Ban the Burka? Q to Kier Starmer today-is this a good idea or not?

[happydappy2]

I know dictating to women what they can or can't wear is not popular amongst feminists. But is stating that they cannot cover their face a bad thing? There are many situations where faces have to be visible for security, ie in a bank you cannot wear a motorcycle helmet. I know some people will say if certain women cannot wear a burka they will not be able to leave their home....but isn't it better that women can just live their lives in the same way as men do, ie faces uncovered? Interested to hear others views. Personally having lived in Saudi Arabia I respected their customs when in their country but feel the UK should also be able to say, in our country, women can show their faces.

But you don't mind living in a.country where.men belonging to.certain groups tell women what to wear.

Agree with this.

I’m reading a lot of reasonable concern about coercive control here, but an unreasonable conviction that banning burkas - which are vanishingly rarely worn in the UK - as an over egged “solution” that will do fuck all to improve the rates of coercive control in DV situations, religiously influenced or not.

This is a category error problem, I think. Ban burka = get very little done, but please a small subset of people who have convinced themselves that only Muslims abuse or control women. Lots of noise, no real impact around misogyny or coercive control, which is this country isn’t just confined to the 6% of the population who is Muslim, let alone the what - 0.0001% who wear actual burkas.

@RayonSunrise ban the burkha might get very little done but it will be one less form of control. Every little helps and while the burkha/niqab/face covering is considered acceptable and protected in law, what message does that send out?
Even Egypt which is majority Muslim and the majority of Muslim women there wear ha headscarf those are banned in certain areas and the niqab/burkha more so.

Of course not only Muslims abuse women, but I can't think of any such oppressive practices by British men that are considered socially acceptable.

The 'more white men are abusive and control women by telling them what to do/wear, than a tiny amount of Muslims who make women cover up' argument sounds like 'it's CIS men out there raping women, why are you bothering about a tiny amount of transwomen, focus on the cis men instead'

I say let's ban the burkha/niqab/face covering and if women can't leave their homes and interact as a result, then we tackle that.

I can't think of any such oppressive practices by British men that are considered socially acceptable

Agree and I wonder why we let this one by, many other EU countries do not.

It isn't just about individual coercive men. It's about communities exerting control. Imams preaching, shunning of non compliant women. I'm sure some men wouldn't care whether their women i.e. wives and daughters wore the niqab if it wasn't for loss of face in the community.

It would be petty to remember that the UK voted to leave the EU and all that European nonsense.

The burka covers the face.

Even in muslim countries such as Turkey the burka is considered extreme. It arises within a culture in which a woman is not supposed to have a public face or a public voice; and that is not acceptable in a western liberal democracy, and against a background in which generations of women have fought for the right to a public face and voice.

That’s funny you raise the parallel with TRAs, because I was just thinking that the focus on the theory of men controlling women in Britain through burkas sounds like the theoretical arguments not grounded in material reality we always accuse TRAs of using. I mean, who cares about the outcomes as long as we FEEL like we’re doing something, right?

I'm sure lots of criminals are distressed their images are released. Maybe they need to invent a sky fairy for special treatment ?

This is how it looks to some people - whether it's accurate or not.

It is the principle that is most important. Saying it doesn't matter because "only a few" is not the point. It is about shared values and common consent and about the role of women in our society. Not everything is about personal consumer choice and individual rights.

Exactly my point @Shortshriftandlethal, this is an “angels dancing on the head of a pin” conversation while actual DV and coercive control carries on, without the need for face coverings. More attempts by Richard Tice to call for debates about burkas (I note this morning), because that’s more important to him than DV, women’s rights, or the cost of living. Got it, Rich.

I'm not really a fan of the state mandating what women can and can't wear.

If we are worried about the fathers, husbands or brothers of these women dictating how they should dress, then I'm not sure that the state dictating how they should dress is a preferable option. We absolutely need to think about how we can best support and empower these women to enable them to make their own free choices, but that's a separate discussion.

