it's the laws of particular countries that are wrong, not the clothing they command. — Banno

Understood, and more than just the laws. Bad laws don't write themselves. Bad laws require bad actors - bad people - acting for bad reasons on bad understandings for bad purposes.

The same as people being against Minaret songs but ok with church bells. People in western society are fine with what they are used to and attribute less oppression to what's existed for long in our culture, while calling other cultures oppressed based on being outsiders observing them. — Christoffer

You tell us, then. When does it become oppression? (And read the Amnesty International cite above, and respond to .)

I'm being more general in the matter. Historically, the west have gotten more free of government oppression by religion, but only due to capitalist interests dominating power rather than specific individuals using religion. While the west has people using capitalism to gain power, the middle-east has kept using religion.

So, we are all oppressed in some way, some more than others, we just don't see western oppressive behaviors clearly since we live in the system and might even be part of that system. The level of suffering must also be balanced to the way it is portrayed in media and the common narrative. It's hard to know the level of oppression if the narrative is never truly objective, but subjective in media and enforced by echo chambers in the public.

Many in the middle-east find themselves oppressed more by western society invading through culture than their own government and religion does.

So how do we balance perspectives and narratives to form a truly objective overview of oppression in the world? Singular examples of oppression like Kenosha Kid mentioned are real, but singular, they form a singular perspective. So if someone form examples from western society of oppression, we get another singular perspective.

The idea I proposed is to back up and view oppression as a concept first, before talking specifics of how different nations, religions, and cultures act upon their own people.

The same as people being against Minaret songs but ok with church bells. — Christoffer

I'm not aware of anyone having a problem with call to prayer, except when it's through loudspeakers at sweet FA o'clock in communities where people have to work, then it's annoying, in the same way church bells are annoying at 4 am (which is why they don't typically ring at that time).

Seems a quintessential 'Don't be a dick about it' issue.

Here's a thing to keep in mind: it's the laws of particular countries that are wrong, not the clothing they command.

Sometimes this gets mixed up. — Banno

What gets to me in these discussions is that feminists (be they women or men) propose to have so much concern and compassion for women somewhere on the other end of the world, but muster none for the woman they're talking to right there on the spot.

So these feminists bring up some obvious point of injustice or abuse, and then harp and hammer on it. And when there are others who don't join them in a "muh tribe" manner, those feminists ostracize those others as The Enemy and The Misogynist.

It's a surefire way to prevent any discussion of the matter and to maintain the status quo. While in the meantime, the plight of women, once more, goes unnoticed.

I'm being more general in the matter. — Christoffer

So ignore the question. Let's be clear, then. You're about a general proposition and whatever you say or have said about about clothing should be disregarded as off target.

All right, what is oppression?

What. Is. Your. Point? Do you have one?

Evidence presented in this thread that the level of coercion is extreme and state, religion, and culturally supported. Please address those. — tim wood

Please correct me if I’m mistaken here, because I don’t want to assume: am I to understand that it isn’t the coercion of women that you object to, but this extreme level of coercion where violence against women is sanctioned at all levels of authority?

I’m not denying the evidence, and I really don’t think anyone here is. I’d like to establish a clearer picture of what it is that you believe must be removed, because you seem keen to take the focus off my suggestion that a necessary condition of this kind of coercion is a denial of female agency. Misogynistic violence amounts to ‘any means necessary’ to maintain this denial, but in my view it’s a symptom, not the cause.

State, religious or cultural sanctioning of violence against women is abhorrent and needs to stop. But from my perspective, what we’re not doing here is addressing the underlying conditions that give rise to this violence. I don’t see this coming from state or religious authorities, but from the culture that sustains them. This authority is given, not taken. Surely the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has demonstrated that removing particular state or religious authority does not solve the problem of cultural hatred or violence? It’s like Hydra: cut off one head, and two more grow in its place...

All right, now we're closer to being on the same page.

I have trouble understanding this sentence:

my suggestion that a necessary condition of this kind of coercion is a denial of female agency. — Possibility

What I understand is that you claim that a necessary part of the machinery of the coercion is denial of the basic equality of the humanity of women - or even denial of their humanity itself. That is, it is a thing taken from them by force, and the taking involving no complicity by women. Or you could mean a deliberate denial of women's complicity, they being, per claim, complicit.

You refer to state and religious authorities as distinct "from the culture that sustains them." I reply that Middle Eastern state and the religion is the culture, expressed through their authority.

Surely the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has demonstrated that removing particular state or religious authority does not solve the problem of cultural hatred or violence? It’s like Hydra: cut off one head, and two more grow in its place. — Possibility

Here we agree, and may I note that the same lesson is taught elsewhere as well.

