Afghan women forced to wear burqa

[GoodieMoomin]

As the taliban continues to gain ground, the forward looking young women of Afghanistan are having to prepare for some major changes.

I cannot imagine how these women are feeling right now, watching their freedoms slip through their fingers. Honestly, I could cry.

^"My mother says we should buy a burqa. My parents are afraid of the Taliban. My mother thinks that one of the ways she can protect her daughters is to make them wear the burqa,” she says.

“But we have no burqa in our home, and I have no intention of getting one. I don’t want to hide behind a curtain-like cloth. If I wear the burqa, it means that I have accepted the Taliban’s government. I have given them the right to control me. Wearing a chador is the beginning of my sentence as a prisoner in my house. I’m afraid of losing the accomplishments I fought for so hard.”^

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/15/afghan-womens-defiance-and-despair-i-never-thought-id-have-to-wear-a-burqa-my-identity-will-be-lost

One has to wonder how the taliban can tell which people must wear a burqa, and why those who don't want to don't just self-ID as male

@GoodieMoomin

One has to wonder how the taliban can tell which people must wear a burqa, and why those who don't want to don't just self-ID as male

I don’t think self I dentifying as male will cut much ice with the Taliban, quite honestly.

Apologies for the derail but it is interesting that when it comes to Afghanistan politicians like Sturgeon seem to know what sex is.

I've not seen a single "people in burquas".

What is happening in Afghanistan should give all women cause for thought. It is so easy and so fast to lose hard won rights.

Last time they were in charge, the Taliban came up with two prinicples:

1. Male doctors cannot examine women.
2. Women can't be doctors.

But we have no burqa in our home, and I have no intention of getting one. I don’t want to hide behind a curtain-like cloth. If I wear the burqa, it means that I have accepted the Taliban’s government. I have given them the right to control me. Wearing a chador is the beginning of my sentence as a prisoner in my house. I’m afraid of losing the accomplishments I fought for so hard.

Such a courageous young woman and I don't know what I wish for her. I don't want her to be imprisoned or to be in jeopardy of her life.

I quoted this recently - it's the Viktor Shtrum character from Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate and he's describing life under a totalitarian regime:

But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated itself into his past, into his childhood memories. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.

Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment—with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.

I admire her and fear for her.

One has to wonder how the taliban can tell which people must wear a burqa, and why those who don't want to don't just self-ID as male

Is this a joke?

A not very funny one.

I feel like I just can't even get my head around what's going on for these women and girls at the moment - it's unimaginable

@Etulosba my point is that while this would work in western nations - because our institutions have bought into gender identity ideolgy - it does not work in a totalitarian regime. Women cannot opt out of oppression

One has to wonder how the taliban can tell which people must wear a burqa

They use modesty police - who are much feared as the punishments are brutal

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/taliban-militants-afghanistan-civilian-torture/100300730

I don’t think self I dentifying as male will cut much ice with the Taliban, quite honestly

Who would even think to do that, when it carries the death penalty?

It doesn't, according to taliban latest statements, have to be a burqa- niqab is also acceptable (this is, perhaps, their idea of greater inclusivity/tolerance?)

I've not seen a single "people in burquas"

That's because the phrase is in specific use for people smuggling methods - it a way to get wanted men out to safety, as long as they don't meet modesty police en route

@Etulosba

One has to wonder how the taliban can tell which people must wear a burqa, and why those who don't want to don't just self-ID as male

Is this a joke?

No, it's not a joke. It's a very serious comment on the ridiculous notion that sex is something that one can identify into and out of, and that the idea that one can identify as a woman or a man is an incredibly privileged luxury belief.

It's never been funny Etulosba, that's the point. No one is laughing, not even before the resurgence of the Taliban.

I cannot imagine how scary it must be right now to be a progressive woman in Afghanistan.

Thanks @Jackgrealishscurtains that's exactly what I was getting at. I thought people here would get what I was saying

I remember being lectured in the past by a woman friend about how we should respect cultural traditions and many women "want" to wear a burqua. Also that doing so, frees them from the attention of predatory males which is in fact liberating for them. As a feminist, there is no way I could buy into this and knowing that so many freedoms women had in Afghanistan prior to this are now being relentlessly undone is so bloody depressing.

I think is where it becomes clear that identity and gender is the privilege of western people

This is

Women cannot opt out of oppression

Quite, something often conviniently never mentioned in some spheres.

It's absolutely heartbreaking, there is a glimmer of hope in that many women have seen that there is an alternative, which wasn't the case before as oppression there runs centuries deep; but I fear its praying for a miracle that it makes much difference.

Spot on @Berthatydfil

@mollythemeerkat I would hazard a guess that kind of argument stems from a lib fem perspective, where 'choice' is everything. If we believe (or can pretend) these women choose X then X must be good.

I think some people who think this way will then need to assert that there's no objective right and wrong, merely different but equal cultures, and what is done within one culture cannot be critiqued by people from another. If that makes sense

Some of the women at least who have fought for their freedoms were actually allowed to be treated as boys when there was no boy in the family . This allowed them the education they needed to begin to change things when they returned to be young women at puberty. There was a programme I think on the world service( ?) a few years ago . Terrifying for the even younger girls and women now and awful to watch them dreading what will happen.

The not so recent history of Afghanistan has been very effectively erased. If you can find pictures of Kabul in the 70s before the Soviet invasion, you will see busy streets full of women in miniskirts, and not a veil in sight on anyone under 60.

I hate men tonight. My stomach has been churning all day for my sisters in Afghanistan and I feel sick with fear for them so can't imagine ho they must be feeling...the fear that must be paralysing them. Yet every comment under every article has stupids useless men laughing bait the MeToo movement being silent. These are MEN'S fucking crimes. It is MEN doing this yet they laugh at women's lack of power to stop it. Fuck them.

I'm so sorry for the typos....shaking with anger.

No-one is trying to be flippant or to trivialise this. We have been told for years now that who is a man and who is a woman is a nebulous, confusing and nuanced issue. And yet we have millennia of evidence that there is absolute clarity from men in recognising women when it comes to sex-based oppression. Afghanistan is a very current and very urgent example of this. When they are deciding who to sell into sex-slavery or who to shoot for going to school, then your identity, your personality and your feelings won't count for shit. Any of our famous trans lesbians could just wipe off the performative femininity and disappear into maleness. (Does anyone know the Taliban's stance on transgenderism? Because, as we know, Pakistan and Iran are big cheerleaders for transing the gay away.) This is a good example of how identity politics only works for those with power because you can never identify your way out of the bottom of a hierarchy. Gender creates the hierarchy and it needs to go.

There's probably some shit-for-brains TRA on Twitter right now, arguing that people in Central Asia had no concept of biological sex until it was imposed on them by colonialists. The fuckwits who go on about women-only spaces and genital inspections won't have the decency to shut up either, despite being faced with an horrific real-world example of people being divided into men and women and no inspections necessary.

As for the burqa, as with any other aspect of choice feminism: if it's a choice, why aren't men choosing it?