Banning the burkha/niqab isn't comparable to being forced to remove clothing and strut around revealing the body as some pp have suggested. It's about the erasure of women being unacceptable .

Take away the cultural/religious demands and other nonsense about it bringing you closer to god for a moment and consider this - any other woman, not subjected to these influences/rules who feels she has to cover her face at all times when in public would likely be assessed as having trauma/ mental health issues and encouraged to seek help

Agree. Why are some happy to acquiesce on this?

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves
We absolutely need to think about how we can best support and empower these women to enable them to make their own free choices,

As long as these practices are perfectly acceptable , I'm not sure we can.
How can we empower woman to reject something that their own communities/families is saying is (mandatory) perfectly fine, and is also backed by our own government.

The problem with banning the burka is that the women will end up never going out.

My personal preference would be that any married women wearing full covering burkas, the husband should have to do the same.

Disclaimer: this is not a serious suggestion

It isn't "backed by" our government simply because they don't explicitly prohibit it. And there will be a wide range of different views within Muslim families and communities.

As to how you could empower women to make their own free choices, it's an interesting question, and I'm sure that there will be some relevant research out there. However, we should not assume that these women themselves are without agency or opinions of their own. Change very often comes from within communities and not just from outside.

It's also an interesting question to think about how we would actually know when these women have been empowered to make their own choices. There is a tendency to assume that women with a free choice will always and inevitably go uncovered, because that preference is so deeply ingrained within our own thinking that we can't even contemplate the possibility that they might choose something different. So the tendency is to assume that, if they are still covering, it must be because they are oppressed, even if that is somehow the result of internalised misogyny etc. It's hard to conceive of the possibility that some women might have their reasons for choosing to cover anyway. I'm not sure how we would ever really be able to know for sure. None of us live in a vacuum.

Change very often comes from within communities and not just from outside.

I think the issue might be that the change seems to be happening in the opposite direction, i.e. you see more women covering their faces and more primary school girls wearing headscarves than 15-20 years ago.

My sense is that quite a few burka wearers are actually knowingly making a radicalised political statement. My experience suggests that many burka wearers are taking up a social and cultural trend which is supportive of Islamism ( a political movement and ideology - not a religious practice). They are often young and educated.

Is 'individual choice' the be all and end all of western democracy and values, though?

This is true, and it would be good to get an understanding of why this is. I don't personally think that banning face coverings is going to liberate any women who are being oppressed. If anything, it will merely limit their freedom more.

I think the idea of a ban appeals to people who don't like seeing women with their faces covered and want them to just disappear from our streets so that the rest of us don't encounter them. I don't think it appeals so much to people who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of these women, as some will be in a much worse position if they are no longer permitted to leave the home.

My concern is not about one of personal displeasure at seeing dark, shrouded figures on the street( even though it is creepy and unsettling) - it is about what this practice conveys about the role and position of women and girls more generally - and how that reflects on my daughter and on my granddaughter and their integrity as female human beings with faces and voices in our society.

I'm sure religious education is strong enough to promote this successfully to some. I still don't think we should accept all religious doctrine as acceptable in this society.

Just so we know what we are discussing -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241

Well, I think that's a fair question and a debate that we might need to have. There may be very valid reasons for curtailing individual choice in some cases. My point is that we cannot simply assume that women who may make different choices from our own are doing so because they have no choice. In some cases, I'm sure that they are indeed oppressed and controlled and denied the freedom to do as they wish. I just think we need to be careful not to assume that that is always the case.

I used to work with a woman who wore the niqab. She was intelligent, funny and opinionated, and she didn't take crap from anyone. She challenged my thinking on this subject quite a lot, and made me rethink some of my assumptions.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem with a lack of female empowerment in some communities. There absolutely is, and it's awful. I just think that we need a more nuanced approach to empowering these women, and that simply banning the niqab or whatever (I've never seen anyone in a burkha in this country, though I'm sure that they are around) is not going to achieve the desired effect.