I've done a fair amount of reading about this stupid Charter o' Values that the Marois government is using as a wedge issue to drive the next election (reading this tripe is how I fall asleep at night) and there's a thought that keeps occurring to me that I haven't really seen expressed, which can be summarized as follows:
Freedom.
Allow me to expand on the point.
One current of thought flowing through this whole debate comes from some women and their supporters who have emigrated to Canada from places like Tunisia and Algeria. I have nothing but humble respect for all immigrant people who uproot themselves and start all over again in a foreign country; however some of these particular women have been in the media expressing their support for the ban on head scarves for government workers because (they say) the head scarf was used in their countries of origin as a tool and symbol of domination and the subjugation of women by (radical Muslim) men.
Do I agree that these women should never have been forced to wear a scarf? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Because Freedom.
And now, these women and many others want to speak for women's rights/equality by... telling other women what they shouldn't wear. Because... not Freedom???
Are there Muslim men out there who force their wives and daughters to wear the scarf (and worse) against their will? Abso-fucking-lutely.
But that doesn't give the right to any other woman, government or organization to step into the role of the abusive Muslim man and replace his edict with another. It certainly doesn't give anybody the right to tell a woman who chose to wear the damn thing (of whom there are many) to take it off, either. A feminist who tells that woman to take off her scarf is as bad as any Muslim who tells her to put it on.
Because Freedom dictates that in this country, those women have the right to walk away from their asshole husbands and wear whatever the fuck they want. They have the right to wear a scarf in fucking peace and not have a desperate gang of seperatists ostracize them. Because Freedom is why they came here: to live their own personal pursuits of happyness in peace, which they felt they could not do in the countries they fled. The homes they left behind. The Freedom was worth it. Which is why they are mostly all HELLNO about the Charter. And why, as an atheist who lives by the idea of the separation of church and state, I am against this bogus charter thing as well.
And why if you truly left a dictatorship in the name of freedom, you cannot possibly be in favor of creating oppression here. If freedom means both the neo-nazi and the humanist have the right to speak, it must also mean that I can wear a paisley snot-rag on my head while the Muslim woman wears her scarf.
And so while I'm at it, let me offer the same answer to the nitwits who argue that if I were to go to a 'Muslim country' I would have to adopt their laws/customs and put a piece of scarf on my head, and so this gives Quebecers the "right" to force Muslim women to "conform" to "our values" and remove it once they hit Quebec soil.
Once again : because Freedom, you dumbasses! Those countries aren't free. This one is. Get it? We don't do that here and that what makes us so awesome.
And if going to those countries and being forced to wear a headscarf is so offensive to you, why would you use the same tactic that offends you so much in others???
