There isn’t much analogy with kosher practices. Do you know the explicit religious purpose of the hijab? It’s to maintain one’s modesty so as not to tempt men. Fuck that. Men are responsible for their own behavior. The religious purpose of the hijab is straightforward victim-blaming sexism. I won’t support a conservative, backward, oppressive practice just because it’s done by a member of a persecuted religious minority. That’s not white supremacism, that’s a basic commitment to progressive values.
I’m not saying we should ban it. In a free society people should be able to wear what they want. But we absolutely should not support it either.
Do you support high heels? Makeup? The stereotype of women wearing dresses usually, that social standard, that gender norm? It’s not as though lots of things in western society aren’t basically on the same level, or don’t basically stem out of the same set of things, set of religious oppression. The problem isn’t the opposition to those things, it’s the double standard, it’s seeing the muslim version of oppression as being unique because it’s unfamiliar and alien.
If your argument is that dresses are the same level of subjugation as hijabs, you’re either trolling or are completely ignorant. It’s not really even comparable in this day. There is basically no pressure for women to only wear dresses anymore. And it’s also not something that’s imposed by a religious rule. It was more of a general patriarchal society issue, which we also have issues with.
I was gonna write a longass comment in response to this but I’m kinda burnt on that because it’s 11:54 and nobody ever tends to read them, so I’m just gonna link one I previously left that’s pretty much on the same topic. Tl;dr, uhhh, I dunno. Just read the post, I’m just gonna end up saying the same shit at the same length if I try to summarize it.
You could also frame it as liberals being on the side of religious freedom, though, which might include this shit
No one is trying to take anyone’s freedom. But that freedom includes participating in coercive, sexist, patriarchal practices designed around oppression, which is all that religion is. It doesn’t make it a feel good or wholesome story. Religion is inherently bigoted because it enforces obedience through manipulation
In any case, it’s sort of like, people decrying christianity at large as being shitty when realistically they just mean like, evangelicals, or catholics, or mormons, or jehovah’s witnesses, or maybe in some odd cases, quakers and mennonites
No, ALL christianity is shitty. It’s inherently shitty because its entire purpose is to subjugate through threat of eternal damnation (let alone literal threats and violence). There is literally no other purpose. And this isn’t specific to christianity. It’s inherent to all religions
Yeah, I can’t change your mind on any of that then, it’s already made up. Just don’t complain when some Rastafarian or some zen Buddhist monk or some Sikh accuses you of religious discrimination. I don’t really tend to be very religious either, I’m an atheist, but I’m also not willing to pretend that I’m above or totally separate from religion. Secular ideas that we carry around which were invented by philosophers who were religious, scientists who were religious, and their ideas and cultures still carry the taint of that. Ideals that are inseparable from the religious principles on which they were founded. Even without religion, we all carry it’s specter.
I’m also not willing to make the blanket generalization that all religion is bad. I have seen too many people give up things plaguing their life, totally turn around, for that to be the case, and I don’t think that’s a role that you could fill with a “secular alternative” to religion, because such a thing would just end up looking like religion, because it shares all the same practices. There is a psychological strength to ritual even if it’s meaningless in reality, there’s a security there.
The sexist and patriarchal practices which have become deeply integrated into most religions over time have become so through centuries of baggage and cultures which have had those patriarchal norms because of the random circumstance of their material reality as it played with their culture, and it is by happenstance we are screwed with this, and not with something better. I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater though, just because it has ingrained cultural baggage much like everything else you might historically pick up, and I kind of doubt you even could. The Bible has different readings, there’s not just one Bible. There’s different metanarratives imposed on it. Different translations, even, different books included that change it’s fundamental literal form. There’s different historical context that you can throw out to substitute your own values, or choose to include. I’m not going to generalize some like, evangelical protestant version of Christianity to encompass the entire religion, despite it being the shittiest version, much as I won’t do the same for Islam, and I refuse to make that snap value judgement just based on someone’s manner of dress. There are plenty of major cultural movements, secular ones, where the majority of participants are shitty people, that’s basically most things, because people suck and we live in a system which rewards them sucking. I’m not gonna chuck it all out or shit on all of it broadly just because of that.
