BURQA-GATE EVOLVES

Burqa-gate notes from all over:

1)  Bitch | Lab has a lovely post up inviting more examination of some of the ideas I and others expressed during Burqa-Gate.  These ideas include among others: (1) the statement that it was the Taliban, rather than U.S. feminists, that made the burka a symbol of oppression; and (2) the idea that it is important to find commonalities among different types of sexist oppression around the globe and commonalities among women's experiences. 

Bitch (hey I read somewhere that you like being called just Bitch!) says that the latter sentiment has been heavily criticized by women of color feminists for the last 30 years.  So apparently when I made that statement that I thought was kind of generic, it went to directly to issues that people at Brownfemipower and their feminist forerunners have been talking about at length for a long time.

Anyway, I thought it was supercool for Bitch to provide a thread at her place to explore those ideas. She was also kind of enough to see both sides of the coin: feminists at Brownfemipower thinking, "We keep saying the same thing over and over again, these people are deliberately ignoring or not acknowledging what we say," but meanwhile not every self-professed feminist has been exposed to this critique. I commented at great length over there and am looking forward to following that thread.

2) Dr. Sue emailed me e-mailed me this article about  Jack Straw, the British Leader of the House of Commons, who criticized the wearing of the veil by saying it was "'a visible statement of separation and difference'' and that he felt much more comfortable dealing with people with their faces uncovered."  Now, see, that's just wrong. 

3)  This thread has turned out to be more satisfactory than I expected.  There is a great discussion there from m. of Scribblepad about the practice of sathi (wives dying on the husband's funeral pyre) during British colonial rule in India, and other issues regarding the aftermath of colonialism.  Also I got to hear more from Bint, who was one of the commenters at Brownfemipower, as to her reasoning behind some of her responses to me.

Comments

[Richard]

Happy-- I can't tell if your "Now see, that's just wrong" comment about Straw's opinion is sarcasm or you're serious.

Straw's is right, of course. We Westerners have a culture too, and we should insist on respect of that culture. So when your dealing with a Westerner Ms. Muslim Woman, take off your damned head cover as we find it offense and belittling to women, even if you think it's pretty spiffy. Brownfemipower is using her perceived victimhood as a sword rather than a shield. I'm surprised you even have time for her silly quibbles.

[The Happy Feminist]

I wasn't being sarcastic. I agree with you that westerners cultural practices are entitled to respect as well. But I fail to see how it is disrespectful of western culture for a woman to wear a veil in a western setting.

It would be disrespectful of western culture, I think, if a Muslim in a western country refused to interact with women who were wearing western dress. I have never had an experience like that nor have I been aware of an occasion when that has happened. Even in Saudi, which has pretty strict rules, western women are not required to adopt the veil and are only expected to dress modestly (i.e. long sleeves and longish skirts).

I don't take offense at the veil -- only its forceful imposition on women. And, if Straw's concern is his belief that women are belittled by the veil, Straw isn't helping by belittling the women further and chiding them for their clothing.

I thought Straw's comment was obtuse. Sure, the veil is a visible statement of difference. But when you are from a country that was once an empire spanning the globe, you are going to have people with differences living among you.

As for Brownfemipower's thread, as I said I didn't like how it went down, but the basic substance of it carried some important points. Some of them I thought were obvious (the veil isn't necessarily about humiliating women -- duh), although perhaps more obvious to me from having grown up in that part of the world. Other points were not obvious to me at all, but I think were interesting and important beyond just Amanda's photoshopped picture.

[anon]

I have a number of problems with Straw's whole commentary, BUT notwithstanding his problematic statements, I DO have similar problems with the whole veil thing.

In the first place, I have lived abroad too. And one of the things I learned was that it was up to me to adjust to the cultural norms of where I was living, not to expect everyone else to change to accomodate me. In that respect, were I to travel to Egypt or some similar place, I would wear a head covering (just as I have worn skirts rather than pants in other places etc). So I fail to see why the reverse respect is not accorded here when in places that do expect to be able to see your face.

My second, very major objection, relates to the covering up of the face. I AM DEAF. I WILL NOT UNDERSTAND SOMEONE WHO INSISTS ON COVERING HER FACE. I am not alone. In the U.S. there are conservatively about 30 million hearing impaired adults, not all of them women.

I do try to make allowances for all kinds of different cultural norms, trust me. But that allowance is made much easier when I see some similar effort being made on the other side as well. Keeping the covering on, especially if it covers the face does not convey that spirit at all.

