The Double Standard

[ishtat]

I'll show my Marxist roots here, but I think it's economic. Throughout most of history, men held the money and women handled the production of heirs. A man who had sex with whomever he liked wasn't really a financial threat; until it became possible to test the DNA of a child, the path of denial generally worked. Women who had sex outside of marriage (in the sense of a social/financial institution) were a threat because they could divert resources to inappropriate targets. The man could end up investing money and resources in raising someone else's children. Depending on the society, even worse could be in store; in England, for instance, as late as the 1800's, an entailed estate could legally be withheld from a man's son and end up with a distant relative if substantial doubt were raised as to his wife's constancy (and hence the parentage of the heir).

The chief way to prevent that from happening, of course, was to prevent the woman from having sex with anyone else, and that led to a host of charming institutions the world over, which it be physical confinement, genital mutilation, covering women with sacks, or simply labelling any woman who displayed sexual desire for any man as a slut. If you go back just a few hundred years, any sexual desire, even for the woman's lawful spouse, is rather suspect. I think it's Swift who calls a woman who runs off with (and marries) a man she feels a passion for "half wife, half whore," and certainly Gulliver is repulsed by the thought of man and wife having sex while the wife is pregnant. After all, they've already achieved the only decent goal.

Shanglan

Interesting theory but how would you apply it to countries like France especially, also, Spain and Italy where women have nearly always controlled family finances?

Another problem is that similar attitudes seem to prevail in pre -money societies though I suppose you could argue that there can be other methods of accounting prestige etc.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Interesting theory but how would you apply it to countries like France especially, also, Spain and Italy where women have nearly always controlled family finances?

Another problem is that similar attitudes seem to prevail in pre -money societies though I suppose you could argue that there can be other methods of accounting prestige etc.

I think I'd discuss what "controlling family finances" entails. In many cultures it's quite common for women to handle domestic responsibilities like buying the food and paying the rent, but then it's also quite common for them to have to badger that money out of the man before he spends it all at the pub. Whether women control how the money is spent within the family or not, so long as the male is the predominant source of that money (or resources, if you like, in a pre-monetary society), he has a strong interest in making sure that it's being spent on his own offspring.

 

[ishtat]

!

I think that might be more to do with "the sulphurous pit" than with reasons for sex.

That is to say:

Down from the waist they are centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness,
There is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench,
consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!

Sex and its distraction being wielded by the female that should be subordinate but holds a magical power over men and thus (in a biblical stylee) holding man back from achieving angelhood.

(Can someone start a critical appreciation thread for Lit work?)

But he was a mad old man wandering around in a storm!!

 

[3113]

Another problem is that similar attitudes seem to prevail in pre -money societies though I suppose you could argue that there can be other methods of accounting prestige etc.

There are always things that a dad wants to hand down to his on whether it's a bow-and-arrows, a tent, a herd of sheep, a plot of land...or, as you say, a position of prestige like tribal leader. Though, to be fair, in most pre-money societies, it wasn't all that common to pass on such things from father-to-son. It often came down to whoever could take and hold such positions, land, etc.

Of course, none of this counts for "non-slut" societies. In some native-American tribes women did, indeed, have the goods and could divorce men by just packing up their tents. They could then take up with another guy, no stigma attached. One society where the women really *do* handle all the finances (women run the businesses and men get allowances) is among the few that practices polyandry with women having more than one husband instead of vice versa.

 

[BlackShanglan]

There are always things that a dad wants to hand down to his on whether it's a bow-and-arrows, a tent, a herd of sheep, a plot of land...or, as you say, a position of prestige like tribal leader. Though, to be fair, in most pre-money societies, it wasn't all that common to pass on such things from father-to-son. It often came down to whoever could take and hold such positions, land, etc.

Even when there are no tangible portables to hand down to one's family, there are the resources expended in raising it. I think that those are part of the equation as well.

 

[christabelll]

THe Book of the Goddess ( I forget the dang author) but it was a woman - Some greek sounding name, published oh - 14 years ago or so - Incredible reference to origins and roots of Goddess worship, symbols, sculpture and carvings some dating back to pre neolithic time periods...

