A Conversation with Sahar Amer, Author of ‘What is Veiling?’ « Transcultural Islam Research Network

On the Transcultural Islam Research Network, an interview with Sahar Amer, whose book, What Is Veiling?was published by The University of North Carolina Press in September of this year. I found this passage particularly interesting:

CR: Throughout your extensive research on the topic, have you found that veiling is more a product of religious and cultural circumstances or personal choice?

SA: I would say that veiling is a product of all of the above, and many other reasons as well. Veiling is due to a variety of reasons, including social, political, cultural, and economic, as well as personal and spiritual ones. While some women indeed must wear the veil because it is imposed upon them by a society with a conservative reading of Islamic traditions, others wear it proudly out of deep piety and conviction that it is an Islamic prescription. Yet other women wear the veil as a political assertion of their national identity, or as an expression of their disappointment in the failure of Arab nationalism and of the postcolonial world, as a tool of resistance to Euro-American stereotypes and policies towards Muslims, or as a means of declaring their opposition to the commodification of women’s bodies in Euro-American societies. Still others wear it for socio-economic reasons, either because it allows them to forego the expense of new clothes and a hairdresser, or because it gives them the confidence to go out in public, hold jobs, and become financially independent in a society only recently accustomed to having women mingle alongside men in public and work spaces. Perhaps the most important thing to understand about veiling is that there is not and has never been one singular reason for wearing hijab that one can consider valid for all peoples or all times or all societies. Variation is truly the norm.

I have rarely read, listened to, or been part of a discussion of veiling that does not assume the simplistic, single-minded template of the “imposed veil” (whether that imposition is governmental, as in Iran, familial or communal) and its corresponding and ostensibly by-definition oppression of women as the only one in which discussion of veiling can be meaningful.

Cross-posted.

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41 Responses to A Conversation with Sahar Amer, Author of ‘What is Veiling?’ « Transcultural Islam Research Network

  1. 1
    RonF says:

    “I have rarely read, listened to, or been part of a discussion of veiling that does not assume the simplistic, single-minded template of the “imposed veil” (whether that imposition is governmental, as in Iran, familial or religious) and its corresponding and ostensibly by-definition oppression of women is the only one in which discussion of veiling can be meaningful.”

    Is it not sometimes a feminist analysis that women who dress in a certain way, or wear makeup, etc., are doing so on the basis of a general oppression of women regardless of the actual reason given by the women in question?

  2. Ron,

    And your point is? And how is it a response to what the post is actually about rather than a chance to take a swipe at feminism?

  3. 3
    Ben David says:

    Richard: I can’t answer for Ron, but my guess is he’s pointing out an obvious double standard.

    When Western women insisted they were happy and fulfilled in their marriages, early feminists insisted this was “false consciousness” as a result of cultural indoctrination, and condescendingly insisted they knew better what these women *really* felt and wanted.

    Why is the “choice” of Muslim women to wear a veil “for social, national, and cultural reasons” not subject to the same scrutiny and skepticism – especially knowing what we know about the coercive, non-individualistic nature of most Muslim cultures, for both men and women?

  4. 4
    Charles S says:

    Ben David,

    So you are bothered by the fact that Richard doesn’t engage in a practice that you disapprove of (false consciousness arguments, which you describe as “condescendingly insisting”) in relation to one thing, because you feel it is a double standard for him not to because completely different people used to engage in that practice in relation to something else 30-50 years ago? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but thank you for your concern.

    Or is it that you yourself reject the idea that “a discussion of veiling that does not assume the simplistic, single-minded template of the “imposed veil” ” should ever occur? If so, why can’t you just state that as being your belief? Why, instead, do you (and RonF) find it necessary to hide behind a ridiculous concern trolling double standard argument, allowing you to present the argument, without having to actually take any sort of stand that that is what you believe?

    Notably, actual false consciousness arguments, to have any weight whatsoever, need to start from the sort of nuanced and detailed analysis of the sort Sahar is engaged in, and also need to come from people personally immersed in the culture they are critiquing. False consciousness arguments decrease very quickly in value the further the arguer is from consciousness they are critiquing. Arguments from personal experience: “And then I realized that all my claims to be happy being a submissive spouse were bullshit, and that I had been faking it for years, so maybe you should think about how your situation and experience is like mine, and see if you’ve been faking it too,” are vastly more powerful than arguments from doctrine: “[given] the coercive, non-individualistic nature of most Muslim cultures, for both men and women” … “the “choice” of Muslim women to wear a veil “for social, national, and cultural reasons” ” [must be false consciousness] (as you cutely non-argue above).

  5. Thank you, Charles. I have been too swamped to respond, but I agree entirely with everything you said.

    ETA: I just reread the original post, and I realize that my language got away from me. Because I use the words “ostensibly and by definition” in the last sentence, I think that sentence could be read to mean that I think there might be instances in which the legal imposition of the veil, as in Iran, is not oppressive of women, and I should be clear that this is not what I think.

    I think that Iran’s (and other countries’) imposition of the veil, especially, but not only, in light of the sanctions it imposes on women who do not veil “properly” is, by definition, oppressive of women. I just heard today, for example, that in the city of Isfahan, men have started throwing acid at women who do not veil properly and this behavior was, I have been told, if not outright condoned by, then certainly motivated by a mullah who, in his Friday sermon insisted that such women ought to be punished.

    Just to be clear: I know that men have been throwing acid; I have been told about the mullah’s sermon, but I do not know its precise content.

    I have edited the original post to clarify my stance.

  6. 6
    Ben David says:

    Charles:

    So you are bothered by the fact that Richard doesn’t engage in a practice that you disapprove of (false consciousness arguments, which you describe as “condescendingly insisting”)

    Nice try. As if I am protesting that more false consciousness arguments should be made…

    I am bothered by the fact that lefties use false consciousness arguments – and other social “science” dodges – to sidestep rational inquiry when it promotes their agenda. And I am consistent in trying to engage in rational discourse, rather than social-science “deconstruction”.

