Phanto, I hope you are not including nuns here?

runner,

"I would say Phanto that very woman who needs to dress immodestly in order to attract man's eye is not free. It is probably easier to throw on one of the hideos burqa's than standing in front of the mirror for an hour a day."

I wish we could throw a metaphorical burqa over your "unattractive" musings.

Cheers...

yea I know Poirot feminist/progressives have always hated be shown the truth. You are one of the finest examples of that.

Lol!, runner...that's telling me!

As far as I can see, so far your crowning contribution to this subject has been to slag off any woman who wears a covering because they may be less that attractive.

Very deep, runner...

Most profound...

and your profound regurgitated progressive answers Poirot are so sophisticated not.

phantom

Your posts are thoughtful and interesting. However, I feel they wander too far into concern-troll territory.

I really think there has been far too much projecting of Western feelings and thinking patterns onto women who wear the burqa/niqab, all designed to see them as willing/unwilling prisoners of their own cultures. We've created this whole line of argument that to ban the burqa/niqab would be to kick these women when they are already down.

This may or may not be true. However, unlike other forms of religious and cultural dress - like Sikh turbans, nuns' habits, Buddhist shaved heads and saffron robes, Italian/Greek women in black etc - the burqa/niqab crosses a line of tolerance for many people in the West.

There is something so overtly confronting about it that, for many, it trumps the sacred Western issue of being free to choose what to wear in public. Also, for some feminists, such as myself, it also trumps common the feminist concern of having yet another patriarchal limitation placed on what women are allowed to wear.

Some would also argue that, if the burqa/niqab were banned, that would mark the slippery slope to banning all kinds of private dress and behaviour decisions.

I don't think so, as the burqa/niqab stands on its own as a 'perfect storm' of confronting values for people in the West, exacerbated by progressives' sensitivities about the West's ongoing war against Islam. Religious tolerance is a two-way street. As far as I'm concerned, burqa/niqab women who live in the West are showing zero tolerance for the sensitivities of the country that they have chosen (or been forced by circumstance) to live in.