An excellent cross over book, that while it is recommended for bible studies, is called The Red Tent... Diamant something or other the author...I was impressed with how she handled the change over from polytheism to monotheism and the loss of the feminine power culture as it happened. In this book scarlet (henna) was used to paint the hands and feet of girls who were having their first period. Again = the sexual maturity signal.

There are several books on the Minoans also available... the last truly recorded history of a goddess based society. They were famous for their barebreasts and snake handling.

I have read and forgotten more than I can think of... but... if you read back through history - pre-christian history at that - there are hundreds of references to red painted women who were raised or taught specifically to use their bodies for pleasure to keep men from raping through out society. It was encouraged of the boys and men to go to these women... to learn and to ease themselves until they were ready to take mate...
There were references within the bible itself to the Scarlet Women of Jerusalem.
Before they were bastardized and turned into something wicked or evil... If I am not mistaken, Mary Magdelene was one such woman.

And one of the best referents to this is the un-anglicized books on the Kama Sutra and Hindi practices before the advent of "western" religions.

I hope it helps - or at least points you in the direction you are looking for.

 

[Varian P]

THe Book of the Goddess ( I forget the dang author) but it was a woman - Some greek sounding name, published oh - 14 years ago or so - Incredible reference to origins and roots of Goddess worship, symbols, sculpture and carvings some dating back to pre neolithic time periods...

An excellent cross over book, that while it is recommended for bible studies, is called The Red Tent... Diamant something or other the author...I was impressed with how she handled the change over from polytheism to monotheism and the loss of the feminine power culture as it happened. In this book scarlet (henna) was used to paint the hands and feet of girls who were having their first period. Again = the sexual maturity signal.

There are several books on the Minoans also available... the last truly recorded history of a goddess based society. They were famous for their barebreasts and snake handling.

I have read and forgotten more than I can think of... but... if you read back through history - pre-christian history at that - there are hundreds of references to red painted women who were raised or taught specifically to use their bodies for pleasure to keep men from raping through out society. It was encouraged of the boys and men to go to these women... to learn and to ease themselves until they were ready to take mate...
There were references within the bible itself to the Scarlet Women of Jerusalem.
Before they were bastardized and turned into something wicked or evil... If I am not mistaken, Mary Magdelene was one such woman.

And one of the best referents to this is the un-anglicized books on the Kama Sutra and Hindi practices before the advent of "western" religions.

I hope it helps - or at least points you in the direction you are looking for.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I feel a bit silly, being utterly unaware of all of this. It's dead perfect as something for a character of mine to refer to, as it's essentially that character's rationale for some rather extraordinary actions. This has rekindled my enthusiasm, and it needed rekindling!

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Did you all see that survey last week showing that men really do have more sex partners than women over their lives? What struck me was a fact not mentioned in the article, which is that a few women must have sex with a whole lot of men to make those numbers balance.

To Shang's "Marxist" allusion - I think it's older than modern industrial systems. I mean, like cave man era stuff - your thing about not "investing" scarce resources in another man's spawn, that is. At least it's as old as agriculture - 7,000 to 10,000 years. But it's not universal, because there are matrilinear societies of various sorts. As with most things human, the possible variations are wide and wonderful.

~~~~~

A girl I used to work with had a refrain: "Men are all pigs and women are all sluts."

 

[ishtat]

THe Book of the Goddess ( I forget the dang author) but it was a woman - Some greek sounding name, published oh - 14 years ago or so - Incredible reference to origins and roots of Goddess worship, symbols, sculpture and carvings some dating back to pre neolithic time periods...

r.

Marija Gimbutas - An American academic (UCLA I think) who was of Lithuanian origins. I think she did some work with Joseph Campbell as well.

 

[ishtat]

!

years. But it's not universal, because there are matrilinear societies of various sorts. As with most things human, the possible variations are wide and wonderful.

~~~~~

."