    If standards of rational inquiry had been applied to feminist re-reading of Western women’s desires in the 60s and 70s, progressives would have had to cough up solid evidence that women were in fact oppressed, unhappy and coerced by Western patriarchy. Instead they insisted – as all lefty True Believers do – that they knew better than the little people what was good for them, and what they really wanted.

    And if rational discourse were applied to the veiling of Muslim women now, progressives would have to explain the obvious evidence of violent oppression of Muslim women – including mutilation of their bodies – and why lefties are ignoring that oppression to accept at face value an oppressive society’s justification of the veil as a “empowering, culturally fulfilling choice” (= more social “science” gobbledygook).

    Get it?

    If you’re going to roll out the uffish we-know-better omniscience of “false consciousness” to explain away statements from free, educated, unoppressed Western women – why the sudden fawning acceptance of what looks much more like a real case of “false consciousness” from Muslim women who are subject to obvious coercion and oppression?

    The only answer I can see is that lefties do and say whatever promotes their agenda, and intellectual consistency be damned… In this case, the depredations visited upon Muslim women shall not be allowed to disturb what “everybody knows” (there’s that omniscience again) – that the Judeo-Christian West is uniquely evil, and that non-Westerners and their cultures are, by definition, more noble, authentic, and moral…. whatever they may do to their women’s bodies….

    It’s amazing to reflect that the left, while proclaiming their humanism, and feminists, while insisting they champion women’s freedom – completely ignore the lived experience of actual female people in both these cases – because people and reality are only useful when they dramatize the political agenda.

  7. And so, Ben David, you make my point precisely. Of course there are instances in which the imposition of the veil oppresses women, but you seem to be suggesting that those instances are the only lived experiences of veiling that count. My point, which I admittedly muddied with some careless writing at the end of my post (see my previous comment and the edits I made to the post), was that Muslim women’s narrative of veiling is a good deal more complex than that, and that complexity is something I think we ought to respect.

  8. 8
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    It is difficult to fairly interpret people’s opinions on veiling outside a situation where they possess the support, commonality, and safety NOT to veil. It’s a bit like the amazing coincidence that folks vote for dictators, even if they ostensibly have anonymity in the ballot box.

    Ben David refers to this as false consciousness. I think that’s a bad term. It’s more reasonable to refer to it as acknowledgment of the biases in your local world. When you do what everyone else does, it is difficult to distinguish between a rational informed choice on the one hand and a love of conformity (or fear of nonconforming.)

    So, for example: If you live in a city/country where 50% of women do not wear the veil, then the fact that you choose a veil is statistically more likely to be based on choice, and less likely to be based on conformity. But if you live in a place where nobody/everybody wears a veil, then any conformity is less likely to be based on choice.

    But that’s not the only issue. Because no matter what they say, we ALSO know that as a general rule people tend to self-justify their actions as choice. If you know you only have salad for dinner then people will often try to make themselves happy with their lot by deciding that they wanted to eat vegetarian anyway.

    How can we know what the “real” answer is? Well, we could test: Take 10,000 people who don’t wear the veil but who live in a veil-free society. Take 10,000 people who do wear the veil but who live in a veil-full society. Put them all into a society where 50% of people are veiled–removing the most obvious social pressures–and see what they do.

    In that respect it seems that the evidence is in favor of non-veiling. Isn’t it? It is my understanding that veil use is decreasing radically when it is safe to do so.

    ETA: Which is not to say that we should reject the experiences of people. But that we should consider the degree to which they may fail to predict the views of larger groups, or the rules in other situations.

    And it’s important not to develop a false equivalence unless the numbers are there to support it: the fact that there are “some women” who are in favor of veiling should be considered in terms of how many women are involved. It doesn’t really make it a seriously two-sided argument on its own. Because you can probably find “some women” who are in favor of about everything, right?

  9. 9
    Ben David says:

    Richard:

    And so, Ben David, you make my point precisely….
    Muslim women’s narrative of veiling is a good deal more complex than that, and that complexity is something I think we ought to respect.

    Nope – you’re using the word “complexity” to gloss over my point: the difference between rational, skeptical assessment of truth and the agenda-driven “narrative” scripting that Lefties do.

    Again:
    Rational evaluation of women’s claims to fulfillment/pleasure with their culture’s norms involves evaluating whether they are, in objective fact, subject to oppression – including what happens to them if they refuse those social norms.

    Western women were/are NOT subject to physical violence or social coercion if they decide to put off marriage or limit the size of their families. They were/are NOT hamstrung in pursuing alternatives to marriage by social norms that withhold education, employment, or political representation, or keep them from driving cars or walking in public without male accompaniment.

    Their freedom to live otherwise unmolested factors into the *believability* of their claims that they are fulfilled by marriage and family.

    Get it?

    Similarly: Rational evaluation of Muslim women’s claims about the veil must be evaluated in the light of what their society does to women who refuse the veil – and in the general context of their freedom (including bodily integrity, ability to appear in public, etc.) to buck the conventions they claim to embrace willingly.

    Please explain why you are using phrases like “complexity of narrative” to side-step that evaluation of Muslima’s freedom.

    Proving your point? No. I thoroughly disagree with the apologetic discourse excusing the veil – and all other non-Western practices that Lefties would condemn were they done in the West, to Westerners (“Put on this veil – and no more Vagina Monologues for you!”).

    See? Rational inquiry remains anchored in fact rather than narrative, and applies *the same* standards to both cases. Left-wing discourse applies *different* standards based on identity politics – and replaces reality-checking with a morality play of “narratives” that don’t respect the real lived experience of the people being comdemned OR championed.

