Dutch Ban Burkas

[DanaC]

*Sighs* great. Here we go. We in the West are becoming so intolerant of Moslem culture.

The whole veil/burka debate bemuses me. I understand that it seems a strange and unnatural thing to us, but there are cultures who view our insistence on covering our breasts as equally strange.

For the women raised in this particularly strict form of Islamic culture, covering up is a matter of personal modesty. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to walk down my high street with my breasts exposed, I would almost certainly be arrested, would be considered to be inviting male attention/sexual assault and would more than likely feel naked to the world. Why? there is nothing inherently sexual about breasts; plenty of societies do not share our view on this. Yet, because we have evolved a culture where breasts are considered to be sexual in nature, women are expected (and indeed governed by law) to cover up. If as a teenager, I had decided to wear jeans and nothing else, I have, no doubt my father would have hit the roof, likewise my older brother.....and not just because of the risk of arrest.

For the women in cultures that have evolved to percieve the showing of body and face as immodest, to walk down the high street without covering up must make them feel semi-naked. Just as I would feel uncomfortable having mens' eyes roving over my breasts then so must they feel uncomfortable having those same eyes 'rove' over their face.

We have become so intolerant of this culture, that we no longer see the parrallels of our own. We see the burka and the veil in terms of male oppression and yet we live in a world where many people, male and female, are uncomfortable seeing a woman breast feed.