Yes, but it's important to remember that matrilinear societies are not necessarily matriarchal - eg. the ancient Israelites

 

[christabelll]

Fantastic!
Thank you! That is indeed the author...
Its been so long since I looked at it that it would not pull up in my brain LOL...

Varian
I glad it helped inspire you to continue...
I love it when that happens.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

THe Book of the Goddess ( I forget the dang author) but it was a woman - Some greek sounding name, published oh - 14 years ago or so - Incredible reference to origins and roots of Goddess worship, symbols, sculpture and carvings some dating back to pre neolithic time periods...

An excellent cross over book, that while it is recommended for bible studies, is called The Red Tent... Diamant something or other the author...I was impressed with how she handled the change over from polytheism to monotheism and the loss of the feminine power culture as it happened. In this book scarlet (henna) was used to paint the hands and feet of girls who were having their first period. Again = the sexual maturity signal.

There are several books on the Minoans also available... the last truly recorded history of a goddess based society. They were famous for their barebreasts and snake handling.

I have read and forgotten more than I can think of... but... if you read back through history - pre-christian history at that - there are hundreds of references to red painted women who were raised or taught specifically to use their bodies for pleasure to keep men from raping through out society. It was encouraged of the boys and men to go to these women... to learn and to ease themselves until they were ready to take mate...
There were references within the bible itself to the Scarlet Women of Jerusalem.
Before they were bastardized and turned into something wicked or evil... If I am not mistaken, Mary Magdelene was one such woman.

And one of the best referents to this is the un-anglicized books on the Kama Sutra and Hindi practices before the advent of "western" religions.

I hope it helps - or at least points you in the direction you are looking for.

I'd wonder if you could direct me to this reference on the Minoans being a goddess-based society. A girl I know is active in Minoan research and from what she says, the identity of the Minoan pantheon is quite an archaeological puzzle. There are strong masculine elements in their religion - the bull-vaulting, the ubiquity of the double-headed axe, and sun-worship - and their writing's never been deciphered.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this, but the modern cult of the goddess has a tendency to take an overly simplistic view of religious history and look back to a golden age of goddess worship that the archaeological evidence often doesn't really support. The result is often more political than historical, a kind of reverse religious sexism: goddess=always good, god=always bad.

I'm thinking for example of the examples of goddess worship found at Catal Huyuk, a very early neolithic site found in southern Turkey dating from the dawn of agriculture, where the signs of the goddess include the disturbing images of breasts with the beaks of predatory birds inserted in place of nipples. It's not sure just what these bas-reliefs (they're found in the walls of houses) are trying to tell us, but they paint a much different image of the local goddess than the benign mother-figure we usually associate with agricultural communities. They almost suggest the kind of bloody crop demons more commonly seen in meso-American Corn Goddesses who demand the blood of sacrifices.

 

[christabelll]

I never said that Goddess worship was benign. In fact in some places it was downright rapacious.
A lot of the sacrificial aspects you reference are common of the era - and because blood is the most powerful "symbol" within any religion - it was used quite extensively from offering a girls first moon blood to the garden - to full out sacrifice of animals and/or humans. And early judaism, hinduism, moslem - all made blood sacrifice to their god(ess)'s. Even in Christianity the symbols of flesh and blood are used - as the bread and the wine - being transmuted - into flesh and blood (this is my body you eat - this is my blood you drink)
I also never said that Gods did not exist - in juxtaposition to the Goddess.
The pantheons were quite extensive - not necessarily mutually exclusive - In the far past the DUALITY of Energy - masculine and feminine was revered - and it showed in the array of gods and goddesses. It seems that only in hindi/buddhist/zen/tao "religions" is the duality still recognized and revered.
The Minoans, in my own studies were Matriarchical and Goddess based, but did not exclude the "male" pantheon. I am trying to remember the reference I read or saw on them - perhaps it was a NOVA program that had shivers running all up and down me... (past life perhaps?).
The Goddess was also seen as the Giver and Taker of Life -
They also had battle scalds - Goddesses of War (battle axes and bows the most common symbol for them)
Mens were very similar - but they covered the Male aspects of the Energy - And vice versa ( gods its too early for semantic discussions)
Depending on the area - Goddesses were sometimes represented by full breasted Vulture headed creatures - with the delta Represented by chevrons or signs for water, nestled between wide hips.
Its been about 10 years since I followed any of the new research and theories being done in the isles. And thats really cool - I hadn't heard that about finding vulture tipped breasts - but it makes sense to me - in that the goddess was the alpha -omega of life. Meaning they brought life into the world and eased or took life out of it. (still do for the most part)
We - meaning modern society- tend to romanticize ancient religions and societies...And I am guilty of it myself - however I do try to base my fantasies on reality. A lot of what I brought into these posts is paraphrased from studies I made literally ten plus years ago - they stuck with me - and any inaccuracies are my own. I would personally love to be on one of those digs... But lets face it - we will never know what it was truly like - and what they truly beleived... We can only speculate -
(kind of like that STNG episode where Deanna Troi is educating Picard on language and nuance - "poad" pointing to a cup - He says oh thats easy - cup. She said really - maybe I said, tea or wine or hot, or cold or poison...you get my point...)

