Dilemma of French Muslims

[Antonio the Sixth]

France has no doubt made many mistakes in attempting to enforce secularism in recent years. The niqab ban was pretty stupid and contributed to alienating a good number of Muslims. I'm more conflicted on the 2004 law on religious signs at school (because come on, public school is not the place to express your religious beliefs) but in practice its enforcement had to be problematic.

The core of the issue, of course, is the fact that many politicians use secularism as a pretense to stigmatize Muslims and stir up hatred against them. And of course these politicians are the same who criticize secularism when it goes against their ultra-Catholic buddies... So the problem isn't really with secularism as much as it is with xenophobia.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The expression of anticlericalism that is tolerated -- state-sanctioned

lolno. Wake up dude, we're not in 1905 anymore. Actually, the French State is waaay nicer toward the Catholic Church than it should be, and the discourse of right-wing politicians has increasingly religious undertones (see Sarkozy's Lateran speech in 2007).

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No, that's not how it works. You have it completely backwards. While it is true that you can construct a stereotype out of the religion (isn't all caricature based on stereotyping anyway?) you cannot use stereotypes to stigmatize all the followers of a religion without risking a trial for hate crime. On the contrary, you absolutely can satirize Islamist leaders or generic Islamists (ie, proponents of a certain political ideology). In fact, probably about two thirds of Charlie Hebdo's supposed "caricatures on Islam" were actually caricatures of radical islamist figures or ideas. You have to get better information if you really wish to formulate some grand theory on French policy.

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Yeah, but what do you want to do? Ban legitimate criticism of religion on the pretext that it might be used as a code-word for racism?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Madeleine, I'm generally in agreement with your position, but you lost me with this:

The second thing to note is that the reason why many women choose to do so--this is something that Muslim women I know have told me personally--is feminist, or at least proto-feminist since this rationale wasn't originally developed in cultures in which feminism was conceptually present, in that it's concerned with averting or deflecting the male gaze (whether this is the effect that it has is a separate question). This isn't a form of feminism for which I expect the sex-positive liberal feminists of Atlas Forum to have much sympathy, but it is a feminist idea nonetheless.

As a non-"sex-positive" feminist, I have just say that I honestly can't believe you're actually making that argument. Your knowledge of feminist theory probably surpasses mine, so please enlighten me if there's something I'm missing, but right now I'm really confused.

Women adopting a certain clothing code in order to avoid the male gaze is the exact opposite of a feminist behavior - it is a way of ratifying patriarchal oppression as the "normal" order of things. Rather than actively combating it, it implies that women should adapt to it and limit the range of their possible choices in order to try and avoid its nastiest consequences. It's the exact same logic that operates when a woman fears that if she dresses too provocatively, she will get raped. Feminism is about eradicating the beliefs and behaviors that sustain patriarchy, not about changing women's behavior to adapt to it.

Note that I'm not arguing that this necessarily a bad thing (you do have to acknowledge reality even if it's unpleasant and you wish to change it). But calling it a form of feminism honestly strikes me as an insult to feminist thought.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I understand the point you're trying to make, and I do agree that in some situations adopting a non-revealing clothing might indeed objectively improve the position of women and constitute a deliberate assault on male entitlement. I think that the issue is that my definition of feminism might be slightly more theoretically specific. In my view, a "feminist act" refers to an act that either constitutes a symbolic challenge to patriarchy (which implies active rejection of the patriarchal system rather than merely coping with it) or actively contributes to undermine patriarchy's material or ideological foundations. The act of wearing a hijab to avoid the male gaze strikes me, if not actively pro-patriarchal (for the reasons that you have yourself outlined), at best neutral. Which, again, doesn't mean that it cannot represent an improvement on women's conditions in some circumstances. Sometimes reconciling theory and practice is a really complex exercise.

But regardless, I do agree with your general point on religious expression. While I would welcome a world where burqas and niqabs didn't exist and hijabs were nothing more than a piece of clothing, I highly doubt that we can advance toward such a world by banning the former, and obviously not by banning the latter.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In my view, a "feminist act" refers to an act that either constitutes a symbolic challenge to patriarchy (which implies active rejection of the patriarchal system rather than merely coping with it) or actively contributes to undermine patriarchy's material or ideological foundations.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the notion that the general principle of using sartorial choices to offend male sensibilities or male entitlement and to deflect or confuse the male gaze can, in fact, constitute just such a symbolic challenge. I'm just not sure that this is in fact a case of that for most people. (I know anecdotally that for at least a few women it is but the plural of anecdote is not et cetera.)

That's an idea I personally have a hard time to swallow, considering my understanding of how patriarchy works. In my understanding, the objectification of women goes hand in hand with the obsession with "modesty", they are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, there's the idea that women are sexual commodity for men to use, and on the opposite side, the idea that women should stay chaste and preserve themselves from men. I think that is roughly what is meant with the "madonna/whore complex". The genius of patriarchy, so to speak, is that it invented both a thesis and an antithesis, that it has framed the debate in such a way that i can draw strength from both sides of it. Adhering to one side of it to counter the other one strikes me as a futile attempt, at least at the symbolic and ideological level (again, I'm not claiming that it cannot work in certain practical situations).

[Antonio the Sixth]

In my view, a "feminist act" refers to an act that either constitutes a symbolic challenge to patriarchy (which implies active rejection of the patriarchal system rather than merely coping with it) or actively contributes to undermine patriarchy's material or ideological foundations.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the notion that the general principle of using sartorial choices to offend male sensibilities or male entitlement and to deflect or confuse the male gaze can, in fact, constitute just such a symbolic challenge. I'm just not sure that this is in fact a case of that for most people. (I know anecdotally that for at least a few women it is but the plural of anecdote is not et cetera.)

That's an idea I personally have a hard time to swallow, considering my understanding of how patriarchy works. In my understanding, the objectification of women goes hand in hand with the obsession with "modesty", they are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, there's the idea that women are sexual commodity for men to use, and on the opposite side, the idea that women should stay chaste and preserve themselves from men. I think that is roughly what is meant with the "madonna/whore complex". The genius of patriarchy, so to speak, is that it invented both a thesis and an antithesis, that it has framed the debate in such a way that i can draw strength from both sides of it. Adhering to one side of it to counter the other one strikes me as a futile attempt, at least at the symbolic and ideological level (again, I'm not claiming that it cannot work in certain practical situations).

I've been making a conscious effort to become more praxis-oriented in my understanding of feminism lately, so maybe that's where our difference of opinion on this comes from.

I respect that, and I think that it's a fair criticism on me that I tend to think of issues (not only this one) in too abstract terms. Still, I think one should never underestimate the extent to which ideas end up shaping reality. The strength of patriarchy, in particular, strikes me as being based almost exclusively on ideology. If we are to eradicate it, we must actively seek out and destroy all the sorts of attitudes and beliefs that nourish it.