It's a very tough intersection of points between tolerance, different cultural norms, adaption, respect for others (that has to go both ways) and so on. I do not know what the solution is.

Leaving aside the issue of covering the face (which will always present communication difficulties for people like me for reasons entirely independent of all this) the main problem I have with covering the female body up is this: if I knew that there was no pressure, no requirement, nothing whatsoever for women who still chose to wear a head covering, then I'd have no trouble with it. But when I read that women are being killed for not wearing some type of externally approved covering, I cannot see the dress in neutral terms. And I think as long as that's true, it cannot be so seen.

[Bitch]

Bitch (hey I read somewhere that you like being called just Bitch!)

LOL. It never mattered to me terribly much in the beginning. The ppl who read me, had been reading me for years, so the naming of the blog and its design and imagery were all this huge insider's joke. but of course it was the internets (tm) and ppl started reading who hadn't read me for years -- and the reactions were fun.

[Richard]

>>> Happy wrote: But I fail to see how it is disrespectful of western culture for a woman to wear a veil in a western setting.

You don’t think it’s disrespectful in a free society to wear symbols of oppression? I disagree. To me it’s as offensive as a guy walking down the streets of a New York Jewish neighborhood with a swastika branded on his forehead, or children trick-or-treating in Alabama on Halloween in KKK costume. You see, I don’t care if Muslim women don’t think of it as an oppressive symbol. That’s their problem when they choose to enter a western setting. If they want to respect our values (do they really?) then lose the symbolic head covering or stay indoors.

>>> Happy wrote: …the veil isn't necessarily about humiliating women

Oh right. And the flag of the Confederate States of America isn’t necessarily about keeping the black man down. I mean, it's only a celebration of southern “culture,” right? Your liberal inconsistencies are firmly in place, Happy.

>>> Happy wrote: Straw isn't helping by belittling the women further and chiding them for their clothing.

Oh yes! Heavens forbid he offend any Muslim women. So insensitive of him.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

The Taliban made the burqa a powerful symbol of women's oppression.

And

The US spent years trying to overthrow the communist government in Afghanistan. The US mostly backed the Taliban's opponents, but the fact remains that if the US hadn't been so keen on fighting the Soviet Union by proxy in Afghanistan, and later just fighting the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban might never have come to power.

So, the Taliban made the burqa synonymous with coercion, violence, and misogyny, and the US helped the Taliban come to power.

What does this have to do with Photoshopping a burqa onto Jessica Valenti?

If we agree that the burqa is a symbol of oppression, doesn't the US's role in bringing about the forced cocooning of Afghan women make Amanda's analogy all the more apt? Her point was that American moralists are a lot like the Taliban in many ways. The historical fact is that American moralists actually helped cause the Taliban takeover.

The takehome message of the cartoon was that these repressive ideas about women's bodies pervade the entire world and that you can't just "other" the US or the Taliban and insist that woman-shaming in George Bush's America is qualitatively different from woman-shaming under the Taliban.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

The veil is not the same thing as a burqa. These are burqas. These are different hijabs from around the world. The vast majority of Muslim women who cover their hair don't cover their faces. Even Iran doesn't legally require women to wear a face veil with their hijab. (I'm not excusing any kind of legal compulsion, but it's important to remember how extreme the Taliban's policies are compared to the rest of Islam.)

Burqas are portable tents with screens over the eyes. They are like diving bells. You can drive in a veil, you can direct traffic in a headscarf, you can lead a guerilla army with your hair covered. Burqas aren't just a fashion statement, they are a form of physical restraint that is designed to be incompatible with an active role in the public sphere. Imagine trying to work in a lab, or supervise a construction project, or plead a case in court wearing a burqa.

I don't think the creators of this graphic appreciate the irony of choosing Rosie the Riveter in a headscarf to epitomize the burqa-free way of life.

[The Happy Feminist]

Richard, wow. This is mind-boggling. Consider this:

-- First, do you really think that the veil is always a symbol of oppression? What makes you such an expert on veiling and its cultural connotations? Why do you assume that the veil means oppression to the women who wear it wholly without coercion? Is a veil inherently oppressive? Might some women find it more comfortable out of habit? Or out of modesty? (As a modest dresser myself, I don't find modesty oppressive unless it is coerced or held to be a moral imperative.) Might some women prefer the veil because of the privacy it affords?