    In this case, yielding the not-very-humane result of throwing Muslim women under the bus in service of anti-Western multiculturalism.

  10. Please explain why you are using phrases like “complexity of narrative” to side-step that evaluation of Muslima’s freedom.

    I’m not. I am merely suggesting that there is more to Muslim women and the decisions they make than the ways in which their lives are limited by social, religious, legal requirements and/or pressures to veil.

    And having said that, I think it’s clear that we don’t really have very much more of use to say to each other on this issue.

  11. 11
    nm says:

    Western women were/are NOT subject to physical violence or social coercion if they decide to put off marriage or limit the size of their families. They were/are NOT hamstrung in pursuing alternatives to marriage by social norms that withhold education, employment, or political representation, or keep them from driving cars or walking in public without male accompaniment.

    I’ll grant you the driving cars and walking in public bit, but the rest of your assertions are rather iffy, at least in much of the U.S.

  12. 12
    mythago says:

    G&B: since Richard did not claim that all women who wear hijab do so out of a belief that they are 100% free to do so or not, kind of not sure what your point is?

  13. 13
    brian says:

    I’d go so far as to say all these debates come down to either the world view “your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose starts” or the world view “Your business is my business, by the authority of the magic pixie what lives in the sky.”

    If women want to wear bikinis or bee keeper out fits, it’s their choice… some places. Other places their choices are more limited.

    Why should Western Liberal Democracy types break their necks to be so understanding of people who consider Western Liberal Democratic values to be against the will of the magic pixie? Especially since the magic pixie wants to behead us and have our women dress as beekeepers?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/turkey-stilettos-quran-tweet_n_6035198.html?cps=gravity

  14. 14
    Ampersand says:

    Brian, you seem to me to be trying to start a flame-war. Certainly, nothing you just wrote was relevant to Richard’s post in any way. Did you even read Richard’s post?

    I’ll ask other posters to decline Brian’s invitation to a flame-war (or to take it to the open thread).

    Brian, if you want to answer me, please either spell out how this line of discussion is a direct response to Richard’s post, or take it to the open thread. Thanks.

  15. Thanks, Amp, for catching that. I will wait to read Brian’s reply, if he makes one.

  16. 16
    brian says:

    Challenge accepted, full aware that confirmation bias means at best I’ll see four of my words taken out of context and used to compose a rant about Gods-knows-what.

    Besides I only start flame wars on redstate and stormfront under aliases inspired by detective fiction. When I stop by here I’m merely being blunt.

    The arguments thus far in this thread underneath the obfuscation translate as this

    Original poster: “Yes in the identified oppressive cultures and similar subcultures existing within other more dominant cultures, women are compelled to behave in certain very restrictive ways to repress their self expression. But because some have internalized their oppressive culture and identify with their oppressors enough to feel they are willingly going along with the culturally imposed norms, it’s ok!”

    A rather reasonable reply by Ron F similarly translated;
    “Ummm, no, it’s not ok, it’s as awful as any OTHER time a culture forced people to go along with the program and some people felt less oppressed by saying they did it of their own free will.”

    Reply by OP; similarly translated
    “Nuh uh!

    Reply by Ben David, similarly translated…
    “No, actually one culture forcing people to conform is just as wrong as another culture forcing people to conform.”

    Followed by another poster deliberately missing RonF’s and Ben David’s points entirely, and OP following suit to forge ahead saying as near as I can tell that some people embracing their own oppression justifies that oppression completely or something similarly baffling.

    At this point rhetorical hair splitting kicked in, getting further and further from any clear point beyond endless circling round the drain into a parallel world where freedom to embrace slavery is a viable choice.

    Debating if people should be free to choose how they live is pointless, it’s settled case law in Civilization. We’re just working out the details at this point.

    In the uncivilized parts you can still be arrested for standing on a book sacred to the great pixie what lives in the sky. (See earlier post of mine for that particular story from a “moderate, Westernized” sample culture.)

    If believing that freedom is better than oppression is cultural imperialism, then call me Rudyard Kipling. I’m not saying we should all move to Denmark or Finland, under the rules of the EU, but then again yeah I kind of am.

    Now as a reward for hearing me out. I offer the music that plays in my head every waking moment. Enjoy.

  17. 17
    brian says:

    http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/when-you-love-your-abuser-stockholm-syndrome-and-trauma-bonds/

    After a nights sleep I remembered something that I could have mentioned earlier. When an individual accepts their abuse and starts to justify it as proof that the abuser loves them it is referred to as trauma bonding. It is a horrible thing to happen to a person, and I find it very demanding to work clients through.

    When millions of people accept institutional abuse, neglect and oppression and come to see it as their own free choice and the best way to live, calling it a viable culture is as disgusting as saying a woman deserved that punch in the mouth for talking back.

  18. Brian:

    full aware that confirmation bias means at best I’ll see four of my words taken out of context and used to compose a rant about Gods-knows-what.

    Which is a convenient way of pre-emptively dismissing anyone who does, in fact, disagree with either your stance as a whole or your reductive “translation” of the conversation in this thread, but, okay, I’ll bite. You wrote:

    Original poster: “Yes in the identified oppressive cultures and similar subcultures existing within other more dominant cultures, women are compelled to behave in certain very restrictive ways to repress their self expression. But because some have internalized their oppressive culture and identify with their oppressors enough to feel they are willingly going along with the culturally imposed norms, it’s ok!”

    So let me ask you a question: Would you also say that women in the United States who wear makeup, or who adhere to or aspire to conventional notions of female attractiveness, are also and by definition doing nothing more than “going along with…culturally imposed norms” and are therefore merely acting out their own internalized oppression?

    To be clear: I am asking not because I think putting on makeup and donning the veil are the same thing. I am asking about whether you are consistent in your understanding of women’s relationship to the patriarchal norms of their culture.

