Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

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> demonstrate the same for non Muslim terrorist

Yes of course the correlation between patriarchal control and depersonalized violence (terrorism) is established well beyond islam. It's a fact that has been pointed out time and time again by feminist scholars and activists.

For example, the Montreal Polytechnique massacre was downplayed/depoliticized by the media as the work of deranged madman, but has long been understood by more pointy spirits to be a political act of femicide. Other examples of this correlation are given in Contrapoint's popular education video about incels, which you can find on Youtube and i cannot recommend enough to understand that mindset.

> Muslim (...) certainly create stricter life for females

Source? Here in France, i don't know of any evidence that patriarchal control is stricter/stronger in muslims than in atheists/jews/christians/hindus/etc. In fact, it is possible it would be less prevalent with muslims, because muslim expressions of patriarchy are more scrutinized/opposed than the presentable white-rapist-in-a-suit variant that occupies every government, police station and corporation here in the global north.

Patriarchy was established long before islam was a thing, and is one of the oldest and most insidious systems of domination. Your statement linking islam specifically to patriarchy seems based on anecdotal data, just like i could produce anecdotal data of muslim feminists proudly dismantling patriarchy.

> Here in France, i don't know of any evidence that patriarchal control is stricter/stronger in muslims than in atheists/jews/christians/hindus/etc

It seems obvious to me that there's an association there. For example, compulsory hijabs only exist in muslim countries.

> muslim expressions of patriarchy are more scrutinized/opposed

Maybe in France, towards French muslims. I don't think that the muslim world cares at all what western countries have to say on the topic, though.

> compulsory hijabs only exist in muslim countries

Yet many muslim countries don't make it compulsory. But you will find regulation of women's dress in most other non-muslim countries, including in France where despite separation of church and State (at least on paper) in 1905, until at least 2010 it was illegal for women to wear trousers.

To take another example from my own country, it is highly arguable that police harassing women in burkini to dress less is just as much patriarchal as Iran's moral police harassing women to dress more.

> Maybe in France, towards French muslims.

I talked about France because that's the situation i know best, from first-hand experiences. However, it's also true on an international level, and there's an entire field of feminist studies dedicating to studying this "imperial feminism" phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_feminism

For example, the somewhat-recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have often been portrayed on the international scene as a liberation of women. The same argument was used during the french colonization of Algeria. In fact, not all examples of such pattern claim to be feminist: throughout the history of colonization, "educating" the "less-civilized" people has been a recurring theme.

> including in France where despite separation of church and State (at least on paper) in 1905, until at least 2010 it was illegal for women to wear trousers.

You surely know that this is one of this silly law that was in place but nobody even thought of enforcing it (of they knew about it at all). It is like the law in some US city where b it is forbidden to attach a giraffe to a lamp pole.

I presume you are French. If so, can you state that the freedom of women in a cité is the same as in the proverbial Versailles I mentioned earlier?

> nobody even thought of enforcing it

That's definitely not true. It was enforced in most places until a few decades ago, and despite the law having been repelled, some variant of it is still enforced in many jobs. In big IT consulting firms just as in the sales/services industry, a woman is expected to wear makeup and a female suit (tailleur).

> the freedom of women in a cité is the same as in the proverbial Versailles

Context for outsider readers: in the french context, a "cité" has come to mean overpopulated suburban area where the government parks all the undesirables: immigrants, muslims... There are some white people in the cités but usually they're not french (or their parents were not when they moved in). Especially since Sarkozy, there's been a growing tendency in mainstream media and far-right propaganda to designate these neighborhoods as lawless places out of which nothing good can come, and where women are supposedly more oppressed than in the rest of our deeply sexist french society.

I cannot say anyone's freedom is "the same" as someone else, because we have different cultural backgrounds and aspirations. What i can say is that patriarchy is very much alive all across France. So i'm not saying there's no codes in regards to how a woman "should" behave in a popular district.

However, contrary to popular (racist) expectations, there may be more leeway for a lower-class non-white woman in france in 2021 than for a daughter of a white bourgeois family from Versailles. Indeed, despite a potential pressure from tradition, a proletarian woman will usually (there are exceptions) be encouraged to study and find a better job than her parents. I've rarely hung out with bourgeois people, but from what i could see they had less to gain, and were more preoccupied with founding a family than anything else. Take it with a grain of salt because that's anecdotal data.

Also, you may be surprised how women dress in popular districts. It's not all niqabs, you know. Of course every district has a different culture and tolerance in this regard, but i can tell you some women dress just as "sexy" as in big cities like Marseille or Toulouse. Of course, strong independent women from popular districts is never what the media will portray, unless it's intended as a full-blown contrast to their surroundings.

> That's definitely not true. It was enforced in most places until a few decades ago

??? The law was from 1800 and nobody really knew about it until 2013 when it was abolished. Please provide me one case where the law was applied.

> In big IT consulting firms just as in the sales/services industry, a woman is expected to wear makeup and a female suit (tailleur).

The same way a man is expected to wear a suit.

> However, contrary to popular (racist) expectations, there may be more leeway for a lower-class non-white woman in france in 2021 than for a daughter of a white bourgeois family from Versailles. Indeed, despite a potential pressure from tradition, a proletarian woman will usually (there are exceptions) be encouraged to study and find a better job than her parents. I've rarely hung out with bourgeois people, but from what i could see they had less to gain, and were more preoccupied with founding a family than anything else. Take it with a grain of salt because that's anecdotal data.

Let me give you the point of view of someone who i) knows well the cités and ii) knows very, very well the "bourgeois" population of Versailles (as you call it).