There isn’t much analogy with kosher practices. Do you know the explicit religious purpose of the hijab? It’s to maintain one’s modesty so as not to tempt men. Fuck that. Men are responsible for their own behavior. The religious purpose of the hijab is straightforward victim-blaming sexism. I won’t support a conservative, backward, oppressive practice just because it’s done by a member of a persecuted religious minority. That’s not white supremacism, that’s a basic commitment to progressive values.
I’m not saying we should ban it. In a free society people should be able to wear what they want. But we absolutely should not support it either.
You don’t have to support it. You just have to shut the fuck up about what other people choose to wear.
Do you support high heels? Makeup? The stereotype of women wearing dresses usually, that social standard, that gender norm? It’s not as though lots of things in western society aren’t basically on the same level, or don’t basically stem out of the same set of things, set of religious oppression. The problem isn’t the opposition to those things, it’s the double standard, it’s seeing the muslim version of oppression as being unique because it’s unfamiliar and alien.
If your argument is that dresses are the same level of subjugation as hijabs, you’re either trolling or are completely ignorant. It’s not really even comparable in this day. There is basically no pressure for women to only wear dresses anymore. And it’s also not something that’s imposed by a religious rule. It was more of a general patriarchal society issue, which we also have issues with.
I was gonna write a longass comment in response to this but I’m kinda burnt on that because it’s 11:54 and nobody ever tends to read them, so I’m just gonna link one I previously left that’s pretty much on the same topic. Tl;dr, uhhh, I dunno. Just read the post, I’m just gonna end up saying the same shit at the same length if I try to summarize it.
I read that
No one is trying to take anyone’s freedom. But that freedom includes participating in coercive, sexist, patriarchal practices designed around oppression, which is all that religion is. It doesn’t make it a feel good or wholesome story. Religion is inherently bigoted because it enforces obedience through manipulation
No, ALL christianity is shitty. It’s inherently shitty because its entire purpose is to subjugate through threat of eternal damnation (let alone literal threats and violence). There is literally no other purpose. And this isn’t specific to christianity. It’s inherent to all religions
Yeah, I can’t change your mind on any of that then, it’s already made up. Just don’t complain when some Rastafarian or some zen Buddhist monk or some Sikh accuses you of religious discrimination. I don’t really tend to be very religious either, I’m an atheist, but I’m also not willing to pretend that I’m above or totally separate from religion. Secular ideas that we carry around which were invented by philosophers who were religious, scientists who were religious, and their ideas and cultures still carry the taint of that. Ideals that are inseparable from the religious principles on which they were founded. Even without religion, we all carry it’s specter.
I’m also not willing to make the blanket generalization that all religion is bad. I have seen too many people give up things plaguing their life, totally turn around, for that to be the case, and I don’t think that’s a role that you could fill with a “secular alternative” to religion, because such a thing would just end up looking like religion, because it shares all the same practices. There is a psychological strength to ritual even if it’s meaningless in reality, there’s a security there.
The sexist and patriarchal practices which have become deeply integrated into most religions over time have become so through centuries of baggage and cultures which have had those patriarchal norms because of the random circumstance of their material reality as it played with their culture, and it is by happenstance we are screwed with this, and not with something better. I wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater though, just because it has ingrained cultural baggage much like everything else you might historically pick up, and I kind of doubt you even could. The Bible has different readings, there’s not just one Bible. There’s different metanarratives imposed on it. Different translations, even, different books included that change it’s fundamental literal form. There’s different historical context that you can throw out to substitute your own values, or choose to include. I’m not going to generalize some like, evangelical protestant version of Christianity to encompass the entire religion, despite it being the shittiest version, much as I won’t do the same for Islam, and I refuse to make that snap value judgement just based on someone’s manner of dress. There are plenty of major cultural movements, secular ones, where the majority of participants are shitty people, that’s basically most things, because people suck and we live in a system which rewards them sucking. I’m not gonna chuck it all out or shit on all of it broadly just because of that.