    ETA: I posted this before I saw your comment #17. My question still stands, but I will think about #17 and, if I have time, respond later.

  19. 19
    brian says:

    Richard are you seriously asking me to summarize American/European feminist cultural criticism since THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE to Sara Silverman? Not for all the cocaine in Columbia, which is what it’d take for one person to do that.

    Hell, put in the open thread “Would you say that women in the United States who wear makeup, or who adhere to or aspire to conventional notions of female attractiveness, are also and by definition doing nothing more than “going along with…culturally imposed norms” and are therefore merely acting out their own internalized oppression?” and just about everyone here can send you half the papers they wrote in college.

    Since I don’t have the time or inclination to write about as many words as it took to write THE GOLDEN BOUGH, I’ll just sum up and say 2 thoughts. Some die-hard feminist here can use it as a thesis for a damn fine dissertation.

    Trauma bonding has been shown to be easy to maintain by an abuser and it reaches a tipping point where it becomes self sustaining as the abused partner feeds into their own abuse with their behavior and self delusions as a defense mechanism. It is also possible to view a trauma bond as more “stable” than romantic love or a relationship based on household economics.

    Certain cultures, subcultures and small social groups in history have standardized trauma bonding as the “normal” type of relationship between husband and wife. Much of the struggle of modern feminism, and possibly the struggle between regressive and progressive culture as a whole, can be seen as a war of ideas between the trauma bonding societies and the OTHER forms of romantic entanglement.

    Discuss.

    If I ever finish my OTHER book ideas I’ll do it unless Amp cares to beat me to it. I’d write it better but he’d have better illustrations. ;)

    My beliefs are always consistent. However I don’t have time nor inclination to explain them in detail as I’m usually too busy acting on my beliefs. You’ll just have to read what I write exactly as carefully as I wrote it and try to catch up on the fly. Until I retire to write obviously.

  20. Brian,

    A simple yes or no would have sufficed. Not everyone is consistent in this regard and it seemed to me important to know whether or not you were before continuing this conversation any further.

    However I don’t have time nor inclination to explain [my beliefs] in detail as I’m usually too busy acting on my beliefs.

    Far be it from me, then, to presume upon your time any further. Thanks for your comments.

  21. 21
    brian says:

    You can’t answer any question about any sociological opinions with a yes or no. Especially around here, where a momentarily imprecise use of phrase can get one labeled a member of the manocentric maleocracy conspiracy who wishes to perform laser hair removal and lobotomy procedures to any member of homo sapiens with xx chromosomes.

    but if you want a yes or no, then yes, in our culture we still have a good way to go. But at least we are making objective progress. Yes a woman who looks like John madden will face a greater social sanction than a man that looks like John madden. But notice that a social sanction is not the same as making it a crime or a sin. We may choose not to put some women on a magazine cover but we rarely beat them for showing more than one eye.

    But don’t use that to try and say that we have no right to complain about cultures that treats half the population as slaves.

    That some slaves tell themselves that chains offer security doesn’t mean slavery is acceptable.

  22. Brian—

    But don’t use that to try and say that we have no right to complain about cultures that treats half the population as slaves.

    That some slaves tell themselves that chains offer security doesn’t mean slavery is acceptable.

    Except that I never said either of these things, and since I am assuming you have read my words as carefully as you insisted I needed to read yours, I am also assuming you know that, which means your argument is with someone else. And I would agree that it is a very important argument to have. Cultural relativism can be a very dangerous thing if it is understood to mean that because injustice exists in my culture I cannot criticize injustices that exist in other cultures—whether those other injustices are harsher than the ones that exist in mine, as in this case, or not.

    Like I said, though, it appears your argument is with someone else, and so I hope you’ll understand if I don’t say more in response to your comments than I have said already.

  23. It is instructive, I think, to read the excerpt from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book to which Brian linked next to the essay that I linked to in comment #23. Not that one woman is right while the other is wrong—they are, it seems to me, both right—but because the differences between them illustrate a couple of things:

    1. The very different individual and collective experiences of and attitudes towards veiling that Muslim women have;

    2. The differences in the status of women in different places in the Muslim world (which is not to say that women in Iran are free and equal to men or that there aren’t places in Iran where that status of women resembles what Ali dealt with in Somalia, but, rather, it is to suggest that collapsing those differences and reducing them to Ali’s experience as the lowest common denominator, which is what Brian clearly intends here, is a convenience of the way we want to see the veil and women’s status in Islam rather than a reflection of the reality of Muslim women’s lives);

    3. The differences between listening to what Muslim women have to say about themselves and veiling and taking at face value how the Western media shape the narrative about veiling and women’s status in Islam that is given the widest play in the west.

  24. 26
    brian says:

    I was writing to a friend trying to explain how we are all at risk of being slaves to our upbringing and culture and I remembered this thread/discussion. I’ll paste my explanation to my friend below, just because I think it makes a point about how we’re all more than ONE influence.

    Here’s where we are disagreeing as I see it. You’re taking the side that “women should be free to wear whatever they want with culture being one of their influences.” And that’s a fair side, and generally I’d agree and buy the next round of beer while we waited for our damn cheese sticks to arrive.

    I’m taking the side that in THIS particular example, freedom isn’t really a part of the choice in most cases. If family shuns you if do elsewise, if your religious leaders tell you it’s a sin to do elsewise, if the government that you or at least your cousins overseas live under pass laws to punish those that do elsewise, it’s not a free choice.

    We are the result of our family/subculture/nation and ALL of those can force us to make certain choices. That can be an internal compulsion ANY THAT’S FINE. It’s when it’s an outside compulsion I get a bit over emotional on the subject. Internal drive fine, external force not fine, to be reductionistic.

