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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I’m following your Slovene example, but not the hijab one. It seems to be both democratic and socially right-wing. It’s not at all a cause adopted by the American right, but mandatory dress standards are pretty classically conservative.

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the soft bigotry of low expectations -- it's minimally acceptable for Muslims to mandate the hijab because they're a poor oppressed group and they don't expect much from them, but if Europeans try the littlest of little socially conservative policies it's terrible, because they should know better.

Sometimes it feels to me like a perceived lack of agency is one of the biggest prizes that can be had. Not so good if it's real, but then again, people are people, and I have my doubts about how much agency can truly vary among (healthy) humans. If it isn't real/is exaggerated, then in extremis it amounts to permission to do whatever you want and everybody just has to accommodate you, because you don't have a choice how to behave.

But that presumes sympathy on the part of the accommodators, which is probably the real prize, in which case this is just one way it manifests.

I do want to chime in and point out that the exact same people who pitch a fit about religious institutions expecting basic modesty standards if those institutions are Christian are happy to rant about the need to accommodate Islamic dress codes. So definitely a double standard, probably from pure tribalism.

Mandated hijab wearing is still something American liberals are not entirely ok with. It was one of the things played up back during the invasion of Afghanistan. American liberals generally support the protests in Iran right now over the woman who died in custody for a hijab violation. On the other hand they will overwhelming support the wearing of it if it's framed as empowering the woman from her choice rather than mandated upon her. Sort of like Asians and White privilege.

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One could argue that there exists a leftist case for school uniforms, namely that they prevents rich kids from showing off.

Also widely practiced for exactly that reason in socialist/communist countries. Used to be mandatory in socialist Hungary too.

Furthermore, "uniforms: yes or no" isn't the main dividing line, but what the uniform's goal is, what it expresses and represents. The classic conservative (aristocratic etc.) uniforms would express one's social standing and position in the social hierarchy. The leftist, communist uniforms had the opposite goal, to erase those old class markers and make everyone look like an equal comrade.

That's not a "one could argue". That's a very popular argument, which I heard from pretty much every school uniform supporter I talked to. Whether they were leftist or not is another matter.

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