Ever pondered what it’s actually like to wear a niqab?
“I had to wear the full niqab when I was 8 years old,” she says of the face veil worn by women here. “I couldn’t breathe. I saw the world in dark colors. I fell down because I couldn’t see when I walked. Men should put this on for one day. They would change their thinking. They don’t know how horrible it is under sun, heat and sweat. It’s a kind of torture. I decided I wanted to see the beautiful colors of life — red, blue, green. Not black.”
It’s like what you think it’s like. It’s horribly hot and uncomfortable. It impedes your vision and makes you fall (and presumably get bumped by pedestrians and hit by cars). You can’t breathe, or move freely. And most hideous of all, you can’t even look at the world. Imagine it – your whole life – apart from your own house and if you’re lucky a courtyard or garden, you can’t ever see anything clearly. You can’t see the streets, people, trees, buildings, anything – you’re shrouded. For life. Because you’re female.
Comments
24 responses to “I decided I wanted to see the beautiful colors of life”
Sometimes there are sacrifices to be made so that we can have a happier, healthier society. And by “we”, I mean “men”.
And really, who can argue with that? (Well, women might but that just shows how irrational and in need of strong guidance they really are.)
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: I decided I wanted to see the beautiful colors of life http://dlvr.it/9J6hY […]
Christopher Hitchens, 536 words in.
Tony Blair, 416 words in.
Depends on what benign, positive and progressive mean.
No, I’m sure they wouldn’t. They force women to wear these so they can maintain control, not because they think it’s a nice thing to wear.
Ken Pidcock @ #3
Its true for particularly malignant values of benign.
Its true for particularly negative values of positive.
Its true for particularly regressive values of progressive.
As of Hitchens’ Nietzschean and reductionist interpretation of religion and naturalism: one way of life is anti-life, effectively treating women, the source of life, as evil, and taking away their beauty and all things beautiful in life. The other way of life, naturalism, embraces life and what is beautiful. Thus, religion is bad, through and through, immoral and will only destroy everything beautiful and living.
Why only one day? This is as stupid as those talkshow hosts who volunteer to undergo watertorture to proce that it’s not torture.
No, they wouldn’t. How utterly naïve.
Oh, but I’m sure they do. And even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s only women suffering, after all.
That’s the bloody point of the exercise. Woman is evil and must be punished.
If only these foolish, ignorant men in their foolish, backward culture could see what they are missing out on by not allowing their women to be free and equal members of the society. What a great shame that their cultures mandate the waste of so much talent and energy. A mega-tragedy for everyone!
Egbert. Well said. There is really not much to add. Religion is anti-life, full-stop.
Interesting transcript and both debated very well, but Hitchens clearly won the debate. Blair, for all his rhetorical skill, was forced to fall back on non-sequiturs (yes it’s true that religion is not the only source of harm in the world, but that’s irrelevant to the proposition at hand).
Yes, in fact I have wondered what it would be like to wear a niqab. Quite stifling, I should have thought, aside from the harness like blinkered view of the world they must afford. Which reminds me of a woman dressed in one in a doctor’s office in Halifax (Nova Scotia) on one of the hottest days of the year. Her husband sat next to her in shorts and a t-shirt. This is not about comfort. Aside from the peremptory authority of the husband, the cultural pressure to dress in tents must be overwhelming. To say that women do this willingly is hard to accept. It’s a bit like saying that children willingly believe in hell and are tormented by the belief thus willingly accepted. It is wrong to teach children about hell. And it is wrong to force women into tents. Niqabs should be outlawed in public spaces. And in private they are unnecessary. They are a symbol of the danger of religion to human rights and democracy. I don’t think there’s a single liberal argument in their favour. In what way is this significantly different from slavery? Can someone willingly become a slave? I think dressing women in tents is poignantly analogous. It is improper for democratic societies to allow people to import the treatment of women as second class citizens. And especially when little girls are being dressed in them in primary school, it ceases to be about choice, and is a form of oppression.
Eric said:
“Thus, religion is bad, through and through, immoral and will only destroy everything beautiful and living.”
And that’s why officially atheist states such as China under Mao and the former Soviet Union were such lovely places in which to live?
It’s not quite that simple.
No no no Sauder, that doesn’t work. The claim that X is bad does not equal the claim that the absence of X is perfection. The claim that religion is bad does not equal the claim that nothing else is bad.
Religion and communism and tyranny are all bad. Secular democracy is the way to go, look at scandinavia.
Where is this quote from?
There’s a lack of human dignity to the niqab or the burqa or any mandatory face-covering. Human dignity is all about having others recognize that your individual thoughts and desires and feelings matter. The niqab hides one’s facial expressions and one’s individual unique features, so everyone wearing it looks identical. You can’t tell if they’re attractive, or big-nosed, or angry, or amused. The only thing evident about a person wearing a niqab is that she’s female–which is of course the only thing that matters.
Building on the exchange between Sauder and Ophelia @#13 and #14…
I am pretty sure that a nuclear bomb dropped on Manhattan would kill millions of people. Luckily, there is no nuclear bomb being dropped on Manhattan — and yet people are still sometimes killed on the streets of Manhattan. What gives? How do you explain that, you silly a-nuclearists?
Vern and Sili said what I was going to, those rascals. The men know how oppressive it is. That’s the entire point (well, one of two, the other being the Othering of wimmin-folk in the eyes of men raised in the culture, thus perpetuating their oppression) of the bloody thing! I’m sure there are some men for whom it would be an eye-opening mind-changer, but for most it would only reinforce their view, either with a blatantly-sexist “this puts women in their place” reaction, or a less-blatant-but-just-as-sexist “women wear this, that means they like having things taken care of for them, therefore it’s for their own good” self-justification.
Ophelia, where is the quote in your post from? I can’t seem to find the link to the original article. And quite recently I found myself thinking about women who decided to unveil, and the reaction to that decision:
http://thenewcomer.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/would-you-care-to-explain-madam/
Oops, I forgot to insert the link. Beg pardon.
There.
Newcomer – I looked at your blog – I know you, right? Internet “know” – we’ve talked. It’s been awhile. Unless you’re someone else, of course!
No, you’re right. I am myself. And we internet “know” each other. And its good to know you!