Speaking on the House floor, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) wears a mummy-like burqa - a head-to-toe covering the Taliban force upon their women - as a visual aid to demonstrate the Afghan government's cruelty toward females..
- C-SPAN
October 18, 2001 -- Rep. Carolyn Maloney didn't veil her outrage at how the Taliban treat women in Afghanistan.
So she let her clothing do the talking when she gave a speech on the floor of the House - shrouded in a head-to-ankle "burqa" with the eyes-hiding mesh panel.
The Taliban orders women to wear the Muslim garb when they're outdoors.
Even her own staff wouldn't have recognized the outspoken Manhattan congresswoman - who is not known for being camera-shy - enveloped in her all-concealing borrowed blue burqa.
She dramatically donned it to give one of several late-night speeches Tuesday on the treatment of women in Afghanistan to a nearly-empty House chamber with C-SPAN cameras whirring.
"If a woman would like to wear such a garment, it is her choice, but it is cruel to force her to wear it," Maloney (D-N.Y.) told The Post yesterday.
"You can't describe the humiliating feeling of no one knowing who you are, being totally invisible in any characteristic of your identity. It's like a single-cell prison," she said.
"It's the taking of your identity, of your ability to see, to walk, to move, even to breathe. It's suffocating under it."
"What was most noticeable is your inability to work," she said. "I was trying to read a speech. I could hardly see. The mesh part in front of your eyes is like having 15 screen doors in front of you. You start seeing double."
The Taliban's rigid insistence on the burqa outdoors is a symbol of how the Taliban treats women, said Maloney, whose speech noted that the restrictions on women's freedom "are unfathomable to most Americans."
posted on October 18, 2001 08:58:02 PM new
"What was most noticeable is your inability to work,"
Heck, James, the Taliban doesn't let women work anyway, so what's the big deal?
Okay, that's out of the way...
Afghan women have suffered under this oppression for years. America didn't particularly care. I am glad that our present circumstances have shed light on the plight of women in Afghanistan. I only hope that we'll care enough about their fate after this war is declared "over"...
posted on October 18, 2001 09:11:47 PM new
James, in all sincerity I ask you to take some time and tell us (in another thread here) what constitutes patriotism for you. I have a suspicion that we're all on the same page -- as Americans -- and that expressing our own personal views on this one topic will show that while we may disagree on various issues, we strongly cleave to some core values in unison...
posted on October 18, 2001 09:16:38 PM new
These women have been begging for us to come help them for several years now. I am ashamed that we haven't helped them before now.
Maybe we need an army of just women with Uzis to go over there and kick but*.That'd scare the bejeebers out of the Taliban.1,000,000 women coming at them with guns flaming!
editedto remove redundant million.
[ edited by rawbunzel on Oct 18, 2001 09:34 PM ]
posted on October 18, 2001 09:31:52 PM new
Lots of Americans were aware of this stuff before and were bothered by it. I really posted this because I was struck by the image of her standing before Congress like that. I don't doubt Carolyn Maloney's sincerity and the work comment was language her audience [Congress] would understand.
Or maybe not, she said 'work'.
Or ignore me
Not at all. It's the kind of question that needs thought so I have to think about it.
posted on October 18, 2001 09:47:15 PM new
I go with my comrade, Rocker. Where do WE sign up? Maybe I will take a girdle (not that I wear one) and make my prisoners wear it on their heads, day in and day out. Better yet, a bra to wear on their chests, the girdle on their heads and high heels while trudging to the food line and my rifle shoved in their backsides. Yeah, that sounds good.
Let's all sign up! I don't know where to do it. Too old for the military and that's not what I had in mind anyway.Just a nice army of women to go help other women around the world.Women kick as*.
Hepburn, I thought they might look good in speedos. LOL Might look ok with the bra and girdle and heels. I'll try to visualize it.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:00:14 PM new
Opps! We have to stop this in James thread. I did not mean to derail. He has a great topic here!
James,I know why you posted the picture and I agree that Carolyn Maloney makes quite a powerful statement wearing the burqa.[is there really no "u" after that "q"? ] I think the men should have tried it on to see what it is like for women to wear it. They have seen it before but to experience it for themselves might really open their eyes.
posted on October 18, 2001 10:02:58 PM new
How do we help the women of Afghanistan? If you look at their web site Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) they are against US military intervention to remove the Taliban, they are against the Northern Alliance, and seem to be only supporting an uprising of Afghanis to change the system. I'm not sure how that is supposed to be accomplished or what has prevented that from happening. They only say the rest of the world must play their role in the organizing of mass-uprising and as well thwart the plans of the internal and external enemies of Afghanistan. Protest marches in LA and NY are probably going to have little effect on that Taliban in my opinion. Am I failing to understand exactly how they want to remove the Taliban?
The US is damned if they do get involved in another country's politics, and damned if they don't get involved in another country's politics. Sort of like what I experience when I deal with my wife when she's in one of her moods.
posted on October 18, 2001 11:59:37 PM new
Of course, if Carolyn Maloney was intending to show the *real* treatment of women under the Taliban, she wouldn't have been at work in the first place...let alone talking to men.
posted on October 19, 2001 11:37:05 AM new
An article in today's Salon quotes somebody who had been studying Afghanistan for the past 18 months as saying that 90% of the women in non-Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan choose to wear the burqa. It's probably more of a political propoganda tool for us than it is an instrument of political oppression for them. And, a great way for a politician to get her name in the paper.
(Is that the representative from Staten Island? For some reason I can't remember, I have a feeling I thought she was a grandstander from a couple of years back...)
posted on October 19, 2001 12:35:48 PM new
Donny, I think her point is "by law" not "by choice". In fact, she said that exactly.