The fact is - with presentism - we cannot have an accurate picture of the past - And when the time machines get invented I am going to be one of the first in line!

I started out merely pointing out that in pre - western religions cultures- a majority of cultures were goddess based (meaning the feminin principle had precedence of masculine)- and women painted their palms and feet red to tell of their sexual maturity and/or willingness to lie with a man - for the greater good of their cultures...And now that symbology is used to deningrate and categorize women as sluts and or whores...

We all know what a deprived man can do - >weg<

 

[cloudy]

If I am not mistaken, Mary Magdelene was one such woman.

One minor quibble: no, she wasn't.

This has been taught in churches for centuries, when, in fact, it never says that she's a prostitute in the bible. There is a prostitute discussed in the same chapter where Jesus meets Mary, but they're not the same person.

An early pope - Leo, I think - was the first to paint her this way, and it's just stuck.

3113 has a good point. In matriarchal societies, women held all the power at home. Even in patriarchal ones, women still reigned supreme at home. Even now, this still holds true. I know that on the reserve where I lived, if the husband worked and the wife didn't, he brought his paycheck home and handed it to his wife. It's just standard for the culture, and men that didn't do that were looked down upon - and the Ojibway are patriarchal.

 

[Recidiva]

Interesting in that a similar thread was just started recently by someone who said women get a pass when they have an affair, because they do it for emotional reasons, whereas the male gets bashed for only doing it for physical gratification.

Depends on which evidence you're weighing, I suppose.

I think the attitudes are so diverse it's hard to say there's a majority in any camp. Perception is key.

 

[christabelll]

One minor quibble: no, she wasn't.

This has been taught in churches for centuries, when, in fact, it never says that she's a prostitute in the bible. There is a prostitute discussed in the same chapter where Jesus meets Mary, but they're not the same person.

An early pope - Leo, I think - was the first to paint her this way, and it's just stuck.

3113 has a good point. In matriarchal societies, women held all the power at home. Even in patriarchal ones, women still reigned supreme at home. Even now, this still holds true. I know that on the reserve where I lived, if the husband worked and the wife didn't, he brought his paycheck home and handed it to his wife. It's just standard for the culture, and men that didn't do that were looked down upon - and the Ojibway are patriarchal.

I never said she was a prostitute I believe she was a Scarlet Woman in the truest sense of the word - (to me anyway) - she Honored her femininity - the goddess - and had no qualms about taking a man to bed... She was painted as a whore in order to devalue her - to the point of making her something completely other than she truly was. But thats a whole OTHER subject LOL....
ANd you are right - women were painted as evil creatures by the "peter" built christian society. Still are for that matter -
THere were several splinter groups in early christianity that bore little to none of the female stigma that Peter had put into the church.
Among them was a group in Southern Europe (black madonna area) called the abortionists - they practiced birth control and pleasure based religion (I wish I could find more material on them) - The "church" had them slaughtered, root stem and seed. As the church has done to most of the cultures it has encountered over the centuries - can't incorporate them - kill them all.