-- Second, don't you think you are being a little paternalistic in your attitudes towards women who wear the veil? Would you try to dictate western women's behavior to them if you decided that they were engaging in customs that are oppressive to them? For example, would you tell a western women that you are offended if she styles herself as "mrs." because it connotes that her status is only "wife of" and all the second class citizenship that entails? Why is this any of your business?

-- Third, don't you think forcing someone to dress how you choose is in itself oppressive? I mean to me when I think of veiling as oppressive, it is because women are being FORCED against their will to veil. Forcing someone against their will not to veil seems equally oppressive. It would be like me being forced to wear a thong on a beach in Rio even though I would feel naked and uncomfortable so.

And the flag of the Confederate States of America isn’t necessarily about keeping the black man down. I mean, it's only a celebration of southern “culture,” right? Your liberal inconsistencies are firmly in place, Happy.

Who is being inconsistent? You're talking about YOU being offended by the people you deem to be oppressed! That's just plain weird! I honestly don't get it.

(And the final irony is: I think you may be saying what people on the Brownfemipower thread thought I was saying. But I never said anything remotely like this, nor would it have crossed my mind.)

[The Happy Feminist]

Lindsay, that is definitely how I read Amanda's picture and that was the point I was making on the Brownipower thread, the point which seemed to anger people (and a lot of other people were making that point too at Pandagon and elsewhere). And I still think that is a legitimate reading of the picture. I think it is the reading that matches Amanda's intentions and makes the most sense in context of the Althouse matter.

But, the more I think about it the more I can see that if you're a woman who chooses and identifies with the burqa (or some other form of traditional non-western dress), you're going to read the picture differently. And it might feel like the picture is ridiculing your preferred form of dress and by extension ridiculing you for going along with that form of dress. I don't think that's a totally off-the-wall conclusion to reach which is why the shorthand burka = total gender oppression can insult the very people we think are being oppressed.

CAVEAT: I know there are women, including feminist women, who choose other types of veiling besides the burka. I actually do not know whether there are women who voluntarily choose the burka but I assume there are for the same reason Muslim feminists have at times adopted other types of veiling.

[Natalia]

Jack Straw specifically mentioned the face-veil. I agree with him. I think that covering your face in public, in the West, can make other people feel uncomfortable and even insulted. I don't think it's necessarily meant as such, but communication standards around here are just not the same, in my opinion.

I wrote an essay about this here.

[The Happy Feminist]

Right, per Lindsay's comment, I am using "veil" as a shorthand for any type of garment that covers the face.

[The Happy Feminist]

Wow - Natalia, that's a really nuanced essay. You're right that I may have made this too simple. I am not a huge expert on what it is like behind a veil, but at the same time I am a westerner who is very used to interacting with women who wear the veil so the idea of being uncomfortable with it didn't occur to me.

I am still baffled by Richard's idea of being offended by someone you deem to be oppressed. If it's just, "I feel a power imbalance when I can't see the other person's face," that's a different issue and actually goes against the whole idea of a veil as oppressive.

I also still vote strongly against requiring women to unveil (except for things perhaps like passport photos and such where security issues are involved).

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

But, the more I think about it the more I can see that if you're a woman who chooses and identifies with the burqa (or some other form of traditional non-western dress), you're going to read the picture differently.

I'm sure there are people who feel that way, and I don't mean to discount their feelings. However, it's telling that the burqa tradition has virtually no currency outside violent patriarchies in Afghanistan. If you're going to have a burqa-wearing society in the modern world, you need brutal religious police to enforce universal concealment through routine brutality. I suspect the vast majority of women who actually wear burqas would acknowledge that they don't have a choice. Even if they don't mind the garment, it's a palpable fact that most of the world's burqa's are worn in societies where men exert legal and physical control over women. Maybe some of these burqa-wearers would continue the tradition voluntarily, but in a free society the burqa would probably go the way of the mandatory whalebone corset in less than a generation. Unless you really believe that women need to be physically isolated and restrained, there's no reason to choose a burqa over a less restrictive alternative.

I found it interesting that several participants in this debate decided that the judgments of POC bloggers carried more weight simply in virtue of their color. It's a little silly for non-Muslim non-burqa wearers to vehemently denounce others for impinging upon the feelings of hypothetical empowered Muslim burqa-wearers in Afghanistan. It was downright absurd that Amanda felt pressured into apologizing either to the hypothetical MBWIA or to the WOC bloggers and their allies who suspected that these MBWIA might exist and felt contingently offended on their behalf.

