Period. I’m very much saying that a hijab is a religious expression and thus (at least here) receives full first amendment protection under our laws.

That’s my assumption, that the two are intertwined, because they are in the US. Telling women what they can and cannot wear is a violation of their free speech and free religion practice.

Either way, thanks for making your views clearer to me. I’m not sure I agree, but at least we managed to make it civil! :wink:

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The Muslims who are coming here to get away from that eleventh century shit will be welcomed by me. Many of them are.

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Does that include crosses and crucifixes? LDS underwear? Tefillin?

The Barbie line of toys has been expanding to cover whatever market they can get. Sometimes they expand because of societal pressure, like when Barbie was an astronaut and doctor. Or like now, when they’re mining cultural and religious diversity. It’s good for sales, and it’s good for kids to know dolls can come in different colors, just like people.

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Thank you for that! It’s always so easy to fall into the trap of mistaking slight disagreement about fundamental things for total opposition.

Yes, Muslims are the victims of discrimination much more than atheists.
You can argue that I should therefore ignore my objections to the hijab and join in making Muslim girls feel welcome.
That may well be the lesser evil, and I’ve often decided that way. But this means I’m defending the rights of young atheists raised by Muslim parents less than those of young atheists raised by Catholic parents, and that makes me feel racist, as well.

Tl;dr: It’s always a choice of the lesser evil, it’s not the choice between an inalienable right and something unimportant.

Yes, the bodies of women happen to be the battleground again, with both men and women fighting on both sides. But note that there have been rather passionate public debates in Austria and Germany a few years back about the issue of religiously-motivated male circumcision. The battleground there was boy’s bodies, and men were arguing much more passionately than they are about hijabs. Apart from that, the arguments on both sides were pretty similar to the ones used here.

And a few hours later, you referred to someone’s stated opinion as “BS” and indicating that doubling down on those opinions is a major cause for “these kinds of problems”. If you really consider @lollipop_jones’ opinion to be equal and deserving of equal respect, you surely have an interesting way of showing it. I feel my disrespect towards the religious practice of the hijab was much milder.
Just for the record, we’re talking about respect towards somebody’s opinions and religion only. Respect for the people themselves is what’s really important.

True, toxic mechanisms for reinforcing group allegiance are a common problem. I think that’s a bad thing whenever it happens, and the fact that it is an expression of religion in this case should not make it immune from criticism.

The second “not” was not a typo. “One cannot not communicate” is a Paul Watzlawick quote. Meaning that there are situations where everything you do is an act of communication. In this context, I mean that wearing a hijab sends a message, and taking it off sends a message, and it is impossible to avoid sending some kind of message.

Conspicuous crosses/crucifixes, probably. Here in Austria, there is no expectation even amongst the most devout Christians for believers to wear a cross, so it doesn’t classify as “constantly-worn”. Devout Christians who stop wearing a cross are not sending a message that they are no longer Christian or no longer as devout.
But I have spent more time in Austrian internet forums criticizing our local practice of decorating most school classrooms with a crucifix than I have ever spent criticizing the hijab.
I have never been exposed to and know next to nothing about LDS underwear or tefilin, so no comment on that.

That’s it, folks, thanks for the discussion.
As there is little time left on this topic, I hope I have not made any new controversial statements in this post, only clarified ones I made earlier.

@Medievalist, if you ever get around to starting that thread about pantheism, atheism, and where to put Sagan in all of this, count me in.

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