As a woman who grew up in Iran, I understand why many Iranian women react so vehemently and viscerally to this gesture of solidarity. Encounters with the morality police were (and probably still are) an all-consuming part of women’s everyday lives in Iran. I completely understand their experience of the hijab as an instrument of state coercion and gendered restriction.
But as an anthropologist of the United States, I also understand the danger of importing that experience into Western contexts uncritically; without reckoning with what the same sign signifies in a different context. In the West, the hijab often indexes membership in marginalized Muslim minorities. Therefore, uncritical, universal anti-hijab critiques can easily reinforce Islamophobic and racist discourses.
The problem is not that Iranian women’s experience of the hijab is false. It is that the hijab’s meaning is neither portable nor universal: its social and political meaning changes with context.
As for this particular gesture of solidarity, these French women are correctly recognizing that the policing of women’s bodies takes different forms. Forcing a woman to wear the hijab and forcing her to remove it are different expressions of the same underlying claim: that others may decide what she can or cannot do with her body. A woman’s attire is hers to choose and so are all her other decisions concerning her bodily autonomy.
I’ll keep reminding you guys: I had an accident in 2016 on my way to write an exam and was the only seriously injured person. I was at the clinic waiting for the nurses to dress my wounds when I overheard one of the other survivors telling people that god had saved her by using my body as a shield. My bloodied body, of course.
You guys don’t know how callous and insensitive your “testimonies” sound until you’re on the other side of them. You make your god sound like a uniquely evil psychopath. And you’ll never accept that you’re indirectly arguing that your god is indeed neither just nor all-powerful. If your survival is proof that god is real, then for the people who weren’t so lucky it is proof that he isn’t.
A strange way to talk about human life.
Unpopular opinion, museums should not have to close bc lack of funding. My taxes should be going to them and not some foreign country to bomb civilians
This is such a nice, thoughtful thing to do and I feel it's more common among the older generation. A totally unprompted, sincere letter encouraging someone.
thats it for our year
since the beginning the fans have always been there giving us energy, supporting through the ups and downs and i really appreciate all of you
we put in coutless hours and unfortunately fell short of expectations and our own standards. despite not having results to show for it, i grew a lot this year as a person, teammate, and as a player, i have my coaching staff and teammates to thank for keeping me accountable.
next year i will be better, no matter what obstacles may lay ahead Im determined to lift that trophy one day
cya next time✌️
Being part of a generation that was told “Wikipedia is not a source” makes it genuinely baffling to me that jobs are now telling people to just use ChatGPT for everything.
who fucking cares man he’s been impeached indicted accused charged none of this shit matters it’s all empty words and circus acts nothing ever fucking happens
Btw here’s Ben Shapiro talking about how he wanted to make a documentary about men playing in women’s sports but was unable to because it doesn’t happen