France: female staff at Eiffel Tower removed for visit by Hindu religious group

[Lalgarh]

The Swaminarayan group requested no female attendance because their priests take a vow of celibacy which require them not to be in the vicinity of any female

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyenxp540vo

BAPS says the segregation of men and women was introduced for the benefit of women, but critics say 18th-Century beliefs have no place in today's world, and keeping women out in the name of religious practices is discriminatory.

I know someone whose mother has spent weeks working on the preparation for the temple they're talking about, unpaid.

Where was precious French laïcité [secularism] when a religious group asks for women to be sidelined from a national monument?

And how did management decide who should make themselves scarce? Was it decided by biological sex, or gender identity?😒

If men could actually keep it in their pants none of this shenanigans would have ever arisen.

I'm with the 15th century Delhi princess who said - can't remember exact words, sorry - that if men could not keep their hands off unveiled women in the street then men should wear blindfolds. Good idea.
But the origins of the separation of women in some faiths (and Hinduism does not routinely separate women from men) is because they are 'honour' cultures not 'high trust' cultures. Europe has a high trust culture, where we trust each other to behave within the decided norms (and punish those who do not keep the norms e.g. who murder, rape, steal, or commit fraud). This is not the case in many other places, which leads to the seclusion of women because men outside one's own family or clan cannot be trusted, as they also cannot be trusted to deal honestly. That does not mean that people are not honest and virtuous, but that the culture does not trust that they are/always will be, the reverse of a 'high trust' society where everyone is assumed to be trustworthy unless they show themselves or are proved otherwise.

The Swaminarayan sect rely on a LOT of female labour and volunteers.

Volunteers, natch

So there are people in France who know what a woman is. Despite criminalising Dora Moutot. Interesting how the rules apply.

I am of Indian and Hindu origin- though I am not really a practising Hindu any more- and there is mass outrage in the community. Both against the monks and the Eiffel Tower management. The Swaminarayan sect is quite a regressive and small section of the community.
What they have now done with this foolishness is to make being a S Asian in the West even harder.

The Swaminarayam sect have now apologised as well, after being roundly flayed in the Indian press.

The Swaminarayan group requested no female attendance because their priests take a vow of celibacy which require them not to be in the vicinity of any female.

Fair enough, gentlemen, whatever floats your boat. I think men staying well away from women is a splendid idea

But if your vow of celibacy [or chastity, perhaps more accurately] requires you not to be in the vicinity of any female, it's probably best not to frequent popular tourist sites.

I suggest an enclosed monastery.
I for one take a vow not to be in the vicinity of it, ever.
Sorted!

I so wish Hinduism- which has so much of delight, value and wonder- could be liberated from misognyistic men and regressive practices.

I'm wondering if they might have been doing this in the UK and it was just shrugged off as inclusiveness (paradoxically). They do apply this in the temple and you're not allowed within about 20 metres of them

Interesting.

At least catholic orders of monks and nuns who don't mix with the opposite sex stay in their own spaces - I remember when I was a little girl a neighbour's daughter joined an enclosed order of nuns, I think they could only communicate with men - or possibly with anybody who wasn't of the community - through a grille in a door.

They certainly didn't swan around town demanding that men stay 20 metres away from them as they went to Mass, or clothes shopping, or football matches, or tourist sites...

It's a bit self-centred, isn't it?

BAPS has strong ties with Narendra Modi, so they have got too big for their boots. Hindutva has addled their brains.
But what excuse do the Eiffel managers have?

Fine. That’s in their own space. You don’t have to go in there. But they have no business imposing that outside their private space.

Given that France also has genderwang, I wonder which enoloyees would have been barred: trans-IDing women or trans-IDing men? Whose belief would have mattered here, the Hindu men or the LARPers?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5576111-french-strike-after-women-asked-to-leave-site-for-visiting-delegation?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

At least the staff union called a strike! Wouldn't get UK unions doing that.

Yes, I can’t see any unions here supporting women (with the noble exceptions of the Free Speech Union and Darlington Nurses Union).

Sadly even members of our government like Stella Creasy, the so called feminist think that subjugating women on religious grounds (while using their free labour) is acceptable here.

Yes I was going to ask this, I thought the French didnt have any truck with this stuff.

Absobloodylutely @MarieDeGournay

It really proves, to me at least, that we live under the illusion of equal rights.

I do believe that could (and will) go at any time.

For them to do that, take a stand with that religious group of men, after sending their police to force a woman on a beach to fucking strip is beyond anything I can rationalize.

"As we would expect to abide by your rules when visiting your places of worship or where your customs hold, we expect you to observe our rules, laws and customs when visiting our public places. These entail treating all citizens, male and female, as equal members of society. If you cannot abide by this, then I am afraid you cannot be accommodated, as we will not exclude people who have a right to be included by our laws and customs."

I think we need to revisit the whole idea of exempting people from the law on religious grounds.

A ban from carrying knives in public is on grounds of public safety, that should apply to everyone.
If equality law says you can’t treat women as second class citizens, that needs to apply to everyone.
If animal cruelty laws say that you have to slaughter animals according to humane standards, then that needs to apply to all animals.

We have managed to apply our law on child marriage consistently regardless of religious demands and that is a great achievement, why not the others?

We have allowed our fundamental principles in society to be undermined and they will only be further undermined by determined groups who meet no resistance. I wonder if the Equality Act has facilitated this decline.

Very well put, 100% agree

Very interesting- thank you!

Good to hear this has caused a stink in India. Always cheer internally when I see resistance to ingrained misogyny and religious control in countries where women are fighting for their rights.

What's the problem? You got your women's only spaces now the men are getting there's? So only women are allowed private spaces?

Yes. This is where the people who tie themselves in knots to ‘be kind’ which generally affects many other people who don’t subscribe to their world view, but tough, must be thrown into a tailspin. What? There are competing rights and privileges? Whoever has heard of such a thing?

Anyway I’m not keen on respecting people’s cultures if it means compromising your own. If you don’t want to shake my hand because I’m a woman and unclean or offending you in some way, then stay out of my workplace, my home, my community. Because I believe in treating women equally and I’m not going to stay out of the meeting or be treated differently. And because it almost always seems to make the woman symbolically less: at the back, out of sight, not in the meeting when it’s the MEN who can’t control themselves or bear women having a place in society. Fuck that.

0/10

The Eiffel Tower is a public space.

(Toilets at the Eiffel Tower, OTOH, are not.)