    There’s a sliding scale of social acceptance. In a perfect universe people could dress or decorate their body however crosses their mind with zero social sanction. Bikinis, burquas, Easter Bunny suits, gimp suits, or what would be my choice, the spaceman uniform from FORBIDDEN PLANET. And in western liberal Christian majority culture, we’re still at a point people would stare some and whisper about most of these on a bus or subway. And maybe the guy in the Easter Bunny suit on the E train will feel a little silly for a few seconds now and then.

    BUT that’s still better than family shunning, throwing battery acid or sentencing to be bludgeoned by big rocks. And I know you think you’re defending free choice here, but as long as shunning, acid and big rocks are part of the social sanction, it’s NOT a free choice.

    Anyways, as promised, my explanation of how our internal version of “normality” can be forced upon us unless we choose to change it. You’re arguing in favor of other people’s internal version of normal AND THAT’S FINE. Here’s your beer, and flag down the waitron if you see her, I am freaking starving.

    ###################################

    One of my professors in my undergrad social work program would work into every lecture the point, “remember, to your clients, this is normal. What… your mom didn’t teach you how to shoot heroin? What… your dad didn’t shoplift? To them, what they do is perfectly normal.” The job of a social worker is to point out to people that THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS pretty much. The rest is just details.

    Humans adapt. We get used to damn near anything. Put a human in a paradise or a god forsaken wasteland and they will usually learn to live, survive and reasonably thrive wherever they wind up. The problem is if you grow up in a god forsaken wasteland most people just assume that’s all there is and they never explore their options. Living in a desert, sucking dew off of rocks in the morning and eating bugs is normal. “What, your family didn’t fight buzzards for dead armadillo carcasses? No, I never tried to see if anywhere else was better than this, why do you ask? The whole world’s just like this, right?”

    I once read about an archaeological dig in Asia, a cave system the size of Luray Caverns that had been lived in by our Neolithic ancestors for something like 5000 years. They know this because they threw their trash in the back of the cave system and countless generations stayed right there until their own garbage pushed them out. There’s a powerful metaphor buried not too deep there.

    Mom, Dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles, the whole extended family. What were they like? What seemed normal back then, what part of that all seems normal to you?

    To be fair, I can tell you this about my own life to illustrate a point. My grandfather was married 3 times back before that was common. No kids from wife one, 5 kids from wife two, four from wife three including my own father. So I have a 8 aunts and uncles, and so many cousins I can’t even remember all their names.

    From an early age, there was a lot of politics among them all. The kids from the second marriage inherited a trust fund when they came of age. The kids from the 3rd marriage (my side of the family) didn’t get a god damned nickel. Think of them as the haves and have-nots, to keep it simple.

    The haves thought of our side as “the bastards from the woman that stole our dad from us.”

    The have-nots thought of the haves as whiny crybabies that literally had millions of dollars and all we had was…. A shit load of envy to be honest.
    My dad to his credit spent his whole damn life trying to be a sort of bridge between the two sides that REALLY hated the hell out of each other near as I could tell. It didn’t do him much good, left some serious damage that I see in hindsight. But I haven’t talked to him since 2002 so I’ve no idea if he ever got over it. (That’s a whole other story.)

    A cold war instead of a hot one mostly. But INCREDIBLE resentment, even within the two sides. All family relationships were VERY transactional. We weren’t family in the normal sense. We were allies based on who could do what for you. And if someone was “ripping you off” you cut them out of your life, sometimes for good.

    When my grandfather died, they actually held two funerals in two different funeral parlors, one in Baltimore and one 30 miles away in Harford country where we have-nots were.

    Seriously, that’s fucked up. I grew UP in the middle of it and even I knew that was fucked up. I stopped interacting with any of them, I was so pissed off at the sheer fucked-upness of it. When my grandmother passed on a few years later, I stopped talking to any of them pretty much; it was all too toxic and weird.

    It took me years to figure out JUST how toxic and weird. Relationships are still very transactional to me. I do my damnedest for anyone on “my side.” But if the other person isn’t carrying their weight, or refuses to help ME when I’ve broken my back for them a few times, out they go. Sometimes never to be invited back.

    That’s nuts. I know this. I work too damn hard for people when I let them “on my side” and if they disappoint me or leave me feeling ripped off one time too many I chuck them in the dumpster. What “normal” people do is work LESS hard for others, and cut others slack when they disappoint them.

    I‘ve tried being normal though, didn’t like it. My family’s way is a mess, and I’ve cut a lot of good people out of my life over the years for disappointing me. But I just don’t like being used, taken for granted, feeling ripped off or any of that and I can’t imagine being ok with it. So I just have to accept I’m occasionally going to be lonely, other times I’ll have people on my side that I know I can count on and that will know they can count on me…. Until I feel ripped off, then I’m gone.

    So my point is, look at the whole ecology of relationships you grew up with.

  25. Brian:

    You’re taking the side that “women should be free to wear whatever they want with culture being one of their influences.”

    Well, no. That’s not my argument at all, and the fact that you think it is shows how deeply you have misunderstood me. I hope next week to put a post up that starts to address this more fully, but for now let me quote you:

    So my point is, look at the whole ecology of relationships you grew up with.

    My argument, broadly speaking, is that this is precisely what people in the US tend not to do when they talk about the veil in particular, and Islam in general—as in your argument above about how the fact that external pressure to don the veil removes, by definition, a woman ‘s freedom of choice. It’s not that there aren’t situations in which that argument is largely accurate; it’s that assuming this argument applies to all Muslim women at all times, to the entire body of Muslim law and tradition concerning the veil, and to women’s interior experience denies the existence of an entire “ecology,” as you put it, that lies outside both the experience and the ken of most people raised in the secular Christian culture the United States (myself included).

