Kim's entry
Okay let me just start off with saying that I was very ignorant (and probably still am) about the veil. Although I know a few women who wear it - out of choice, I believe - I've never really asked them about it and have gone under the assumption that if they wear it out of tradition or religion. With current international relations, there is the idea that women who wear the veil are oppressed. However this article gave me the new information about "new veiling" where women are finding empowerment from it and wear it out of choice for tradition or religion. Again this goes into the idea of who are we to tell others that they are oppressed. The west seems to be telling these women that the veil degrades them and they should resist it. But rather they are choosing the veil over the western ideas of vanity and showing of femininity. It makes sense to me that they feel that we are over exposed and that our "womanness" is out there for others to look at and that makes western women more oppressed. That brings up a thought between the difference of wearing the veil in countries in the middle east vs in western states. Does it automatically mean something different? Is it more about choice in western countries? When every woman wears it does it change the meaning or is it more about how we view the veil? With the idea of exiled and self-exiled Iranian women - what, if anything, changes because they've spent most of their adult life in the west?
On a random note -- I don't think I understand secularism well enough. I always understood it as not favoring one religion over another, being open. Giving equalness to all different religious options. But I get the feeling it is about having no religion and so it takes away some of the power of the dominant religion - and that is why I am having a little trouble with mentally grasping secular feminists.