[Richard]

>>> You're talking about YOU being offended by the people you deem to be oppressed!

The La Shawn Barber piece you posted earlier offended us both because she had embraced the oppression of her own sex. Women who voluntarily wear the burqa in a western setting are embracing a strongly oppressive symbol for westerners. Yes, I find it offensive.

>>> Don't you think you are being a little paternalistic in your attitudes towards women who wear the veil? [ … ] …don't you think forcing someone to dress how you choose is in itself oppressive?

No, because the issue you raised was what one should do voluntarily in a western setting to show respect for the culture. I would “dictate” or “force” nothing. That is also one of our values.

>>> Do you really think that the veil is always a symbol of oppression?

I rarely agree with “always” or “never” statements. If your standard for offense is whether something is always offensive, then you’ve effectively eliminated all standards. Remember a couple years ago, Prince William(?) got in hot water because he wore a Nazi uniform to a party? Highly symbolic. Now is a Nazi uniform always offensive?

>>> It would be like me being forced to wear a thong on a beach in Rio even though I would feel naked and uncomfortable so.

Since I've never seen you, I don't know if this is something I should comment on, but the issue here isn’t about fashion, it’s about strong negative symbolism. Westerners, for reason not altogether unreasonable, find the burqa to be a symbol of female oppression. Muslims should respect that sentiment when they are in a western setting.

[Richard]

After thought: To be quite honest, I'm not really one to get offended much. I admit to being a bit dramatic here for argument's sake. Keeps things lively, and gets Happy's panties in a twist. But I can understand why westerners might be suspect of religious traditions that appear to be oppress people. We haven't ourselves as a society exactly got over our Puritan hangups, and so its disheartening to see a growing culture with an even thicker soup to swallow. I don't buy the moral relativism implied in much of what I've read here. There is much in the Muslim world to be concerned about.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Richard, standards of personal modesty aren't just about fashion. Try a more extreme example. I'll assume you feel comfortable being naked in your home shower. So, what about in a locker room? Or on a public beach? Or working out at the gym? A co-ed gym? On the street? At work?

Rationally, what people do (or don't) wear makes no difference, unless they need protective garb for some specific task. Human bodies are human bodies. Exposed flesh is not radioactive or otherwise dangerous. Each person should be allowed to choose how much of their own body they wish to reveal.

That said, every single one of us is powerfully conditioned as to how much of our body we can show and in what context. If you come from a society where "decent" women cover their hair, you may feel exposed or vulnerable if you are suddenly expected to uncover your hair in public. It's not just a fashion statement, it's about feeling comfortable in the public sphere. You can't just snap your fingers and make people comfortable on a nude beach or with their hair down. If you really want everyone to participate in public life, you've got to subordinate some of your own preconceptions and let people dress in ways that make them feel comfortable.

Also, covering means different things to different people. Many feminist Muslim women who choose to cover say that they interpret the gesture as a sign of solidarity with their fellow Muslims. I respect that. Why should the ultra-conservatives decide what it means to be covered or uncovered? I'd like to get married some day, and I don't give a damn whether Christian fundamentalists want me to or not. When I do, it will be for my own reasons. The fact that fundies approve or disapprove is irrelevant to me. They're not that powerful.

[The Happy Feminist]

I am arguing from a position of not quite knowing whether anyone voluntarily wears the burka or not. I can only speak to other types of covering garments and therefore throughout this discussion I have assumed that there are voluntary burka-wearers out there, as there are for other types of veils. But per my caveat and as Lindsay points out that could be quite wrong.

And yeah, the dynamics of the discussion didn't make any sense to me. After all, it's not clear to me that either side of the discussion knows how Afghani women would tend to react. For all we know, a lot of them (bearing in mind that they are individuals likely to have different opinions) might say, "What the eff are you people nattering on about? Do you think we care about this crap? We've been through hell and worrying about a stupid photograph is not on our priority list!"
Or some of them might even say, "That Althouse character reminds us of the Taliban!"

Still, I can see how the use of the burka as a convenient shorthand for oppression in a discussion about a bloggers' lunch would seem disturbingly flip and disrespectful from the perspective of someone like my blog-friend m. who sometimes wears traditional Indian garments.