    One more thing: when you point out that part of a social worker’s job is to point out that, say, it is not “normal” for a kid’s mother to be shooting heroin, you fail to acknowledge all of the myriad cultural, etc. markers that both the social worker and the addict share. Too many people here in the States—and this was part of the point of my original post—presume to tell Muslim women what is “normal” (so to speak) completely unaware of the cultural gap in markers, etc. that exists between them.

  26. 28
    brian says:

    you fail to acknowledge all of the myriad cultural, etc. markers that both the social worker and the addict share

    For Crap’s sake, I also didn’t discuss the origins of human language. I can only kill so much time here. Arguing about what I DON’T say is kinda 3rd grade. “You didn’t say I couldn’t steal your bike! HAHA it’s mine now!”

    Your original position was

    I have rarely read, listened to, or been part of a discussion of veiling that does not assume the simplistic, single-minded template of the “imposed veil”

    and my position has been that even when a metaphorical gun isn’t aimed at their heads, it’s coerced by less obvious forces and thus “not Okay.”

    As an imperfect comparison, lets say a bunch of modern Cambodians decided it was part of their cultural heritage to wear the black pajamas and ankle chains that the victims of the Khmer Rouge wore in their final days weeks and months of slavery before being executed en mass. They’d be showing a very unhealthy attachment to oppressors within their own culture.

    Or substitute any members of a not-currently-oppressed group that decides to emulate their oppressed kinfolk in dress. It’s not at all healthy. It’s down right messed up. It’s stockholm syndrome but self inflicted. It’s like if FUBU started selling mammy and minstrel clothes.

    Any feminists want to weigh in here?

  27. Brian,

    Your original position was

    I have rarely read, listened to, or been part of a discussion of veiling that does not assume the simplistic, single-minded template of the “imposed veil”

    and my position has been that even when a metaphorical gun isn’t aimed at their heads, it’s coerced by less obvious forces and thus “not Okay.”

    And you still don’t get it, do you? My position has nothing to do with whether or not wearing the veil is okay or not okay. It is not my place to tell Muslim women what to do or not to do in that regard. My position has to do with the problematic nature of the very narrow lens through which people here, and you are providing a perfect example, insist on viewing the phenomenon of veiling.

    But I think, Brian, that we really don’t have much more to say to each other. You continue to engage with an argument that I am not trying to make.

    As I said, I will be posting more about this next week.

  28. 30
    Grace Annam says:

    brian:

    Any feminists want to weigh in here?

    Sure.

    Basic declarations: I do not veil. Having been raised in the United States, I feel no particular impulse to veil, and I’m certain that I don’t begin to understand what veiling is, in a cultural context other than mine. If I were visiting a place where women typically veil to such an extent that foreign women are expected to veil, then absent a compelling reason not to, I probably would. If, over time, I felt I had a better grasp on the matter, I would re-assess my choice. I would certainly feel that my choice was coerced (since I am not accustomed to veiling and would not choose to do so in my native environment), but as a trans woman living in the United States making decisions about clothing, makeup, where to go at what hour, how to approach a given workplace interaction, and so on, I’m accustomed to my choices being coerced; it’s the water I swim in. By the same token, I think that the choice of other women who have to choose whether to veil is also coerced, to a greater or lesser extent and in many ways depending on the circumstances. But we are all coerced, all the time. We’re coerced to pay taxes, to drive on one side of the center line, to “man up” or “be a lady”; myriad coercions, greater and lesser, happening all the time.

    As I understand your argument, you are saying that because of the existing social structure in countries where veiling is common, a woman cannot make a free choice to veil or not to veil; there is too much pressure on her, and any choice in such a context is coerced.

    Eliding many important fine points: There is a strand of Second Wave feminism, a strand somewhat toward the fringe, which holds that because of the existing social structure, men and women cannot be equals in a relationship, even if they try consciously and hard, and that therefore, in society as it exists now, any woman who enters into a relationship with a man is participating in her own subjugation, and that therefore women should not enter into partnered relationships with men.

    Your position reminds me of that.

    Richard’s position reminds me of people saying to feminists making that argument that, yeah, while there’s a lot of merit in the points you’re making, it’s not actually so simple that we can easily judge people for the choices they make, and especially not without listening to them (meaningfully, not just by being in the room while they make those funny flappy noises with their lips).

    Your position is arguably more ideologically pure… when viewed from a Western ideology. Your position might look different viewed from a different perspective. If you want to understand that phenomenon, you need, to the extent possible, to actually look at it from that other perspective.

    What you’re doing right now looks a lot like telling women what they should think. Which, you know, that’s also the water we live in, so it’s not exactly a shocker, but since you asked: Brian, you’re not the one experiencing the coercions surrounding the choice to veil or not to veil… you might consider listening with an open mind to what those women say about their experiences around that choice.

    Grace

  29. 32
    brian says:

    As I understand your argument, you are saying that because of the existing social structure in countries where veiling is common, a woman cannot make a free choice to veil or not to veil; there is too much pressure on her, and any choice in such a context is coerced.

    Pretty much. My philosophical bias is that we are all blank slates upon which the outside world writes a personality based on cultural, subcultural and familial influences. It takes significant introspection, critical thought and insight to shed ones self of all those influences.

    This is MORE of an issue when, as I said earlier, those influences are enforced with familial shunning, battery acid flung into the eyes or bludgeoning with giant rocks.

    You may notice that by my philosophical bias, having the same cultural scribblings on one’s blank slate isn’t required to read someone else’s slate. For that matter, I’d say no one sees their own culture as clearly as an outsider would, because personal experience actually gets in the way.

    The best way to understand what being on fire feels like may well be to be on fire yourself. But that won’t give you as clear a perspective as the person NOT on fire a few feet away.

    You’ve inspired me to fire up one of my abandoned blogs on philosophy. Thus this is my last word on resurrecting Aristotle from the Objectivists here.

