Last month France became the first country in Europe to ban the wearing of the facial veil in public, including in shops and on the street.
Personally I have no problem talking and interacting with someone who has their face covered. The only thing that bothers me is when you can't see their eyes, but then I think about how it doesn't bother me when I talk to someone that wears sunglasses, I suppose it really doesn't matter if anything or everything is covered when someone is talking to me.
Human rights are obviously in question here, but I think the basic question of how people feel about faces being covered up regardless of the reason should be looked at...
1. Women who wear veils over their faces for religious reasons
2. Some women/men cover their face with botox, plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings, etc. still covering part of their natural faces.
3. People with deformities often have prosthetics to cover the entire or parts of the face.
4. People wear surgical masks to avoid sickness
5. People who wear ridiculously large brimmed hats and sunglasses, blocking a good percentage of their face.
6-100. There are so many more examples (like mimes)....
There are so many more examples out there but it comes down to freedom of expression, freedom to live within a culture and still be an individual. Regardless of the reason, be it medicinal, social, religious, or cultural, I don't think that the government should have the right to tell someone to take off whatever is covering their face while walking down the street...well unless it is someone like leatherface, which I would be more than happy if the police arrested leatherface-like-people.
Personally I have no problem talking and interacting with someone who has their face covered. The only thing that bothers me is when you can't see their eyes, but then I think about how it doesn't bother me when I talk to someone that wears sunglasses, I suppose it really doesn't matter if anything or everything is covered when someone is talking to me.
Human rights are obviously in question here, but I think the basic question of how people feel about faces being covered up regardless of the reason should be looked at...
1. Women who wear veils over their faces for religious reasons
There are so many more examples out there but it comes down to freedom of expression, freedom to live within a culture and still be an individual. Regardless of the reason, be it medicinal, social, religious, or cultural, I don't think that the government should have the right to tell someone to take off whatever is covering their face while walking down the street...well unless it is someone like leatherface, which I would be more than happy if the police arrested leatherface-like-people.
There are two issues at work here: what is in the best interest of the people involved, and who has the right to determine it. First, government mandating what is to be worn or not worn treads dangerous waters. France is essentially doing the same thing that many Islamic nations do on the other side of the coin: forcing women to dress a certain way. They have both overstepped their bounds. Second, and more importantly, is the woman better off with or without the veil? Is society? I believe these questions are best answered by the individuals involved, not the government, no?
ReplyDeleteThis topic is briefly mentioned here: http://books.google.com/books?id=VttdxFt4kT4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+moral+landscape&hl=en&ei=-e3LTYXPI9CutwfHtuyDCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CE8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Indeed, those are the two issues, but sometimes I like to think of it without the categories, such as religion, and just as a question of the fundamental objection, which is that the women are covering their face.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely adding that book to my must-read list...in an interview Sam Harris answered a question about the difference between there being no answers in practice and no answers in principle, and why is this distinction important in understanding the relationship between human knowledge and human values?:
There are many questions about human subjectivity—and about the experience of conscious creatures generally—that have this same structure. Which causes more human suffering, stealing or lying? Questions like this are not at all meaningless, in that they must have answers, but it could be hopeless to try to answer them with any precision. Still, once we admit that any discussion of human values must relate to a larger reality in which actual answers exist, we can then reject many answers as obviously wrong. If, in response to the question about the world’s fish, someone were to say, ?There are exactly a thousand fish in the sea.? We know that this person is not worth listening to. And many people who have strong opinions on moral questions have no more credibility than this. Anyone who thinks that gay marriage is the greatest problem of the 21st century, or that women should be forced to live in burqas, is not worth listening to on the subject of morality.
Brilliant.
Who are we to decide what is in the best interest of anyone else (bar children/vulnerable). The question of whether a woman should wear a veil, burqa, hijab, scarf, whatever is not ours to make.
ReplyDeleteIf it is a religious issue, we need to facilitate women breaking out of such restrictions, not force it down their throats, much as women in Irish society over the past few decades have been empowered.
It needs to come from within! If it is about suppression of women in society, whatever society, simply saying ban the burqa will not end such suppression. If anything it makes life more difficult for women.
Also linked to the last point, if it is about Human Rights; Human Rights give women (all individuals) the right to choose, Human Rights do not take away a person’s right to live their life, wear what they want.
The biggest issue about debates around such contentious issues in the EU and US is that the arguments are often not based on fact (it's often based on fear, misunderstandings, exaggerations and/or falsities purported in the media and government) and often do not involve the people that such laws will ultimately affect.
This really should be such a non-issue, but if gov feel the need to ban such garments so as we can see a person’s face, it is going to be cold, cold, winters here from now on as we shouldn't be able to wear hoodies, scarves that come up over our faces and woolly hats that come down round our eyes.
All in all this is a non-issue, or should be there are more important issues at hand than dictating to others what they should wear.