We've been getting along so far. Are you sure you want to call me "prescriptive and oppressive" and "incredibly distasteful?" 'cuz she also said But wait - here's the ringer: Yet absolutely no effort whatsoever was made to make room for the idea that maybe, juuuuuuuust maybe, the women who wear burqas in Europe aren't entirely 100% in charge of their own choices. This is an author who argued that once she'd been forced to wear a burqa for three years, she figured out the charms it has when she can wear it to the convenience store rather than changing out of her track gear. Sure - maybe I'll throw on a burqa too. But that's my choice. And in an environment where parents can choose to sit their kids in front of Youtube for eight hours a day without suffering any blowback, a lot of them will. Kid nextdoor watches videos on his phone all day. Has since he was probably six. He's twelve now. He thinks signs are alive and wonders how buses know to stop to pick people up. That's the sort of absentee education you can get when your parents abdicate your entertainment to an algorithm. Me? I was latchkey. nothing but me and cable TV between 3 and 7 pm 5 days a week. Did I get cheated? fuck yeah. But boy howdy if eight-year-old me had four hours of Youtube to stare at every day? I'd probably have a Ben Shapiro tattoo by the age of 9. So it's worth bringing up the author's false equivalency, her easy championing of questionable positions, and her selective argumentation. And if you wanna call that "incredibly distasteful" then we aren't friends anymore.My eyes stung with tears of rage and shame. Most of all, I felt infantilised, stripped of the right to dress how I pleased due simply to the fact that I was a woman, and hence, purely a sexual object to be concealed lest it should inflame desire. For the first few days, it felt almost comical, like some absurd game of macabre fancy dress.
I became anti-social, hardly able to wait until I got home before tearing off the ghastly garb.
Over the next three years, however, my opposition gradually eroded. Initially an ugly burden, the abaya and niqab became a comfort and, eventually, a delight. It was a relief not to have to think about what to wear.
When there is little option in what you can wear, the smallest details start to count.
As the feet were the only part of the body one could legitimately flaunt, a good pedicure was not only necessary, it was an integral part of the ensemble.
Now I live in the UK again and work for a private equity firm, I would never wear it to the office. But, as a fashionable 29-year-old, I sometimes pop it on to go to the corner shop rather than show the world my tracksuit bottoms.
Given the choice, I would never have embraced the niqab. My initial teenage revulsion was inspired by the fact that it was mandatory.
I don't want to argue with you, and I'm sorry I started an argument! I shouldn't have said that you were being "incredibly distasteful". I felt frustrated (and a little confused) that you were discrediting an author I never claimed to defend on an article she wrote nine years ago - especially because I anticipated that my article wouldn't be popular and encouraged people to provide better ones. Maybe this is all my own problem. I don't want you to think I'm saying you were the bad guy here, but I want you to understand why I reacted the way I did. I'm going to keep a better handle on that in the future. You write really great content, I don't want to miss that. To your point that women who wear burqas in Europe aren't entirely 100% in charge of their own choices, my point was that banning women's clothing items will also leave European woman not 100% in charge of their own choices. I obviously don't like that the author (or anyone) has been forced to wear a burka, niqab, or hijab, but I agree that she doesn't seem totally objective about her own experiences. If I'm being reductive here, I'd love to read an article from the opposition if you've got one you prefer. Anyway, I'm sorry I pissed you off by being such an ass. I'll move our next conversation back towards a place in which I don't insult you, and one where we can keep being friends.
Thanks for the apology. I appreciate that. There's a new trend these days to argue that facts are facts and have no bias therefore you argue about the "facts" while studiously ignoring that the selection of facts is another matter. Particularly from the right: You argue that it's been colder in three select cities over the past two years therefore global warming is a hoax because global trends aren't the discussion here why can't you deal with the facts as they are presented? There's also a tendency to answer statistics with narrative because people have an easier time with narrative. "Scientific research indicates that global temperatures are increasing in direct correlation with a rise in global C02 concentrations, therefore C02 causes global warming." "Oh yeah? Well I opened eight bottles of Dr. Pepper in my room and it cooled down so CHECKMATE SCIENCE!" "Screen time" has been a problem since the invention of television. The first arguments that less television is better than more television came out about the time television showed up in the '50s. By calling it "this latest panic" and framing everything in terms of "this is my anecdata of one" is the rhetorical equivalent of saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own." It's something the author does a lot, often to absurd levels (Burqas are great!). Arguing that the style and factual choices of the author are biased is ethos rhetoric - the author does not have the moral or technical standing to present herself as an expert. Unfortunately modern Internet rhetoric is basically tearing each other down for our assembled echo chambers. Sherry Turkle has four books about the effects of screen time - the first written in 1984. Reframing a decades-long corpus of evidence as "the latest moral panic" is the sort of disingenuous move that needs to be called out. So I did.