Ladies in Black

by Marion Winik

The image of an Afghani woman swathed head to toe in black robes has become a
symbol of the repression of women under the Taliban. Why, I wonder? Is it
because we in the West are so focused on clothes, on expressing our
personality and our sexuality through our appearance that we obsess on what
people are wearing rather than the fact that they are deprived of all basic
freedoms and kept in line by constant brutal punishments?

I don't think so. I think the burqa is a symbol of and in fact the key to the
other abuses of Afghani women.

Clearly the burqa represses individuality. Americans don't like that. And it
is based on the idea that women's bodies are so sexual that even their
outlines are dangerous, or that a woman cannot be adequately faithful to
either God or her husband unless her female form is well hidden. A lot of us
don't agree with that either.

But in these regards the burqa is no different than the garments worn by
Orthodox Jewish women, Amish women, or indeed, Islamic women who wear a
chador.

The difference is choice, right? As long as women choose traditional robes of
some sort, we have no reason to object, even if we disagree with the
principles underlying that choice.

That is true, but it is only part of the problem. The problem is that women
who are forced to wear a burqa have no faces. They cannot be seen. They
cannot be recognized on the street. And in this they are deprived of not just
individuality, but identity. They are not citizens. They have no public
existence and no rights. Just as the executioner wears a hood so that his
killing is done not by that person, but by the state, the woman with no face
is deprived of her personhood. Imagine men wearing burqas. It's immediately
obvious that what they have lost is their identities.

When we lose our faces, we lose our names, we lose our dignity, we lose our
basic purchase on humanity. The burqa sets up all the other violations
suffered by the women of Afghanistan