That is one of the reasons I refuse to follow the "church" in any way shape or form.

 

[Pure]

stella My guess is that women censure promiscuous women far more than men do.

P well, yes, in zorba the greek women lynch a woman.

however, up in Vancouver, a fellow killed 30 or more prostitutes* over the years, undetected. the police did not care.

it might be mentioned that the promiscous or pro women who run afoul of the law are arrested, tried, and sentenced by males. if a pro does jail time, it was a man who put here there, by the odds.

further, if you look a whom men marry, their standards are in evidence; the literal and figurative {=promiscuous} hos do not do well.

women, of course, have a status system. i imagine that almost no woman here has been acquainted with a prostitute, even to the extent of having a coffee. the 'good' women hang together, as do the 'bad.' so the 'good' don't have hostile or censorious feelings so much as they treat the 'bad' as nonexistent.





*i know prostitute does not equal promiscous, but both sorts have many partners.

 

[BlackShanglan]

To Shang's "Marxist" allusion - I think it's older than modern industrial systems. I mean, like cave man era stuff - your thing about not "investing" scarce resources in another man's spawn, that is. At least it's as old as agriculture - 7,000 to 10,000 years. But it's not universal, because there are matrilinear societies of various sorts. As with most things human, the possible variations are wide and wonderful.

Yes, I think that that is the interesting bit. You can take similar circumstances and economic imperatives and come up with quite different ways of dealing with issues. Many Celtic tribes, for instance, also reckoned descent matrilinearally, one assumes with the sensible logic that the mother was the parent you could be really certain of. Some also had provisions for divorce, but they showed their economic roots; if a woman and a man divorced, she could be entitled to half of their goods, but only if she'd brought certain goods with her into the marriage. Really a rather fair system of management.

In the West, we've seen the emphasis on female chastity and virginity decline as the emphasis on producing large families and on producing heirs to hand materials goods down to has declined and as the ability of women to earn a living wage has increased. And to be clear, in the laboring classes - the vast majority of the population - attitudes had long been quite different anyway. We now tend to look on chastity and sexual exclusivity as personal choices best negotiated or achieved as part of a relationship between equals both attempting to meet personal emotional needs.

In other parts of the world, things are still a good deal more ruthlessly pragmatic, as in Saudi Arabia where women cannot drive cars or leave home without being cloaked head to toe and accompanied by a male relative. I'm curious to see how much that impulse will remain economic/religious and how much it will become reinforced and raised up as a social/political symbol of resistence to the West. It's a grim prospect for the women who live there - particularly given the carefully thought-out rule that women may also not leave the country unless accompanied by a consenting male relation.

Shanglan

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

. . . In other parts of the world, things are still a good deal more ruthlessly pragmatic, as in Saudi Arabia where women cannot drive cars or leave home without being cloaked head to toe and accompanied by a male relative. I'm curious to see how much that impulse will remain economic/religious and how much it will become reinforced and raised up as a social/political symbol of resistence to the West.

Interesting you should mention that.
from Bret Stephens in today's WSJ, on then-House of Commons leader Jack Straw setting off a furor in Britain by suggesting there was something amiss with the growing trend among Muslim women there to wear the face-covering, head-to-toe black garments commonly known as the niqab:

Seen from a narrow angle, it's easy to tie oneself in knots debating the correct attitude of Western societies toward the veil. The liberal says: People generally ought to be entitled to dress as they choose. The liberal also says: Veiling the female face isn't merely an expression of sexual modesty but an obliteration of a woman's public identity and hence a violation (even if self-imposed) of her political rights. The conservative says: If religious freedom is a bedrock Western value, then the rights accorded to the Amish or Hasidic Jews to dress as they do must also extend to ultraconservative Muslims. The conservative also says: Liberal societies cannot allow illiberal and separatist practices to flourish under the banner of multiculturalism, particularly if those practices are enforced by bullying and violence.