[The Happy Feminist]

The La Shawn Barber piece you posted earlier offended us both because she had embraced the oppression of her own sex.

Right. She was applying her views to other women -- those women who might run for President.

Women who voluntarily wear the burqa in a western setting are embracing a strongly oppressive symbol for westerners.
But, if it is a symbol of oppression, it is a symbol of their OWN oppression. So if a woman embraces something I consider a symbol of her oppression but which she does not consider a symbol of her oppression, there is no basis for me to be offended. If the woman were advocating a requirement that all woman must wear the veil upon pain of arrest or beating, that would be a different story.

That's different than the example of the Confederate Flag or the swastika which, when displayed is an endorsement of the oppression of other people.

I don't buy the moral relativism implied in much of what I've read here.
I am not a moral relativist. I just don't happen to think that there are any moral absolutes relative to the amount of covering one voluntarily chooses to wear. If we were talking about people infibulating their daughters or engaging in honor killings, this would be a very different discussion.

[The Happy Feminist]

None of this is to say that there aren't major problems in Europe in terms of the isolation and radicalization of immigrant communities. But I just don't see any reason why women's voluntary dress should be considered part of the problem.

[The Grouch]

So when your dealing with a Westerner Ms. Muslim Woman, take off your damned head cover as we find it offense and belittling to women, even if you think it's pretty spiffy.

Presumably, Richard grows a beard and wears a skullcap when he's dealing with Muslims. Presumably he also would like secular American women to eschew pants and "immodest" skirts around fundamentalist Christians, as they find those things offensive--or would it be the fundamentalists who have an obligation to wear miniskirts rather than offend the secularists? Incoherence is soo hard to deal with.

I think you make good points, Happy, and I'm also appreciating Lindsay Beyerstein's comments on this matter. I think they're very insightful.

[Richard]

Grouch— What is it about symbolism you don’t understand? The burqa is a heavily iconic piece of clothing with strong religious and political connotations. It is culturally loaded with the same kind of intensity associated with, say, a Ku Klux Klan hood, a swastika armband, or a chastity belt. You actually attempt to compare it culturally to skirts or pants? Hmm. Let’s just say not your best thinking.

[Arwen]

Lindsay: I've read your comments here there and everywhere with agreement, and yet I still agree with Brownfemipower. I don't think I'm questioning the fact that the burqa was mandated in Afghanistan and is part and parcel of the Taliban's brutal treatment of women; and I cannot speak for others, but I don't feel that's the main jist of the criticism.

The "choice" aspect to me isn't about the fact that women were forced into burqas in Afghanistan, but instead is about the whole subtext behind the use of the burqa as a symbol for the most heinous of oppressions. The Burqa-Clad Woman/The Stepford Wife. We don't and can't know - exactly BECAUSE of oppression and patriarchy and colonialization - where the women of Afghanistan would have taken their quest for emancipation. We collapsed a probability wave. When the first NATO bomb fell.

I think most of us can agree that women have withstood and made room for themselves and fought back in all sorts of brutal cultures in ways that have made sense at the time. Or at least I agree with myself. There are a lot of women fighting hard the world over; being imprisoned and tortured for their convictions, and yet coming back out of the corner to go another round. (I do a lot of Amnesty International writing campaigns. *g*)

But Afghani women's actions have been necessarily changed by NATO, and not because NATO cares about the women of Afghanistan. Even if you and I and everyone on these blogs is against the war with all our protesting voices, the war itself has reframed the issue of the burqa to do with WESTERN geo-political aims, and the women of Afghanistan are again dodging bullets thrown by an externally mandated tune. So the burqa's significance may have changed because everything changed wrt the governance and stability of Afghanistan.

I can only imagine myself in a burqa. That is all any of us can do: and we've seen various interpretations of what that might look like. This is the problem, of course, since we all grew up with very different cultural influences. What the burqa would mean to us individually is also a Rorschach. Imagine it, for a minute; the claustrophobia, the fear outside, the internal space. Imagine that for a year, for two. Even here in the West I think we'd all freak out differently. But you would still be you, and I would still be me, and we might get very creative with how we lived our existences.

I think it is possible that within Afghanistan the burqa has come to have multiple layers of meaning, as women adapt - for smuggling, or for identity protection while fomenting rebellion. You know? The problem is that we cannot hear the voices from inside those burqas in part because our governments have called the tune. To then use the voiceless image - because it is hidden in the panopoly of *changing contexts* - is a double absorbation of a people as a symbol. First by the Taliban, and then by the US.