You seem to be French so you may have actually gone in a cité. I recommend La Courneuve which I know well , or Epinay. The women I actually know from there are under a TREMENDOUS pressure to adhere to the rules of the Muslim population.

Now have a look at the Versailles high school Hoche. In the top 5 schools in France, the essence of "bourgeoisie". Have a look at how the people there behave and how diverse they are. Mostly white, but also Asian and Indian. If you knew that population a bit more you could see how they behave - and they behave perfectly, surprisingly especially towards minorities.

But to know that you have to actually know these people. And also know people from the cités, closely.

> The law was from 1800 and nobody really knew about it (...) The same way a man is expected to wear a suit.

You're correct. My phrasing suggested that this law was enforced, when in fact i meant that the moralistic content of the law were applied, despite most people not even knowing about the law. You seem to suggest dress control is not specifically a gendered thing, however i've been on more than one job where "casual" dressing was permitted for all but that did not include trousers for women, nor did it dispense them from wearing makeup.

> The women I actually know from there are under a TREMENDOUS pressure to adhere to the rules of the Muslim population.

And what would that be? I'm not doubting there's a bunch of social expectations, but i sincerely doubt they're greater in popular districts than anywhere else. For example, when you refer to "the rules of the muslim population", what would that be? Rules made up by a bigger brother who's never read any religious text? A way of life suggested by the imam? I doubt your case, not because i fundamentally disagree that women's lives are being controlled, but because there is a very racist emphasis on "muslims" trying to control women, which is completely disconnected from reality of french society where all women are being controlled.

First, because as i said previously, it's an excuse made up to put sexism from other cultures/classes under the carpet. Second, because most of the accusations of sexism against the muslim community are baseless. As an example of that, there is a weird fascination in france against the muslim veil (while a christian veil never raised any question). However, nowhere in the Quran is written that a woman must wear the veil, and most muslims are aware of that (atheists and christians, less so). Some muslim parents force their daughter to wear a veil, like some christian parents force theirs to wear a cross around the neck. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but its far from the "danger to our civilization" that the far-right makes it appear to be.

I can't say i've never met women who were under social pressure from their neighborhood. And some of them were muslims from popular districts. But i can't say that scheme is typical of muslim-majority popular districts, as i've heard exactly the same stories/complaints from women of different classes and cultures.

I'm not sure where this conversation is going, or why you would want to reconcile me with the higher classes who are the sociopaths destroying our planet and making sure it's uninhabitable for everyone, while the rest of us struggle for basic survival/services...

> I'm not sure where this conversation is going, or why you would want to reconcile me with the higher classes who are the sociopaths destroying our planet and making sure it's uninhabitable for everyone, while the rest of us struggle for basic survival/services...

It is not going anywhere.

I gave you tangible examples from someone who knows both sides.

You said that you have anecdotal information about Versailles while I have it first hand. Still, you build whole preconceptions based on that.

And the ones from impoverished areas (you have no idea, honestly. I spent a long time over there trying to instill in the minds of these children that they should go ahead with their education - and actually managed to have two of them (of the dozen or so I was in contact with) graduate from X and ParisTech, they were initially saying that "it is not for us").

So since "higher classes who are the sociopaths" we have nothing more to discuss, stay in your hatred world. Good bye.

Here in France you have places where women who walk in sorry dresses are whistled on or insulted. There are bars they cannot enter.

These places are in areas with a large Muslim population.

Now go to Versailles and you will not see that.

I am not sure what kind of evidence you are looking for but just thinking about your sister or wife walking in normal, civilized clothes in one of these places, and ordering it to be Versailles is enough.

> women who walk in sorry dresses are whistled on or insulted

Who are you to judge a woman's dress? Also, you should probably know catcalling and other forms of street harassment has little to do with how you're dressed.

> There are bars they cannot enter.

I'm not saying it cannot exist, but i've yet to see evidence of that. I cannot say male-dominated spaces are very welcoming for women and enbies, but it's never happened to me when walking with friends that we were denied entry in a café. It's happened though, on occasion, that we became a local tourist attraction for as long as we stayed, for the dozen or so of men who spend their whole day betting on horse races in there.

> These places are in areas with a large Muslim population.

I don't think this is true, but i don't have scientific data at hand. From my personal experience, there's two factors correlating with catcalling: 1) it only happens in areas where a lot of young men are desperate and have no perspectives for their future 2) it mostly comes from men of african descent, whether they're muslim or not, and muslims from eg. Asia don't seem to engage in such behavior

The first point is very important, because young men to whom society opens the door for making studies and finding a job don't engage in such behavior. Those have access to different social spaces, where flirting takes different forms... and so does sexism. But why is the media only ever concerned about street harassment, and never explain what sexism is on the workplace, or in a bourgeois family? It's of course a racist bias to pretend sexism doesn't exist in France anymore except coming from muslim men.

In fact, i would argue those forms of sexism (catcalling, street harassment) denounced by the media are very much in line with traditional french sexism. A few years back, in the start of the #metoo movement, a hundred women from the higher classes (famous actresses, business women, etc) published a manifesto defending that men have a "right to bother" women (liberté d'importuner). They argue that not accepting no for an answer is part of French romance and it's perfectly fine like that.

If you speak some french, you may be interested to read Valérie Rey Robert's "Culture du viol à la française" (French-style rape culture), you may learn a few things about how french society is deeply misogynistic and pointing the finger at muslims is just a useful tool for the men in power to hide most problems under the carpet.

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