I've had this sub-thread brought to my attention. It's not helping any of you to prove your point by throwing around the term "liar". And I would have thought the argument is over. "Expedential" has 825 entries on Google, and most of those are directing you towards "exponential" as the correct term. "Exponential" has 28,400,000 results. QED.

Anyway, it is completely off-topic, which is about the burqa. Next person to post on the "expedential" controversy is going to get sin-binned.

Graham (Moderator)

Thank you, Graham: hopefully some sense of adult maturity can be restored.

Re the position of women in some societies, and thereby the burqa:

This may be a much more complex issue than most of us think. Perhaps it may help if we consider it from the angle that, as part of the marriage rules of patriarchal societies (most peasant societies, Rome and Greece, Muslim societies, most traditional Aboriginal societies) families must, on the one hand, perpetuate themselves by having children to inherit the family/clan land - but on the other, they need women from outside the family in order to produce the next generation of children, preferably sons.

These 'immigrants' are therefore traded from one group to the other (in fact, the trade itself is a means of establishing and maintaining good relations between the men of different groups). Once they have served their purpose of incubation and suckling the next generation of boys, their duties are confined to house- or farm-work, and keeping the daughters in line, raising them to be properly subservient to whichever male is, or will be, dominating them.

In the meantime, the mothers remain 'immigrants', never being part of the family that they marry into and provide sons for, or having any rights to the land they must spend their lives on - in fact, in the case of Aboriginal women, they may still have ritual obligations to part or parts of their own family or clan's land (hence 'women's 'secret' 'business' ').

TBC

[cont.]

Is it possible then, that in some societies, women are not seen as attractive and desirable per se, as in most Western societies, but are mistrusted, and even found repugnant, useful only for breeding and/or the humdrum work around the house and farm ? As such, those societies perceive that women must be kept under control, confined to the house if possible, but dressed in certain ways to mark them off as somebody's possession ?

Is it common for Muslim men never to have seen the bodies of their wives, or even their faces ? It would not be necessary to do so, if all they were needed for was to procreate and produce the next lot of sons. But it would be necessary, to ensure that the husband was surely the father of any children produced, to keep a tight rein on such women, to police their relationships, to enforce gender-segregation rules on both wives and daughters. Restrictive clothing might go some way to achieving this purpose.

So, in order to live in such an environment, women may have no choice but to comply by wearing restrictive clothing. They may even pre-empt the suspicions of husbands by wearing clothing which is MORE restrictive than their husbands expect.

So let's not add to their oppression by blaming them for their position :)

Joe

It's not that long that there was a very patriarchal attitude in this country re Anglo-saxon male/female relationships. I can remember when women had to resign from the Commonwealth Public Service on marriage. You could relieve for hols etc,but no longer a permanent employee. That didn't change until about the 1970's.When I worked as a Teachers Aide with NSW govt, we didn't have access to Super. The divorce/financial settlements etc were so sexist-women's contribution was not valued, only money was treated as important. No laws about rape in marriage?Police wouldn't intervene in violence of women by their husbands.
The Catholic Church's attitude to contraception caused much damage, health issues and death to too many women - it's only just taken a small step re HIV/AIDS prevention.
The Anglican Church doesn't have any women in any positions of power or shared decision making re their funds etc. There's still a lot of areas where discrimination is alive and well.
The overwhelming majority of people who are discriminated against in the workforce are women.
Just because we don't have an item of clothing etc doesn't mean that the sexes are equal. Women still have to work 65 days per year more than a man in order to receive the same pay, for doing the same or similar work. The list goes on!
I find it quite amazing,that having troops in Afghanistan has not protected the women and girls from horrific violence. What the hell are we protecting or 'fighting' for? Only on yesterday's news was the report of girls still being traded between war lords, families/male etc.In fact,the war lords who use oppression against women and girls, are in the Karzai govt, committing murder and torture! Why are we there if we can't impose justice for innocent civilians?
The stats for child suvival, education and justice are getting worse not better. We're only causing more trauma - after 9+ years!
Don't hear Senator Bernadino insisting on their protection! He couldn't give a toss!His interest is racist and anti-Muslim! Not interested in human rights of women!

So Liz .....

Are you suggesting that the position of women in Afghanistan would be better if we pulled our troops out and gave it over to the Taliban ? What do you think might happen to all those women who have ventured out of their homes, worked alongside men, gone to school, voted, cast off the burqa for the gown and hijab ? Do you seriously think they will actually survive ? How soon before we see film of women being strung up by front-end loaders, and hanging from the soccer goalposts again ?

Terrible choices: The Yanks/us/Karzai or the Taliban/al Qa'ida ! There are not too many heroes in that lot. Yet we have to make choices, all the same. It's a dirty-hands world, Liz.

Joe

<<Why are we there if we can't impose justice for innocent civilians?>>
Surely that's putting the cart before the horse?