Yet all this misses the fundamentally tactical element of niqab. "It's about enforcing separation," notes a former senior French Interior Ministry official who helped draft his country's 2004 ban on religious headgear in public schools. "It is best understood as an intra-Muslim show of strength, a way to intimidate their own women, a way to intimidate the infidels, a way to make themselves more visible, a way to make sure no one strays from their world vision."

Sorry for the slight threadjack, but perhaps it's not, actually.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Mmmm. I agree that most strictures that are highly visible are ultimately tactical in nature, and that those tactics have both internal ramifications within the practicing group and external ramifications within society as a whole. But then, all sorts of social signs and markers have that ability, whether it be a doctor's white coat, a clergyman's collar, or a submissive fetishist's collar.

I think your source is right in the sense that the wearing of such garb does have those ramifications, but I'm not sure I agree with the implication that that is the "ultimate," key, or final interpretation of them. I don't think it's an answer to the well-identified conflicts that the author mentions before making that point; I think it's more like one more complication to a thorny problem. While we're busy focusing on the tactical significance of dress, I'm concerned that we might not be giving enough attention to the broader question of why these groups of people feel the need to identify themselves visually and culturally. There was a fair bit of that in the US on the road to greater social acceptance of and prospects for African Americans; sometimes it can lead to good things. I think that the real question here is where the impulse comes from, what elements of it might be responses to legitimate grievances, and what parts might need to be resisted.

Shanglan

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Mmmm. I agree that most strictures that are highly visible are ultimately tactical in nature, and that those tactics have both internal ramifications within the practicing group and external ramifications within society as a whole. But then, all sorts of social signs and markers have that ability, whether it be a doctor's white coat, a clergyman's collar, or a submissive fetishist's collar.

I think your source is right in the sense that the wearing of such garb does have those ramifications, but I'm not sure I agree with the implication that that is the "ultimate," key, or final interpretation of them. I don't think it's an answer to the well-identified conflicts that the author mentions before making that point; I think it's more like one more complication to a thorny problem. While we're busy focusing on the tactical significance of dress, I'm concerned that we might not be giving enough attention to the broader question of why these groups of people feel the need to identify themselves visually and culturally. There was a fair bit of that in the US on the road to greater social acceptance of and prospects for African Americans; sometimes it can lead to good things. I think that the real question here is where the impulse comes from, what elements of it might be responses to legitimate grievances, and what parts might need to be resisted.

Shanglan

Good points. I'm very suspicious in this instance, and my presumption is that the "tactical" use suggested is in fact the correct interpretation. But I'm open to rebuttal in that.

 

[christabelll]

Hmmm I wonder where that statement leaves me???


I have had breakfast with "whores" lunch with "dancers" and dinner with Actuely oriented BDSM women. Even a few men...
BUt I have also done the same with Church Going Sluts, Pew Warming Whores and Bible thumping promiscuous preeners....

I guess I have been lucky in that I can seem to travel in the high falutin and scum sucking levels of society and just about everywhere in between.

The common theme is this - I was called a whore... there fore I became a whore
I was called a slut - so I became one
Or another - NO matter what I did or how much school I had the only I could feed myself and/or my children was to get paid to spread my legs.

As long as you ain't messing with My mate - I could care less...

ANd the self righteous do no sin sinners commit some of worst crimes ever perpetrative on a human in the name of christ. They can be the cruelest most judgemental haters of anything except cold stone that has ever been spawned.

THere are huge double and triple standards out there...

Every Woman wants the bad boy
Every Man wants the whore/slut

BUt none of them are worthy material for being a mate -

I say HORSE PUCKEY lolol


ANyway - my point is this - we are all to eager to slap a label on someone -
because they don't meet with some force fed doctrine that was created to control the masses in the first place.

What I do in my bed/room is my business - no one elses.

And as I said before
and it harm none? NO FOUL!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Good points. I'm very suspicious in this instance, and my presumption is that the "tactical" use suggested is in fact the correct interpretation. But I'm open to rebuttal in that.