  30. 33
    Grace Annam says:

    brian:

    Pretty much. My philosophical bias is that we are all blank slates upon which the outside world writes a personality based on cultural, subcultural and familial influences.

    To an extent, I agree with you. Otherwise we’d have a lot more spontaneous Christians in, say, predominantly Hindu cultures, and vice versa.

    To an extent, I disagree. If we all start with slates that blank, I think we’d have a lot more conformity, and almost no trans people at all. But trans people exist, and assert themselves, or kill themselves to escape the pressure. Where does that come from? I don’t think it can be attributed to cultural, subcultural and familial influences.

    It takes significant introspection, critical thought and insight to shed ones self of all those influences.

    Absolutely. It took me a lot of work to get past most of the transphobia my cultural, subcultural and familial influences wrote on my not-so-blank slate.

    This is MORE of an issue when, as I said earlier, those influences are enforced with familial shunning, battery acid flung into the eyes or bludgeoning with giant rocks.

    Yup.

    You may notice that by my philosophical bias, having the same cultural scribblings on one’s blank slate isn’t required to read someone else’s slate.

    You can never read someone else’s slate. Every other person’s slate is interpreted and translated for you by your own slate. This is always true. There is no such thing as objectivity in human perception.

    For that matter, I’d say no one sees their own culture as clearly as an outsider would, because personal experience actually gets in the way.

    I think that this view ignores the biases every human being brings to the table. I might find it more convincing if Westerners who can see, say, Chinese cultural problems so clearly were approaching Chinese commentators to ask them what is wrong in Western society. But we don’t see that, much, do we?

    Sure, as a Westerner you bring a different set of personal experiences. But you don’t bring no personal experiences. If you think you do, well, that’s exactly the sort of thinking which causes us to think that “man” and “black man” are appropriate pairs, like “lawyer” and “woman lawyer”. It’s what enabled white male commentators to experience outrage when Justice Sotomayor referred to herself as a Latina, which clearly meant that she was going to be biased, even though they themselves would describe themselves as white, which codes neutrally and therefore suggests no bias. It’s the privileging of the default over the exceptional. It’s the assumption which provided the foundation for pundits to claim that Judge Vaughn Walker should have recused himself from a case concerning homosexuality, and left that decision to a presumably heterosexual judge … because everyone knows that heterosexual people can be unbiased about matters of sexual orientation, and homosexual people can’t.

    The best way to understand what being on fire feels like may well be to be on fire yourself. But that won’t give you as clear a perspective as the person NOT on fire a few feet away.

    In this example, you shift the goalposts (though I don’t think you’re aware of it). In the first sentence, you concede that probably the person who is actually on fire probably has a better understanding of what it feel like than the observer. In the second sentence, you suggest that the observer can see other things, and you implicitly value those things more highly. Depending on the topic, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but if the topic is “What does it feel like to be on fire?”, they definitely aren’t.

    Grace

    P.S. I read some of this exchange to my wife, Lioness, who commented that she could envision circumstances when she would veil, here in the United States. Intrigued, I had to ask what they would be. She said that one of them would be, “If people, here in northern New England, were throwing rocks at people who were veiled, I would feel a moral imperative to veil.”

    And after a moment’s reflection, I found that I agreed.

  31. 34
    brian says:

    Grace, you actually read what I said, and for that I would buy you and Lioness a round at your favorite pub. Gracias.

    I would add that I chose FEEL and PERSPECTIVE very carefully. Subjective experience can’t be had 2nd hand, thus I will never know how anyone TRULY feels. But standing a few feet away I can pick up things about someone that they wouldn’t notice without years of therapy, or at least doing Buddhist meditation for a long time.

    So yes, Chinese commentators will pick up what’s wrong with American society damn well, by my theoretical bias and in my reading/viewing experience. And due to the American beer-goggles, whatever they spot as a flaw many Americans would consider to be awesome.

    Example. Think of anyone you know with daddy issues you can spot from across the bar. Then ask “Do THEY realize that they are a hot mess of paternal obsessions?” Nope, they don’t. 99 out of 100 anyways.

  32. 35
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Sure, as a Westerner you bring a different set of personal experiences.

    One particularly relevant set of experiences that we may bring is “experience with a method of analysis which attempts to recognize and correct for one’s own internal biases.”

    I am biased, of course. But like many people, I am also trained and educated in making the attempt to recognize that biases exist; look for information about my own biases; and try to correct for them. Although I certainly don’t end up at some purely objective ideal, I would argue that on average, people with this type of training and approach will end up less biased than people without this type of training and approach.

    (Though of course, that’s only one axis to consider. There are all sorts of philosophical approaches which would affect that.)

    “I might find it more convincing if Westerners who can see, say, Chinese cultural problems so clearly were approaching Chinese commentators to ask them what is wrong in Western society. But we don’t see that, much, do we?”

    A reasonable response might be: are the commentators equally focused on awareness of their self-biases? Because if not, those views are not equivalent and the demanded comparison is not a good one.

    It’s what enabled white male commentators to experience outrage when Justice Sotomayor referred to herself as a Latina, which clearly meant that she was going to be biased, even though they themselves would describe themselves as white, which codes neutrally and therefore suggests no bias.

    This is the same thing (and I think you’re reporting it wrong.) The issue was never really “does she have bias resulting from her history?” Because after all, everyone does. The issue was the signalling choice of what she said and how she talked about being a Wise Latina, which signaled (even if the interpretation of the signal was inaccurate) an approach which made folks uncomfortable. Judges usually don’t discuss their biases outside the context of explaining how they are going to avoid or mitigate them.

    ETA: In other words, the usual signaling is that “biases are bad and should be stomped down.” Sotomayor signaled the opposite approach, which was “my wise Latina woman biases are good; or if not they balance out the while male biases in the rest of the court.” It may be true, but it caused upset because of the approach.