Propaganda? Why so skeptical? Politician she may be but she is also a woman. I've yet to meet a woman who didn't take oppression of women anywhere personally. The same way *you* care about human rights she just *might* care too.
posted on October 19, 2001 12:58:56 PM new
Yes, I'm sure she cares, both about human rights and in the chance to get a memorable photo-op spread around.
Why so skeptical? Well, we've all heard and heard about the burqas. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so there she goes, making sure the cameras are rolling.
If the burqa keeps on being brought up, as an issue to outrage us, but it's chosen by 90% of women who aren't under Taliban control, it looks like it's more of a propoganda tool for us than an oppressive piece of clothing for them, doesn't it? Notice I'm not saying it's only a propoganda tool for us, but more one than the other.
posted on October 19, 2001 01:07:34 PM new
Well, it's not her fault that C-Span broadcasts congressional sessions. I think her motivation was to visually demonstrate a point to the Boys' Club. You are right; when a politician does good it does make for a good photo op. What to do, what to do. I'd prefer they still do good.
As for what Afghan women do in the North, in my view it's oppressive too since it's probably coercive in many cases even if it's not enshrined in law. That's why Turkey has banned them in public. Religiously oppressive? You bet. But it protects women and I like that.
posted on October 19, 2001 01:21:12 PM new
"As for what Afghan women do in the North, in my view it's oppressive too since it's probably coercive in many cases even if it's not enshrined in law."
The Salon article I linked to didn't say much about whether the person who studied in Afghanistan considered it coercive, but suggested that the women who choose to wear it wear it because it's tradition. Tradition can be coercive - to break from tradition (any tradition, anywhere) is to risk ostracism.
I don't know about Turkey. What is banning the burqa there protecting women from? If it's religious oppression, but needed religious oppression, would the standard of need for banning yamulkes be the same? Or higher?
posted on October 19, 2001 01:35:47 PM new
I didn't say in all cases it's coercive. But since "honour killings" against "loose women" take place in these countries (I will grant you, I have no specific information on Afghanstan, but it certainly happens in Pakistan) my feeling is that to not wear it is not a realistic option, thus 'coercion'.
Why is it banned in Turkey? Because whether you like to acknowledge it or not, the 'burqa' is symptomatic of an oppressive mentality towards women in the countries in which custom dictates that it be worn. A mentality that allows men to dowse their teenage daughter with gasoline and burn her to death because she dared to get raped, for example. Turkey, not being desirous to have such a mentality live in their country did away with what they know to be the tip of the iceberg in that type of thinking. I suppose it's what they gleaned from centuries of their own experiences.
I said it is religously oppressive. I don't like [i]that[i]. I like that there is a measure in place that protects women.
posted on October 19, 2001 01:55:35 PM new
There are plenty of oppressive articles of women's clothing, and we don't usually make the leap to equating them with contributing to a climate of justifying setting women on fire. Go from whalebone corsets to today's bras... Are they symbols of control of women? Could be. Do they contribute to a culture of setting women on fire? It's something other, and more, than clothing that's at work there, isn't it?
As to religious oppression, we're misunderstanding each other, I think. As I understood it, you said that the banning of burqas was a form of religious oppression, but a religious oppression you saw as having benefits that would outweigh the protections we'd usually afford to religious customs. That was why I asked, would a perceived need standard have to be the same, or higher, to ban yamulkes (or the turbans Sikhs wear for religious reasons, as another example.)
posted on October 19, 2001 02:07:34 PM new
Maybe "we don't" but Turkey does. Maybe Turkey does because Turkey knows what the score is in the culture and the region.
The bra doesn't contribute to setting women on fire because we don't set women on fire.
I do believe that banning the burqa which presumably is a religous requirement for some very orthodox Muslims is a form of religous oppression that couldn't muster in the United States. However we have the luxury of living in a different type of society where odds are if a women wears a burqa she isn't wearing it because of signifigant pressure; she's likely resisting pressure not to wear it. I could be wrong about that though. Also, honour killings are not very commonplace in the United States even by people from regions where it is common.
There is the element of the article of clothing itself [as Maloney described it, looking through 15 screen doors] that makes it incomparable to a yarmulke or a turban. That -- when coerced and not freely chosen, combined with the mentality that it seems to abet is oppressive towards women.
posted on October 19, 2001 02:18:13 PM new"we don't set women on fire"
You may not, James, but I have set several women afire.
How about investigating the origins of this garment? It seems by it's appearance to be an emminently practical thing for parading across deserts as part of a beduin caravan.
posted on October 19, 2001 02:22:39 PM new
"There is the element of the article of clothing itself [as Maloney described it, looking through 15 screen doors] that makes it incomparable to a yarmulke or a turban. That -- when coerced and not freely chosen, combined with the mentality that it seems to abet is oppressive towards women."
Then it's the two things together, the restrictive nature of the article of clothing itself, and the non-choice that women under Taleban control have that make it oppressive, and the things separately wouldn't be enough?
The picture of the burqa is a big flashpoint for us, and for Congressperson Maloney. But 90% of the women not under Taleban control in Afghanistan choose to wear it, and the only coercion there seems to be the coercion imposed by tradition, or religious belief.
Isn't it possible that we've seized on something that's alien to us and imputed to it an undesirability born of our own customs and religious beliefs? And now we're throwing this thing around saying - "And look how bad this is, we've got to save them!"
posted on October 19, 2001 02:27:01 PM new
Yes, it is possible. If all the ladies loved their burqas, though, why did the Taliban have to enshrine it in law?
I suppose Maloney should have stayed home from Congress that day if she wanted to make her point. Wait, that's cultural too. Maybe she should have set herself on fire...
There are several Afghan women's rights organizations run by Afghan women who say the Taliban are oppressing Afghan women. What's their cultural misunderstanding?
Rocker 