I offer not so much a rebuttal of the interpretation as a different suggestion about methodology. I'd much rather have a straight answer myself, of course, and I realize that the failure of a position such as mine to give one is the chief point on which people of other persuasions typically attack it. But wanting a straight anwer and there being a straight answer available to be had are not the same thing, and so I settle for this: believing that there is such a large population of Muslims throughout the world, and that there are so many diverse teachings amongst them, and they are composed largely of people (like all of us) so variously driven by self-interest, dogma, traditional, family habits, and whatever they had for breakfast, that there is unlikey to be any cohesive answer to the question "what does the veil (or other garb) mean?"

I doubt that it means the same thing to all Muslims; I find it difficult not to believe that, like anyone else, they're probably full of examples of families in which hardly anyone in it agrees with anyone else on the topic, let alone on being monolithic at a broader cultural level. With that in mind, I think it's better to focus on the actual beliefs that may or may not be problematic than on the veil which can represent so many things to so many people that resisting the veil itself is a sure way to upset nearly everyone.

If we're concerned that the veil is a sign of an increasingly militant and seperatist cultural identity, I think we're better off working to build bridges, work on positive models of cultural exchange, and promote religious and cultural toleration by and of all parties involved rather than attacking the veil that might or might not be a symbol of resistence to those goals. Even it if is such a symbol for some people, removing the symbol won't remove the issue and indeed is likely to inflame it and give them something to rally others around. Worse, if it's not such a symbol to start with, trying to remove it from people who rely upon it for innocent purposes could create the problem we're trying to solve.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I offer not so much a rebuttal of the interpretation as a different suggestion about methodology. I'd much rather have a straight answer myself, of course, and I realize that the failure of a position such as mine to give one is the chief point on which people of other persuasions typically attack it. But wanting a straight anwer and there being a straight answer available to be had are not the same thing, and so I settle for this: believing that there is such a large population of Muslims throughout the world, and that there are so many diverse teachings amongst them, and they are composed largely of people (like all of us) so variously driven by self-interest, dogma, traditional, family habits, and whatever they had for breakfast, that there is unlikey to be any cohesive answer to the question "what does the veil (or other garb) mean?"

I doubt that it means the same thing to all Muslims; I find it difficult not to believe that, like anyone else, they're probably full of examples of families in which hardly anyone in it agrees with anyone else on the topic, let alone on being monolithic at a broader cultural level. With that in mind, I think it's better to focus on the actual beliefs that may or may not be problematic than on the veil which can represent so many things to so many people that resisting the veil itself is a sure way to upset nearly everyone.

If we're concerned that the veil is a sign of an increasingly militant and seperatist cultural identity, I think we're better off working to build bridges, work on positive models of cultural exchange, and promote religious and cultural toleration by and of all parties involved rather than attacking the veil that might or might not be a symbol of resistence to those goals. Even it if is such a symbol for some people, removing the symbol won't remove the issue and indeed is likely to inflame it and give them something to rally others around. Worse, if it's not such a symbol to start with, trying to remove it from people who rely upon it for innocent purposes could create the problem we're trying to solve.

I wasn't really looking to you (or anyone here) to provide that rebuttal - I think it would have to come from the actual community the article I cited was about, which is a particular segment of the Islamic community in Britain. That segment has hardly been coy about its loyalties and beliefs - see this post: http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=22872125&postcount=102 Whether those views are the "mainstream" in the Islamic world, sadly they are not at all rare or unusual.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I wasn't really looking to you (or anyone here) to provide that rebuttal - I think it would have to come from the actual community the article I cited was about, which is a particular segment of the Islamic community in Britain. That segment has hardly been coy about its loyalties and beliefs - see this post: http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=22872125&postcount=102 Whether those views are the "mainstream" in the Islamic world, sadly they are not at all rare or unusual.

Mmmm. I see what you're saying, but then that still essentially seems to make your position "Prove to me that the veil is harmless and I won't resent it." I'm saying that I think that from our position, there are better ways to approach the issue.