  33. Brian:

    The best way to understand what being on fire feels like may well be to be on fire yourself. But that won’t give you as clear a perspective as the person NOT on fire a few feet away.

    The problem with this is that because what you see is a person on fire, you might very well mistake as being related to, caused by, consequences of the fire things that are in fact not related to the fire at all; and when the person who is/was on fire tells you that have it wrong, the thing to do is not tell the person who is/was on fire that he or she is wrong, that there is no way he or she could understand her or himself better than you do. The thing to do is step back and listen.

  34. 37
    brian says:

    ‘YYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH!!!!!” *SIZZLE SIZZLE*

    ;)

  35. 38
    Grace Annam says:

    brian:

    Grace, you actually read what I said, and for that I would buy you and Lioness a round at your favorite pub.

    Sure! :) Next time you’re in the north of the northeast, drop me a line.

    Subjective experience can’t be had 2nd hand, thus I will never know how anyone TRULY feels. But standing a few feet away I can pick up things about someone that they wouldn’t notice without years of therapy, or at least doing Buddhist meditation for a long time.

    Oh, certainly. You have a different perspective, which can be quite valuable, modified of course by circumstances, how it’s communicated, how it’s received, etc. You just need to be wary of the conceit that your perspective is the best perspective, the correct perspective. Sometimes it’s not.

    Your example of a person on fire is useful, in this: we can all agree that the observer can’t understand the level of pain. And, in fact, that’s true of ALL pain. You still have to ask about pain — there’s no way to measure it. Which is why it can be a useful analogy for gender identity, because there’s no way to measure that, either, and the only way to determine it is to ask a person.

    Which brings us back to perspective. Gender identity is possibly the strongest counterexample I can think of, to the assumption of observer superiority. A pre-transition trans woman knows perfectly well that people, looking at her, see a man. And she also knows that her appearance doesn’t show the truth. The observer has nothing to add, except the insistence that appearance is definitional… which is powerful, straightforward, and wrong.

    Not all cases are like that, as you point out. “Dude, you have spinach in your teeth,” is a situation where the observer has better information than the dude with spinach in his teeth. “Hey, Peter, I can see your house from here,” … Jesus had a higher vantage point. And so on.

    Example. Think of anyone you know with daddy issues you can spot from across the bar. Then ask “Do THEY realize that they are a hot mess of paternal obsessions?” Nope, they don’t. 99 out of 100 anyways.

    Sure. As you might expect, I run into people with a lot of issues, in my line of work, and often also actively in crisis. The issue often seems immediately obvious, but I’ve learned not to place too much weight on that initial assessment. Sometimes we’re able to have an extended conversation (waiting for the psych doc, or during a prisoner transport to jail), and I learn more, and what they’re doing starts to seem more complex, and more understandable, and less easy to fix with a simple solution.

    Possibly a good example and one where my own frustration and outrage probably parallels your own at the thought of women being coerced to veil: domestic abuse victims often return to their abusers, or communicate with them in spite of a restraining order. When I was new to the job, I shook my head in wonder. Now I understand it a lot better. I don’t usually agree with the choice, but I understand it. I can make an argument for it, even if I still don’t think that argument outweighs the argument against.

    Grace

  36. 39
    Lioness Annam says:

    Brian, thank you! Meet you at Callahan’s.

  37. 40
    Grace Annam says:

    gin-and-whisky:

    The issue was the signalling choice of what she said and how she talked about being a Wise Latina, which signaled (even if the interpretation of the signal was inaccurate) an approach which made folks uncomfortable. Judges usually don’t discuss their biases outside the context of explaining how they are going to avoid or mitigate them.

    In my limited experience, judges generally don’t think they have biases, or that if they do, they have mitigated them beyond relevancy. They’re wrong; we all have biases, and that’s why supreme courts have multiple justices, in an effort to mitigate biases through averaging. Justice Sotomayor was acknowledging that all people bring their biases to the table, and that she was bringing hers to the table. The people who threw up their hands about it were simply maintaining the traditional posture, that it is possible to be unbiased, and that by declaring something of her own bias, Justice Sotomayor was conceding that she, herself, had not achieved nirvana … excuse me, had not achieved unbiasedness.

    But of course, we all have biases. Which is why diversity is important all positions of power, and particularly in the monopoly of government.

    Grace

  38. 41
    Rash92 says:

    Obviously not all women who wear the veil want to go out without a veil and are forced to by their family/government/society, because their family/government/society believes in islam and the parts of islam that call for the veil. Although a lot of women ARE forced to when they don’t want to.

    Some women, get this right, some women ALSO believe in islam and the parts of islam that call for the veil, and wear it because of that. And would do so even if no one around them believed in islam or the parts of islam that call for the veil.

    If you have people forcing others to do X because they thing X is the right thing to do, you’re gonna get people who do X by themselves without being forced because they ALSO think X is the right thing to do.

    There’s a tendancy by some people to decide ‘X is bad for women, women would never do X by themselves, it must be the non women around them who are making them do X’.

    Like being pro-life. There are plenty of women who believe that abortion is murder and are pro life, they’re not pro life because the men around them are pro-life and have brainwashed them. the same things that convince men that abortion is murder convince women that abortion is murder. The same things that convince men that obeying islam and the parts of islam concerning the veil is a good idea can convince women. If you believe god said to do it, and you believe in god, you’ll do it.

    Of course, some arguments may convince men and women in different ratios, but still.

    Of course not all women are coerced by those around them to do it, all you need to prove that is the fact that there are single women who live alone in western countries who do it. But as brian said, concrete coersion is not the only thing that affects how ‘free’ your choices are.

    I don’t think there are many people who think the ONLY reason women wear veils is direct coersion/ pressure to wear it, but it is still a reason that happens. and i don’t think it’s wrong to focus on that.