(Or the USSR, US, Taliban, US. Or however you want to break it down...)

If *I* were in Afghanistan now, would I be fighting the Taliban who put me in a burqa, or would I be using the burqa to smuggle guns to defeat the Canadian armies whose raids killed my son? I don't know the answer to that; but I assume that no matter how raped, beaten, and abused I was, I'd have an opinion. An action. And in a war time, that action would probably be shifting.

To use, then, the shifting realities of the burqa is othering, because it draws on the static context of male to female oppression. But that's not what's going on in Afghanistan; it's one of many intersecting issues. The burqa is not historical; it is actual. So using it as a static symbol (rather than dialoguing about it, as has happened afterward), radically oversimplifies the issues women in war are facing.

Patriarchy's bad: but there's a balance. I would blame no one for preferring patriarchy to having their kids getting their heads blown off. In totalitarianism, if one keeps one's head down, there may be more hope than if there's a war raging outside the door and raining from the sky.

But of course, the worst is that it's a propoganda symbol being used by the Right Wing and they're crazy. Do you know SCTV? My husband always said that they'd get into a point of not really being funny because they were too close to that which they were parodying. I think that's the other part of the case in this original issue. Not exactly dripping with irony, is the Islamic woman oppressed by the Islamic man, in this context of political propoganda. I do not accuse Amanda, certainly, of wishing to buy into that propoganda, but I think the image was suffering from SCTV syndrome.

[Arwen]

And also; I did lose my cool when someone suggested that having CDs stolen out of their car was like being violently raped. I'm not entirely convinced that Althouse when taken reducto ad absurdum points in a direct line to the Taliban.

[Louise]

Well done, Arwen- and by the way, CONGRATS! Makes me proud to share a Canadian heritage...And for having that heritage and well as a family tree mostly made up of New England puritans, I have absolutely no personal experience with burqas. (although I do have a traditional Indian outfit for special occasions) I have had coworkers and friends from India and Pakistan and from talking to them, some understanding of their views and life. SOME. Not alot. A quick story:

My Indian friend divorced her husband, passed her citizenship exam, bought herself a zippy little sportscar, and wore Indian clothing under her lab coat every day. She incorporated being an American to include the parts of her former life that SHE wanted to keep. Along came a new coworker to the lab, an Indian man. He was a good worker, polite to all- EXCEPT for my Indian friend, who he treated with such rude disdain! Bossed her around terribly (polite in English; rude in Indian)- but never when a supervisor was around to see or hear him. I asked her one time WHY he did this and WHY she put up with it- she replied that he was outraged that she was betraying her country and heritage with her behavior, and that he saw it as a disrespectful insult TO HIM, as an Indian man. Because she still had residual guilt for living her life on her own terms, she said nothing to him or our supervisors. Culturally, she was still "bowed down". I've never forgotten that conversation; it impacted me and made me see how fortunate I was to grow up in an open culture.

[Natasha]

I have a thought about the Jack Straw position, which might fit in here somewhere....

What he has said is that he invites people who arrange a meeting with him in his constituency to consider removing the niqab (covering both nose and mouth). He is not asking them to remove the head veil, the hijab.

Since it's a request, which he makes so that he can "see what the other person means, and not just hear what they say", and since he still conducts the meeting even if the woman says 'no thank you', I'm not sure that it's that controversial. In fact, you could say that he is improving the woman's chances of getting her point across, and therefore giving her greater personal agency (though, granted, it's not so nice to think of a male politician holding the invitation keys to a female citizen's power; but presumably female politicians might conceivably ask so too. Also, in these UK 'constituency surgeries' the tradition is that the MP is at the service of the constituents for 1-2 days a week. This may be relevant). It is true that he's in a greater position of power, and that, yes, he wouldn't ask a Christian woman to wear a thong. But I suppose there's a question of reasonable boundaries, cultural and physical. I'd say asking someone to wear a thong exceeds a reasonable cultural and physical boundary. But inviting them (voluntarily), to consider (in a private room) removing face-coverings is, I think reasonable. I don't think there's any doubt at all that the women are free to say 'no', and that Straw would continue the meeting.

I don't claim to be an expert, but I think this point hasn't yet been made here.

Thank you for the opportunity to join the thread...