[lbo-talk] I say banana, you say bikini (was: those exotic Iranians)

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Mon Jun 29 15:31:58 PDT 2009


At 04:40 PM 6/29/2009, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>At 01:22 PM 6/29/2009, ravi wrote:
>
>
>
>>So, if my brown "third
>>world" woman mother has certain preferences, say when it comes to
>>bathing attire, that do not gel with what the West prefers, then she
>>is exoticising herself.
>
>
>Nobody, except you maybe, said anything about gelling with Western
>preferences.
>
>The question is what are the ramifications of legal codifications
>surrounding e.g. clothing and sex/gender segregation.
>
>I don't get why people think it's unusual to ask such questions. Whole
>books have been written about gender, class and race issues looked at
>through the window of the history of swimming in the U.S.

I think what they're trying to say, albeit poorly, is akin to the abortion debate in the u.s.

1. don't like abortion? don't have one. 2. this is very acceptable to most u.s.ers. no one is forcing anyone to have an abortion. 3. the people who get upset are the people who think that, enshrined in public law, is the right to kill teeny cewt cuddwy baybays. the feel that liberal tolerance is being forced on them, these people who believe that murdering teeny cewt cuddwy baybays is wrong. they feel morally obligated to get rid of the law, because otherwise, they are allowing an injustice to be enshrined in law.

With regard to Iran, these lbo'ers, who haven't yet demonstrated that this is the dominant view in Iran, they claim that a bunch of Iranians would be just as horrified that women were given the same rights as men (e.g., their testimony as witnesses is the same as men's), that they are free to dress as modestly or immodestly as they please without, that they are free to take classes in the same rooms with men, with the same instructors (and not in entirely sep. buildings), and so forth. To their mind, there is a larger minority, perhaps even majority of Iranians, who want this morality enshrined in the law.

I agree with Doug that exoticizing is going on:

1. They are assuming (AFAIAC) that Iranians do not have as part of their history a notion of liberal tolerance and if there is such a thing, it's something that only a small minority of privileged, westernized people conceive of -- because of their educations and orientation toward the west. This assumes that, somehow, Iranians couldn't possibly have come up with some notion of (liberal) tolerance way before the West did, that it is unique to the west.

2. They are assuming that are assuming a monolithic culture. They keep insisting that we have to provide evidence or some sort of illustration that the desire for a secular government (where reglious codes (dress, comportment, practice, observance) is secularized as part of one's observance of one's religion, however you see fit, and is not a requirement by secular law.

For those interested, you can see the tension between theocratic attempt to codify religious codes at the same time as principles of liberal tolerance are also called out as animating the political life of the repblic, you can look at the Iranian constitution

For those interested2, a quick skim of veiling in Iran's history reveals that there was five decades where no veiling was required, thus it is fresh in mother's and grandmother's and great grandmother's memories. Moreover, the history of the POLITICAL (not merely religious) uses of the veil during the lead up to to the revolution is instruction. Secular women used it as a sign of resistance to the shah's regime.

For those interested3, as has already been mentioned by me and Michael Pollak, the theocratic views of the current punks in power has always had and continues to have a growing number of clerics who reject the current regime and believe that iran's experiment in theocracy has failed. etc. This has zippo to do with the West, and everything to do with Shi'ite Islam.

shag



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list