The ban on freedom

In the canton of Ticino, no more than 28 fines were imposed for burqa in four years. Burqa-wearing women do not walk the streets of Switzerland in droves. Unless as tourists – as in the Swiss Mecca of Interlaken. Yet the Federal Council, which the people have mandated to ban the use of face masks, wants to fine women who wear the veil up to CHF 1,000.

One could now read that this law against the reduction of women to gloomy cloth figurines may have been a “paper tiger.”

Is the lane ban on the autobahn a “paper tiger”? There are very few accidents like this. Is the ban on cheating in restaurants a “paper tiger”? There are almost no such crimes! Is the ban on public obscenity a “paper tiger”? Incidents of this kind almost never happen.

Shouldn’t laws prevent violations, not punish them? So the paragraphs have a deeper purpose of articulating order and establishing a social culture, such as a culture of equality and freedom for women?

But isn’t it precisely this freedom of women that is violated by the cover-up ban? Doesn’t this prohibit Muslim women living in Switzerland from wearing a veil that covers their face?

Does the Federal Council forbid freedom?

What kind of freedom would that be? Freedom, against which thousands of women in Iran have been pouring into the streets for weeks: because they refuse to wear a veil, because they are tired of a headscarf, because they recognize in religious dress codes what they are, what they serve. – to the suppression of freedom, to the oppression of women.

Yes, Switzerland introduces a ban on bondage!

Thousands of men are also participating in demonstrations in Iran. They recognized that women’s freedom is their own freedom, and vice versa.

Yes, freedom is indivisible.

One might think so. However, many Western feminists are fighting the uprising against the mullahs and their religious dictatorship. The Iranian women’s uprising has basically caught gender ideologues in the wrong direction. On the one hand, they have just committed themselves to language education, that gender asterisk that in the future will make the word “human” “human” and be able to pronounce with the right hiccups; on the other hand, they view the veil and headscarf as simply a religious symbol, such as the Christian cross, to be put on or taken off according to taste.

But now the mullahs’ regime is arresting, torturing and shooting women who want to live uncovered to their liking – without a religious symbol on their body or head.

The total veil is not a symbol – it means something very real: the destruction of a woman as a person, the erasure of her form and face, her movements and smile – her humanity. The headscarf is the discipline of women through the discipline of their hairstyle.

Both are as little symbolic as the chaining of slaves.

Perhaps left-wing reactionary feminists should try what a day in a hijab and veil is like – purely symbolically, of course, and with all the freedom that, in their opinion, such dressing up implements.

Judith Butler, the pope of fashion feminism, preached the freedom of the veil in the following words: “It symbolizes the modesty of a woman and the connection with her family; but also that she is not exploited by popular culture and is proud of her family and society (…) Thus, the loss of the veil also means a certain loss of these family ties that cannot be maintained. The loss of the veil can bring with it an experience of alienation and forced westernization.”

Could Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ali Khamenei, have put it better? more modern?

With the necessary ideological rigor, rebellious women in Iran are given leftist instructions in their family books: they not only rebel against the symbol for no reason, but also criminally violate the women’s duty to be “modest” and “close to their family.” – as well as provocative with the “loss of the veil” and “forced westernization”.

Everything is inexcusable – both for Judith Butler and for the mullahs.

No less for their Swiss comrades.