A Public Service Announcement

We interrupt work on Part 2 of my response to the Iran NIE to bring you a link to the latest by Mrs. Frum - a series of blogposts on her experience of a week of life in an abaya. I post this with hesitation, because the series opens with a domestic anecdote that seemed to this reader at least to offer Too Much Information ....

'I wonder what it's like to wear Arabic dress?" I said one day to my husband.

His eyes sparked with interest. "You mean as in 'I Dream of Jeannie'?"

"No. I mean those black cover-ups they wear in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries."

"Oh." He looked disappointed.

"Seriously. What must it be like to wear something like that day in, day out? Never being able to show your face in public — or to a man who is not your husband. I don't think Western women appreciate how oppressive that must be."

My husband was not paying attention. "That filmy, translucent fabric, the little sequined top ... If I could impose dress on women, that's what I'd impose." He paused. "Maybe not all women ..."

I ignored him, warming to my rant. "And yet, you never hear a peep of protest about it from the feminist groups over here. They protest the war in Iraq. But the idea that there are people right here who want to shroud women ... to make us all submissive and invisible ... where's the outrage over that?

"And we shouldn't kid ourselves. It's coming here too. It already is here."

Anyway you can read the first post here and the second here with accompanying video here. The series originates with the National Post and is being carried in the US by the Huffington Post. It seems to have thrown some HuffPo readers into gasping outrage. After all, as is well known, the real oppression of women occurs in the West, source of all evil ....