them them them, always thinking they’re better than you.
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I live in a apartment community with a large proportion of women who wear hijabs. In my building and the closest building alone there are at least 8 women who regularly wear one. I really want to have a conversation with these women, ask them about why they personally wear one, do they ever wish they didn’t have to, do they feel pressured to wear one or is it based mostly on their own free choice? I’m intensely curious. But of course, I can’t ask. Those are really personal questions and I don’t know any of these women.
I’ve been working up to introducing myself to a few of them but taking it slow after one of them looked so very startled when I nodded and smiled at her (like I do for neighbors) across a lawn. She was sincerely startled, and then delighted. She smiled and nodded back shyly, but with enthusiasm. I kept smiling until I was in my own place and then stopped because I felt incredibly sad. What kind of treatment did she usually get from white women that a simple smile and nod was so startling? Unfortunately, she hasn’t been the only one surprised by a friendly attitude from me since then.
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Honesty, for all its failings, is better than fear. Keep smiling!
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They’re invisible. Why else do you think that in every discussion about hijab people project their wholly unrelated anxieties onto a piece of attire? What I’ve learned is that Muslim women are at their most sympathetic when silent and being spoken for.
“What a terrible crime being perpetrated against Muslim women!”
“Look at how they’re treated!”
“Muslim women are trapped in a prison of their own mind.”
White people act like they have zero agency in pretty much every conversation I’ve been in. Maybe it’s because my mother, sister, aunts, and friends have been Muslim women, but sometimes I want to yell at people, “They’re human beings, not Islamic Burkabots!”
ETA: My favorite story about this. I was talking to a classmate who started asking me questions about the hijab, and he told me about this one classmate of his who seemed to be looking at him whenever he looked at her. He was wondering if it was because he wore an Atheist t-shirt one or two times. I looked at him and went, “You’re kidding, right?” The guy was a very conventionally attractive man. Like a stereotype of a professional model down to having the height for it. “Not to inflate your ego, but did you ever consider that she might think you’re good looking?” The look of epiphany on his face was phenomenal.
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You have a really good point. Thanks for that perspective. I’ve noticed that kind of attitude before, that the hajib a woman is wearing is more important and worthy of notice than the person. It’s part of why I will probably never ask my neighbors about wearing one. I don’t want them to feel like that’s all I notice about them.
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A regular sight on campus during my post-9/11 student days were female Islamic students wearing Malaysian-style headscarves…along with hipster jeans and midriff-baring tops.
Very much a deliberate choice of personal cultural expression.
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Great. Women have to wear the hijab lest they tempt men. Because women are not tempting men, men are going all terrorist. Either way, blame it on women.
Misogynist cretin.
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I’d try and get to know them, all nice and neighborly like. It’s nice to make new friends, and if any of these women do in fact feel isolated, you can help with that, just by saying hi and stopping to chat.
I’ve also taught many young women at my school with hijab, and it’s clear most of them wear it as a symbol of religious piety, tradition, and to make connections to their religious community. I don’t doubt that some of them feel forced to wear it, but then again, I also don’t doubt that many of the non-Muslim women on campus, where ever they come from, what ever their religion, or cultural back ground, also suffer from abuse from men in their lives or have in the past.
There is also the act of resistance to a society that is constantly trying to demonize them. Frantz Fanon wrote an essay about this very phenomenon back in the 1960s with regards to the Algerian War called Algeria Unveiled, which is worth looking up (I’m blanking on where I read it from - I’m sure it was in a grad class at some point). Here is a discussion of it, though:
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Without offering any approval to the subject of this post, and without any evidence of my own to cite, I think there may be a link between sexual oppression and violence.
I believe that if the religions of the world stopped ruling out socially acceptable sex, and allowed an people occupying other hues of the sexual rainbow to live their lives honestly and comfortably, that we would see less violence.
The sexual urge is so fundamental to living that it’s a terrible crime against humanity to stigmatize or criminalize.
Good sex is part of a good life. Please fuck off and let us figure out how it can work for us.
Humans can be free to be human (and hopefully happier), and religion can be freed to find more useful focus than who puts their parts where.
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Hm. This would assume that once a society has become more secularized, that sexual violence would end. Of course, there is still plenty of sexual violence in places that are more secular. I wish the answer were actually that easy, but it’s not. There can be a variety of reasons why people have hang ups about sex, and religion is only one of those. I think a major part of the problem is also when women are treated as objects of desire rather than people who also desire sex.
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Uh, Malala Yousafzai?
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Yeah, among many other women in hijab doing so… As @ActionAbe points out, they rarely are imagined to have agency in conversations about them…
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“What I’ve learned is that Muslim women are at their most sympathetic when silent and being spoken for.”
Yes - I’ve noticed that about my oxen. Who wants to listen to a beast of burden, anyway? I mean - what would they have to say other than “Could you please remove this ring from my nose?” for the thousandth time.
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This young lady?
Her hair is shamefully exposed and her garments are of an unseemly color. She should dress properly, like a god-fearing American!
Incidentally, in my US state you’ll be arrested if you don’t wear the legally mandated religious attire (although admittedly any genital covering is considered sufficient). As far as I know, only San Francisco allows freedom from clothing mandates.
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More like “tolerates”.
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