Maybe i'm getting brainworms from twitter and this isn't a real thing and there's nobody defending this, but there is no way in hell hijab is a way to show "modesty in women". I know that there is a lot of westerners who are assholes and prejudiced against muslims and a lot of leftists want to defend them, and you should defend them, but don't do it by defending backwards practices. Hijab objectifies women.
Most of the time, women who wear hijab are pressured into doing it by an external force. It could be their immediate family, their relatives or their neighborhood. This isn't a fucking trope, it's the reality of it. It is very rare to see someone who decides to wear hijab by themselves. Sometimes people who migrate to west choose to keep wearing it as a way to connect themselves back to their home, but it isn't a common reason to wear it.
I'm not saying attack hijab, because it is not your duty to criticize islam as an outsider(and probably you won't have sufficient information nor experience to do so), but when you see some assholes attacking a hijabi woman for her hijab, defend her right to wear what she wants(even if she's forced by her family to wear it), not the hijab.
Please tell me where i'm from and explain how it is ethnocentric for me to judge something that is embedded in my own culture.
This is a huge problem with american leftists, you guys are used to criticism of anything foreign being from chuds or patronising white people that you automatically assume the criticism is coming from outside of that culture.
Sorry for comming too hard on you, wasn't my intention. I am just so tired of these same arguments coming from a bunch os islamophobic pricks, so I overreacted.
Regardless, what I tried to point out is that the view that Hijab is backwards is shared amonst lots of western liberals, that take their ideia of a free woman to be rooted in the liberal ideals of the 'progressive' liberal west. That is to say that a women is more free when she uses western clothes, shows her own skin, etc - which is also deeply related what she is able to consume. These takes usually take for granted the idea that the west is the bastion of freedom and any expression that goes on a different way is backwards - which in itself could be taken as an evolutionist idea (as in some cultures are more advanced than others).
The other point is about the generalization that women rarely chose to wear hijab, where are you taking this from? Is it from your personal experience? That is not to say that this wouldn't be valid, but you can't equate your personal experience to the full experience of hijab wearing muslims.
Overall, I just get triggered when I see people calling shit "backwards practices"; without further context it always seems like an evolutionist notion of cultural practices, despite this not being the case.
also, point taken (altough I'm not american). I really saw your comment as coming from a white american. I really need to logout more.
The idea for it being "backwards" is because the biggest goal for it is "preserving" the female body from others, and saving it for the future husband. It denies women agency over their own body. If a women wants to wear it without outside pressure, i'll disagree but more power to them.
Mostly personal, almost all women who wears hijab and if i could talk to them about this stuff, their experience usually had some form of coercion into wearing it. Other than that, in muslim majority countries where a hijab isn't mandatory, in most regions prevelance of hijab has a correlation with domestic violance and non-working women.
Sorry, i got pissy too.
nah, i was definately the jerk first lol.
I honestly don't have enough knowledge to continue with this discussion much further, I haven't really read a lot of muslim ethnographies, and most of my knowledge of muslim majority countries is related to wars - so not a lot of good cultural takes can come from that at all. Also, I still have a very hard understanding and getting to know how I feel about how the west seems to culturally change everything it touches - mostly in regards to how parts of the indigenous population in my country deny their heritage, in exchange to be assimilated into big cities. Until I can understand this better, there's no point in me saying what I think about hijabs or whatnot. My opinion is abolutely pointless regardless, but the discussion about agency is definitaly something I would love to dive to in the future - there's just so much to learn.
Anyways, my original comment still probably serves to some people in this audience, who think that a free woman is only one that shares the same liberal beliefs they do. Definately not targeted towards you, but overall people should be wary about how they view other cultures, it's super easy to fall into our ethnocentric default.
Sorry again for being so rude and thanks for your reply :)