Liberation of a Woman

I was raised a Western Feminist in the 80's and 90's so I was raised to believe that not only was a woman allowed to wear (or not wear) whatever she wanted and that that should have no bearing on how she was treated, but also that it was somehow asserting my rights as a woman to wear less. It was confusing at first, since the party line has always been equality and freedom of choice, but as I got older I understood that freedom of choice meant the freedom to choose to wear smaller, tighter outfits, show more nudity and sex in the media, have more sex partners, delay or forgo childbearing and work outside the home. Since I have always enjoyed working and never liked children, I guess I never questioned the rest since it modern feminism has a real "with us or against us" mentality and I felt great appreciation for those that gave women the right to vote, the right to work and the right to birth control.

I remember the first time I was exposed to Islam. I was very young - elementary school age actually - and I was reading the book Princess. At that time, the hijab was explained to me as part of the systematic oppression of women that included drowning daughters in the family pool and female genital mutilation. The message was simple - give an inch (by covering yourself) and the patriarchal system will take a mile (by revoking your right to drive, locking you away in the house and killing you if you complain). Then we went to war with Iraq (the first time) and the stories came back about how horribly women were treated (including our female soldiers) and the crazy religious police in Saudi Arabia that would beat women that didn't comply with their strict dress code, but we were going to make it all better. Never once was I told a story about a woman that chose to wear hijab to stop men from treating her like a sex object and allow her to be seen for who she was on the inside. I was also never told about how hijab stopped people from being divided by income and beauty, how it removed the superficial things and brought people together for their minds, and it honestly didn't occur to me.

I'd always had some issues with modern feminism, like believing elective abortions should only be allowed for the first 4 months, thinking affirmative action is just discrimination against white males and should be abolished and disagreeing with lower standards for women in the military. Still, the first thing that really chipped away at my "feminist" teachings was my marriage at 22. Now to many cultures this may sound quite old, or at the very least very ready, but so many people told me that I was too young to "tie myself down." Granted, my husband and I hardly knew each other before we married, another thing that is common in other cultures, but in our own ways we both knew and to me it is evidence enough that our marriage has outlasted that of many of our peers who knew each other and even lived together for years before marrying. The second was when we decided to have children, and that was the beginning of the end because 1. I was unable to get pregnant, and found out many others my age who were told we had all the time in the world are having the same problem and 2. he was going to stay home, which got a huge and unexpected negative reaction.

I found things like Get to Work and The Feminine Mistake and many more in the same vein trying to guilt stay at home moms into dropping their children at daycare and going back to work. Now my issue with the statement "A woman's place is in the home" has always been "A woman's place is" and now I am seeing self proclaimed feminists saying "A woman's place is in the workplace" so what is wrong with this picture. If you need evidence that they are wrong, look no further than the two generatons that have been raised by day care centers and the public school system. We are two of the angriest, most disillusioned and most violent generations to ever appear on the face of the Earth and STILL we choose to home school and stay home with our children. Do I think a woman needs to stay home with her children - No, but do I think a PARENT needs to stay home - absolutely. Let the couple decide which parent is better suited to the task.

It took a while, but challenging one teaching lead to challenging them all (as it will often do) and before long I challenged the idea that a woman should not cover herself and conform to a patriarchal society. First of all, does it really please a man when a woman dresses modestly? Why would it? A long time ago a man had to marry or go to great lengths to see a naked woman. Not so today, so who really benefits from a society where women in tiny scraps of cloth that can hardly be called underwear crowd every beach? Why is it in our oh so equal society that male frontal nudity is still left to the realm of porn and foreign films while female frontal nudity is served with Sunday dinner? Why is our media filled with shows like Desparate Houswives where cheating is glorified? And while it is surely not right that a woman should HAVE to cover herself to avoid the stares, catcalls and gropings that plague most metro areas, why is it that other women look down on her if she CHOOSES to? I knew the attention I received from other men made me uncomfortable and upset my husband, and I knew that society's standards of beauty made me feel fat even when I was on the lower end of a normal BMI. I haven't been swimming in years because I don't want to show that much of myself and was too afraid of what others would say to wear a burquini. It got to the point that I didn't want to go out without my husband, then hated myself for not being an "independent woman." But WHY did I do this to myself when the answer was so simple?

"O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters and the believing women to draw their outer garments around them. That is better in order that they may be known and not annoyed..." (Qur'an 33:59)

Well, I may not be a believing woman, at least not in the way that anyone of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths would recognize, but I believe in faithfulness and equality and I was certainly being annoyed. Having tried everything else, unable to change society to meet my need, and at the breaking point of annoyance with others' disregard for my marriage vows I put on hijab of my own free will and finally truly liberated myself.