Jill at Feministe is on a roll. This is frickin brilliant:
And while I’ve written before about the headscarf and the hijab, my opinion that they should be neither required nor outlawed, and my belief that a woman can wear whatever she wants and still be a perfectly autonomous human being, I do have a big problem with the underlying message behind the idea that women should always dress modestly. It essentially comes down to the idea that men are incapable of interacting with women in public, and that women should shoulder the burden of men’s animal nature by covering themselves and not “tempting” them. It’s sort of like blaming grocery stores for alcoholism — I mean, the grocery stores put the beer out there!
This is such a great quote. It was in the middle of a very long (and great) post, so I wanted to highlight it. It’s smart about feminism and women’s choices. It’s smart about rape and contraception and “asking for it” and being punished for choosing it. The hard right has been expanding its anti-choice umbrella to include more and more. To include contraception and “immodest” attire. These rights are at risk. So it’s good to trace it back to the underlying message:
Women must not trick men into having sex. Women are permitted to trick men into marriage in order to have sex, on condition that they be punished by the inequality of marriage and the inability to control how many children they will have.
That’s the Christian Right anti-choice message in a nutshell. Whenever they disguise their agenda as being about “life” or “choice” or “protecting women” or “decency,” run it through the anti-choice message translator and see if it doesn’t change significantly.
That is lovely indeed!