Hi Janie.

Yes, you make very good points here.

It is true, there is not symmetry in Western countries. Although perhaps it is a matter of degree. Certainly a woman in a hijab in a Western country, who lives on her own and is not pressured by a family, is not too different from a non-Muslim woman on a beach who covers her breasts because society expects it.

The beach analogy is a good one, although I disagree that “There’s nothing inherently sexual about breasts”. Bodies are innately sexual — and not just breasts. When I was a little boy — before preschool age — I recall seeing a book on my mother’s bookshelf that had a woman’s leg on the cover. The image stimulated me greatly, and I hid the book under my bed. I liked to look at it, and I did not know why.

That was not social training — I was too young. My brain had hard-wired circuits to recognize female features, just as a squirrel has hard-wired circuits to recognize nuts.

But I think you are right, that if someone decides to wear a covering purely for their own reasons, they should be allowed to. I am only concerned about practices — like covering one’s breasts — that once they become commonplace, they become a norm, and then are expected — and then can be used to subjugate women or as a symbol for thinking of women as inherently different from men. The hijab is like this in many Muslim countries: if you don’t wear it, you can be targeted, and it is in those countries that women often have less freedom.

One has freedom to not wear a hijab as long as only a minority wears it. If everyone wears one, we lose the freedom, and the misogynist religious police come after you to “put you in your place” — in “the name of God”.