Man punches nurse for removing wife's burqa during c-section

[Ms. Toad]

178. The right of self determination for all people is a core value for me

It is the reason I entered the conversation in the first point. I responded to a post which grossly mischaracterized concerns I** raised, about sexist and religiously intolerant comments being made recently on DU, by insinuating that my belief that some women do choose to follow practices that others see as patriarchal means that I believe all women wearing burqas are doing so by choice. That is just nonsense - I believe all women to choose - and it beyond dispute that many women are forced by their husbands, families, religious communities, or governments into practices in which they do not want to participate. They deserve our support to free themselves from the enforced participation in those practices. If you feel like doing a search, you can easily find places I have said just that.

But a natural consequence of my belief that everyone has the right to choose is that I also have to support her choices even when she makes a choice I fundamentally disagree with - and I don't get to dismiss her as merely the puppet of patriarchy just because I can't imagine making the same choice. Making comments describing women who make such choices as "bobble-heads" is both sexist and religious intolerance, both of which are violations of the TOS of DU. I will continue to point that out.

But, as to where you have tried to take this conversation, if we don't even agree that every individual has the right to determine what their religion requires of them, I am just not interested in having a discussion about whether society has a legal or moral right to impose restrictions on the expression of those beliefs. It is just as pointless as having a a conversation about women's rights with someone who insists that any woman who says it was her choice to be a stay at home mom is merely a bobble-head front for her husband; that she could not possibly have made that choice.

So if you want to have a substantive conversation about the burqa laws in France, or elsewhere, it has to start with the premise that we don't get to decide for others what the expression of their beliefs look like - whether that is wearing burqas, or polygamy, or any of the other practices you have dismissed as "not religious." Once we have that as a baseline, I'm happy to discuss whether it is appropriate, or not, for society to regulate those practices. I'm just not going to have a conversation that is based, at its core, on intolerance for religious self determination

I'm still not going to discuss tangents with you, but just to let you know how wildly off base you are as to whether I have ever spent any time thinking about native rights, I am on the national board of an organization with many projects - one of which (for at least the past 30 years) has been working to change US laws relating to prior, and ongoing, interference with the rights of native people to self determination. I have also spent a minor amount of time with some of the indigenous people in Australia, specifically the Northern Territory.

**The comment was not specifically directed to me, as far as I know. It was, however, intended to disparage concerns I have been raising, by grossly mischaracterizing the concerns.