Originally a comment by Ian Hargreaves on Can you make the smile any bigger luv?
Speculation: the archbish is grinning broadly because she’s just interacted with the person on the right. Spoken with them, agreeably. Has had – mask notwithstanding – a friendly conversation with them. She’s not coming to this image without context – she is fully aware of the humanity of the person under the shroud. It hasn’t occurred to her what the image will look like to someone not well-disposed towards people of her ilk, and indeed one might reasonably asked why she should. After all, in her position there’s practically nothing she could do that would earn her the respect and admiration of any thinking atheist… so why bother?
Another thought: there’s a racist/sexist/culturalist(?) assumption commonly made about people who dress like the one on the right. (I’m careful not to say “women”, because from that picture I’ve exactly zero evidence that that’s a woman). The assumption is that they are, firstly, women, and secondly that such women are universally cowed, submissive slaves, quiet and unassuming, barely daring to speak in public.
I’ve had reason to interact with just a few such people in a variety of scenarios, and have found them to be, almost without exception, remarkably loud, hostile and rude. Shockingly so, the first time. In fact, the very epitome of the average obnoxious religious nutjob of any stripe, just in a mask. Their dress is, in my experience, not (for them) a symbol of submission to their husband or their god so much as it is a violent public rejection of what they think of as the disgusting, inferior culture they find themselves surrounded by. And again in my experience, they absolutely don’t mind telling you this, in fact they’ll go out of their way to make it clear, even unasked.
Never make the mistake of thinking of those people as victims. They’re into it, as much if not more so than the men. And if you argue that they’re only into it because they’ve been indoctrinated – I agree with you. But take care where you direct your pity. They have none for you.
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