RE: The United States of inclusivity
December 7, 2020 at 9:16 am
(This post was last modified: December 7, 2020 at 10:16 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(December 7, 2020 at 1:50 am)Apollo Wrote: Not sure what you mean. I already used an example vis a vis Linda Sarsour or using it as token representation of Muslim women.
When western liberals accept hijab as cultural practice without questioning what it symbolizes and how it is used to push patriarchy and even as gateway to punitive measures and violence across Muslim world, they pander.
The hijab obviously hasn't been accepted uncritically, and it's hardly unique as a product of patriarchy when it comes to clothes.
If someone's otherness is defined by (or signified by) their wearing a hijab to a given culture - then it would make sense to represent people in hijabs. That's exactly the kind of otherness that imagined and real contact has been shown to reduce. Turns out that seeing something strange, alot, makes it less strange or not strange.
As it so happens, pushback against the hijab is not at all an issue of being concerned over women's health, but an exercise in othering muslims using their headgear as we do (and as they do), as a signifier. In the end, it's not really strange - that's just an artifact of us wearing a different set of things over our heads - and it's not as if what we put on our heads and elsewhere is any less a product of a violent patriarchy.
Perhaps we could approach this from the opposite direction. What if we always wrote and made movies about battered women, in hijabs? Anytime you saw a hijab it meant that it was hiding bruises. That when we see a hijab we immediately think that there's a man offscene beating the poor girl. Or perhaps something less extreme, that anytime we see a hijab that must mean that an abusive patriarchal relationship is at play - if not instituted by the principal partners....imposed by their shared culture. That it's inconceivable that a loving man and a loving woman are in a loving relationship...in which she puts a cloth thing on her head. That it's always a horror story, and never a romance. Wouldn't this be a far better example of a bigotry of low expectations?
That's how we used to do it. A girl in middle eastern dress was either a terrorist, a battered wife, or about to get peeled right out of that seductively foreign giftwrapping. That last one will probably stick, but the first two..meh.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
