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.

This is utterly bizarre. You have either not read or not understood my comments. Why are you trying to make me defend a point I don't believe in? Buzz off.

I agree with this too. No idea why that PP has put words in my mouth.

I was literally replying to the question you asked, but fine I shall interact with you no more 👋

What do the “it is their right” posters think of the fact that several decades ago in certain countries women were not covered, and wearing western-style clothes?

Burqua-wearing is on the increase, and worryingly at a younger age. A girl in DD’s class in year 6 was fully covered, including face - not just a head covering. Her dm wore a sort of leather mask - which I can imagine must be really burdensome. And of course impossible to have any discourse with a member of the public.

The burka-wearing woman can take it off indoors in the presence of other women. Like at women-only swimming class, or the book club. Or the women' toilets and changing rooms. They can reach out to other women in the same way as women trying to escape other forms of coercive control do. If they are imprisoned at home, that's much harder.

Edited for SPAG

I don't think anyone is saying "it's their right" - I'm certainly not. It's just that the consequence of banning it is very likely to be that women become invisible prisoners as in Afghanistan.

I'm not here to educate you, I'm sure you're perfectly capable of educating yourself if you choose to. I'm just disputing your claim that women in burqas can't talk to others. You probably could have figured that one out by talking to some of them yourself.

Yes, but then you added all the rubbish implying that I think there's meaningful free choice in wearing religious face coverings, that I'm not aware of the oppression of women in Afghanistan and that I support the wearing of face coverings when it is "free choice". None of which I have said, and if you were able to understand my comments then you would know I believe the exact opposite. It's also worth pointing out that I only asked the "would you rather..." question in response to your comment implying that women being effectively imprisoned wasn't materially different to being outside with a face covering. You then twisted it, ignoring that vital context to try and make it seem that I was positioning religious face coverings in public as unproblematic.

If you're going to have a civil debate or conversation with somebody then you need to actually read what they write and understand it. It's the height of rudeness and it stifles legitimate conversation when you misrepresent what someone is saying and put words in their mouth. I suspect we actually completely agree with each other on the fundamentals, but your desperation to start an argument with somebody has rendered you unable to see that.

Specifically ban the burka as insisted on by Islamists. Make those wearing hoodies, motor cycle helmets etc remove them in public places (not when on motorbike, obv). Someone wearing a scarf to keep out the cold - which they will remove anyway if entering a shop etc - is fine.

Honestly I don't know what the answer is. I don't think we should accept harmful patriarchal religious or cultural practices in the UK because it's completely counter to our own modern culture (or at least the culture that lots of us strive for) and our laws, which give women and girls autonomy and equal rights. And that's a wider issue than just Islam, or just face coverings. But since this thread is about so-called "burqua bans" that's the specific issue at hand.

That said, if our only action is to ban face coverings, then we do absolutely nothing to address the root problems, which are complex and far-reaching. And the result will be women and girls who are imprisoned in their homes. Removed from education. Removed from any safeguarding support. Removed from society completely. Full erasure. I for one cannot accept that those women and girls are just collateral damage. We have to decide what our motivation is. Do we oppose face coverings because we think they harm women and girls, and we want all women and girls in the UK to be safe and treated as equals? Or do we just not want to have to see face coverings in public because we don't like it? If we are feminists and we actually care about women and girls, we need complex solutions to a complex issue. Not a knee jerk ban that erases vulnerable women and girls.

I agree.

On a practical level I fear that a ban would condemn some women to their homes.

I'm also not comfortable being just another group policing women's bodies.

It's a similar split to the left wing / right wing tussle over the ownership of women: Each convinced of their moral superiority but neither ultimately willing to allow women full emancipation.

If we want to live in a society where women are free to make their own decisions away from patriarchal belief systems, let's focus on society and men.

I think if we see women and girls out & about totally covered by a burka, it sends a signal to everyone else growing up in that society that we agree it is acceptable for a woman/girl to be covered, whereas it's completely fine for a boy/man to be free from having his face covered. I don't think a civilised society can function like that. Look at Afganistan-the women & girls there are begging for their freedoms back.