Authority v. culture. Post war Germany, Japan, Italy, and South (and North as contra) Korea illustrative of how a perverted authority, in these cases annihilated by war, can with care be entrusted to the better aspects of their respective cultures - although most of a generation need first die out.

But what to make of much - most? - of Middle Eastern Culture? Where in the Middle East does culture and authority separate into what in other places would be properly separate channels?

Can you point to where that actually happened here?

I have trouble understanding this sentence:
my suggestion that a necessary condition of this kind of coercion is a denial of female agency.
— Possibility
What I understand is that you claim that a necessary part of the machinery of the coercion is denial of the basic equality of the humanity of women - or even denial of their humanity itself. That is, it is a thing taken from them by force, and the taking involving no complicity by women. Or you could mean a deliberate denial of women's complicity, they being, per claim, complicit. — tim wood

It’s not that simple.

By agency, I mean the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own choices. The interdependence of humanity - that our actions are not entirely independent, and therefore our choices are not entirely our own - has been historically more obvious to women than it is to men. It is this imbalance of perception that has traditionally limited the perception of female agency, but not its evidence in reality. Plausible deniability of male interdependence and its attribution to the female aspect of humanity helps to consolidate illusions of independence in patriarchal society.

This is particularly noticeable in relation to an individual’s capacity to act independently and make their own choices in sexual relations and in the life of an unborn or infant child - two aspects of humanity where female agency/male interdependence appears particularly undeniable.

It is these two aspects that have enabled women to gradually negotiate for expressions of agency within patriarchal society, but has also motivated those societies to strive for a tight rein on the cultural systems of meaning within which women express this agency. So the behaviour or appearance of a woman that might portray her agency (and by extension, a man’s interdependence) as explicitly undeniable is still carefully isolated within or else excluded from the social construct of a valuable, moral or even lawful existence for women.

Most modern cultural systems of language and morality still have structures that protect and promote the deniability of female agency, and it is within these systems that fundamentalism gains a foothold. What women choose to wear is still closely linked to morality and sexual status in relation to men. I’m socially, if not morally or legally, held responsible for how a man might interpret my hemline or neckline in certain settings, as if male interdependence is neatly packaged up with my choice. This makes it easy for men to freely interpret a woman’s expression of agency (as a come-on or a sign of her sexual immorality) while maintaining an illusion of independence. Both Muslim and Christian cultural traditions offer written examples of morality laws and justification for controlling female agency in this way that are of particular interest to fundamentalists.

At this point, I draw attention back to Indonesian culture, where the wearing of the ‘jiljab’ has not been enforced by law, and remains a choice for women that is part of their cultural identity. Until 1998, the government had kept a tight rein on the influence of Islamic groups, but since then there has been a rise in the wearing of more traditional Muslim head coverings than the loose-fitting jiljab, with culturally-specific fashion trends leading the push. The question of how women can or should dress has merged in the last two decades as a highly politicised topic in Indonesia, in a similar vein to the ongoing US abortion debate. Political campaigns have in recent years drawn attention to images of the candidates’ wives with particular head coverings as a show of morality/choice, and fundamentalist groups calling to enforce Muslim dress for all Indonesian women are gaining traction.

What Indonesia illustrates is how easily choice may be eroded in what is otherwise a ‘free’ society. This is how it started for a number of radical Islamic states that currently operate. Hosseini’s book A Thousand Splendid Suns depicts this descent from apparent freedom to oppression, and Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale shows how fragile the perception of female agency remains in modern Western/Christian society.

Look at this, for example:

I don't think I need an especially elevated moral ground to not be okay with throwing acid in women's faces. I'm sorry you're not there yet. — Kenosha Kid

So there are Western feminists who severely criticize some men for how they treat women, saying how those men are oppressing women. Yet these same Western feminists are, in terms of principle, doing the very same thing they criticize others for.

Or maybe women are supposed to be so happy because Western feminists are not throwing acid into their faces, but are, instead, only seeing themselves as the arbiters of women's reality?

This is why I don't share in the fierce moral indignation that some Western feminists display. Because they still consider themselves to be the ones who get to define what a woman's thoughts are, what a woman's intentions are, what a woman's words and actions mean. They get to act in bad faith, they get to jump to conclusions and think the worst of some woman. They get to consider the woman guilty until she proves herself innocent, on their terms.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words -- here's one, with a few words to it:

https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Image-from-iOS-26-1024x976-1-e1611927131807-660x559.jpg