Interesting what happened when an Ozzy MP wanted to discuss banning the burka

[happydappy2]

https://x.com/PaulineHansonOz/status/1992886488300966251?s=20

She has a point-can women wearing a burka be employed or will they be reliant on the state? (or someone else.) How does a full face covering work with facial recognition cameras? Can a woman in a burka enter a bank, when everyone else has to remove face coverings?

I imagine this is a question the UK needs to address pretty soon as well.

Yeah that was the argument used against GC women, trying to force team them with conservative Christian groups. I can think she’s awful and also completely agree with her position on the burka.

Another reason this a nothing but a stunt - recent estimates have put the amount of burqa-wearing women in Australia at … 250. Gosh. Well worth the outrage!

Right. I live in a very multicultural part of Melbourne. There's a mosque a few streets away. Can't remember the last time I saw anyone wearing a burqa.

I doubt there's a single woman wearing one in Hansens' Queensland backwater electorate.

I am in Perth and can't remember seeing anyone in a burka either. Its just a non-issue and racist Pauline is just shit-stirring (again).

Pauline Hanson is not calling for a burqa ban to improve women’s rights. She’s accusing burqa-wearers of using the covering as a way of concealing their identify so they can get away with crimes. When asked for evidence of this happening she was not able to give any examples of it being a real thing that has happened even once in Australia.

This isn’t the first time she’s done this. She pulled this stunt years ago. She needs some new material.

Anyone holding up Hanson as a defender of women’s rights really needs to take a closer look at her history. She’s an MRA who claims women regularly falsely accuse ex-partners of violence and abuse as a way to win custody disputes. She blames her ex-daughter-in-law for the fact that her son breached the restraining order placed on him.

I just saw that it's Pauline Hanson 😂Very few people take a blind bit of notice of anything the dreadful woman says. She's an out and out racist.

Are you joking?? You ARE aware she’s been active in Australian politics for 30 odd years? Or have you just heard of her? I mean your original post didn’t even mention her by name. I assume you just saw the headline and did a quick copy paste without engaging your brain any further. You want me to trawl back 30 years to find examples? There’s plenty. No. Your fingers work as well as mine. I’ll start with “piss off back to Pakistan”

I don't know anything about this Australian stunt in parliament beyond the headlines but I see some people on the thread are calling for a burqua ban. Banning the burqua would mean some women in the UK were effectively under permanent house arrest. I very much see religious face coverings for women as a symbol of patriarchal religious oppression, but do we honestly think those women who don't willingly cover their faces and are made to do so (and I realise this isn't all women who wear face coverings), have husbands/fathers/brothers who would just say "oh they've banned it, nevermind - you just carry on without it"? No. They will be banned from leaving the house if they can't be covered, banned from participating in life, from seeing the doctor etc.

I'm sure for lots of women who choose to wear face coverings, they would just have to deal with not being able to. But there are women for whom it isn't a choice. I don't think it's feminist to just throw away their lives and treat them as collateral damage. I think it's a complex and deeply rooted issue and that banning burqas is a lazy, superficial response that harms vulnerable women.

You are an absolutely fool if you think this notorious racist gives a fuck about feminism.

I’m embarrassed for you. If you have an argument to make, make it without hiding behind this dreadful person.

Banning the burqua would mean some women in the UK were effectively under permanent house arrest.

As opposed to their freedom to be completely swathed in material from head to foot and unable to interact with anyone anyway?

Agree. There’s a huge amount of cognitive dissonance on this issue. Denmark banning the burkha must have many people who see themselves as liberal getting their knickers in a twist trying to work out who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” here.

Agree with a PP who said all face coverings should be banned in public settings. I was waiting at my DC school reception recently (London) and witnessed the receptionist telling a sixth former to take his hoodie down then two minutes later waving a mother in full burka through the main doors to meet a teacher. Totally nonsensical.

At least they could leave the house and make contact with other women.
That's better than virtual imprisonment.

The whole point of the burqa is to reduce contact, it makes communication almost impossible.

Thats literally why men force women into them

I used to work with a woman who wore the niqab. She challenged a lot of my assumptions tbh.

Yep same with the asylum policy. Racist until people can say Denmark.

I think it's very clear from my comment that I don't support religious face coverings and think they are deeply harmful.

But to answer your simplistic retort, would you rather be able to go to the shops, go to the park, visit other people's homes etc fully covered from head to toe, or would you rather never leave your house again?

I can see you have very little personal experience in this. Women in burqas can and do communicate with others.

Would I rather be imprisoned in my home or inside a cloth covering?

Neither are decisions that should be imposed on women. Do you truly believe that women in burqas have the freedom to just go out socialising whenever they choose, because if you do there's millions of women in Afghanistan who would beg to differ.

The burqa is a tool of oppression and has no place in any society and I will not support the wearing of it regardless of it being a supposed free choice.

Maybe you can educate me.

What is the purpose of the burqa and why are theocratic regimes so keen to force women into them?

What does a burqa do that, e.g a niqab doesn't?

Agree we shouldn’t have either as the outcomes.

Yes, this.

Ban the Burka, anti abortion, Sex Work is Work, Trans Women are Women - left or ringht, they all reduce women's bodies into playing counters for demonstrating cultural values.

If you (generic you) believe the burka is part of a system of oppression of women (and I do), then fight that oppression so women are empowered to say no.

Just "banning the burka" is putting the people with no power in a community in the impossible position of fighting their own community or breaking the law. It's making them into pawns. It is like fighting slavery by making it illegal for the slaves to wear chains, then prosecuting the slaves and not the masters if they do.

It also isolates women from other women. Most Muslims will never wear it and wouldn’t want to wear it. I’d have no issues with a ban.

I don’t think I’ve seen the burqa in the UK but I find the proliferation of niqab worrying. Outside of a few Arab visitors in Kensington you didn’t see it anywhere in the UK when I was growing up and now it’s everywhere. It’s regressive, misogynist and emblematic of a strand of Islam which is not compatible with a modern democracy. This strand of Islam is not “live and let live”.

Burqa is patriarchal anti women and a form of social control. I am completely opposed to extreme restrictions put on women in certain (most partriarchal) religious traditions. I certainly don’t want them imported to western cultures and I certainly with my own eyes can see that certain cultural practices are not benign and are certainly not ones to take from their roots and bring to liberal cultures. I would follow the French on a ban on burqas.

My point is that the lines are potentially very blurred.

I would very much like to ban what I see as clearly misogynistic and oppressive women's face coverings... but I also support the rights of people to wear medical masks or to keep warm, and sometimes the right to hide their faces (for example I would support women's rights to hide their faces as they pass a baying mob of TRAs to deliver a pro-women petition)... and I also kinda think that to a very large extent you either allow face coverings or you don't. It is an issue full of nuance IMHO.