Just because you haven’t seen women wearing burka, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

There are at least 4 women (plus several young girls) who drop students off to my dc school. Plus, I regularly see burka wearing women in several of the supermarkets and bigger shopping centres where I am in Qld.

I am excessively affected by the heat, whenever the temperature is over about 18C (it was 38C today), so I notice as I would dread to think what would happen if I had to wear one…

Going by your username and the sheer statistical anomaly of your claim, I’m not sure I believe this. I go through Western Sydney on a regular basis. (Western Sydney is where many Australian Muslims live.) I’ve seen a woman in a burqa twice in 10 years. Hijabs? Yes. Burqas? No.

The issue is that it becomes more widespread in communities and people who don’t want to wear them then start feeling pressured and encouraged to wear it. I know girls who started wearing the hijab not because they wanted to, but because their friends were all wearing it. They felt a pressure even though their own female relatives didn’t wear it.
It concerns me that niqab will go this way.

But you have to engage with the full issue. It's too superficial and lazy to just say a ban is the answer. I agree it's not acceptable to allow a cultural or religious expectation to exist for some women and girls that they will cover their faces. I also don't think it's acceptable for women and girls to be confined to their homes if they can no longer meet that social expectation. But you haven't engaged with that point at all. Do you think that's acceptable collateral? Does it not bother you because you won't see it? Or do you think we owe it to all women and girls to create legislation that protects them without causing further harm?

If we ban the burqua, there will be little girls who never leave their house. Never attend school. Never speak to anyone or have the opportunity to experience life. Can never ask for help or report abuse. Is that acceptable to you in return for a ban on public face coverings? Because it's not acceptable to me. I think we owe it to those girls to come up with something better.

In the UK? Yr 6 is 10/11 years old. Is the excuse that she'd reached menarche? That's indefensible.

This already happens burqa or not.

Controlling patriarchal dynamics that women are imprisoned by controlling patriarchal men as part of domestic violence/abuse scenarios are common. Loads of religions exhibit aspects of these behind closed doors. The way to counter these beliefs is not by making the practices culturally accepted. It is to gnaw away at them over time.

The specific politician aside women should speak up on how they want their society to be shaped, if that’s against certain kinds of control and patriarchy then so be it.

How much time? How do you gnaw away at it?
Communication is unequal with someone whose face I can't see, COVID facemasks were nightmarish for me as a lip reader.
Facial expression is part of communication, it's part of your voice.

She's right on this issue - no woman should be covered in 2025. Sometimes it takes a strong voice to shine light on reality, regardless of how unpalatable that reality is.

If you'd followed the thread you're quoting you'd see that nobody said it didn't ever happen. We said it's really rare - rare enough that we know Hanson is just dog whistling and doesn't really give a shit about the women involved.

And like a pp it sounds like you are confusing burqa with a hijab/head scarf as it's extremely unlikely that unmarried school girls would be wearing burqa.

But they are. Unmarried schoolgirls, that is. Obviously their families would have to be quite extreme in their views, but I have seen as an example the girl in dd’s class.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan it is not uncommon to have young girls completely covered.

I think few have an objection to a headscarf etc, but the burka is on a completely different and - frankly - sinister level. What purpose does it serve other than to segregate women from society - and I don’t believe that is something that is to be welcomed, especially if the practice is increasing.

I don’t lie.

I live in an area with migrants from many countries.
There are also many Indian men in traditional long white tunics and trousers, and turbans. Several Indian women wear saris (which are quite beautiful).
Several students at the school wear the Sikh turbans, many girls wear long sleeves and long trousers under their uniforms.
There is an Islamic School less than 10 minutes drive from my home, and English as a second language college about 4 minutes away, and we have many Somali and other refugees in the surrounding area.

Are you really so ignorant as to think that your experiences are the only ones possible?