Banning Women’s Autonomy

By now the notorious actions of armed French police officers demanding that a Muslim woman remove a shirt she wore as part of her swimwear are well known.  The action was humiliating and not isolated.  The officers also appear to be writing a ticket.  The woman was considered in violation of a local (Nice) regulation banning swimwear designed to accommodate the dress needs of Muslim women.  In the offensive reference of the outfits as “Burkinis”, the absurd justification for the swimwear ban is that the dress “overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks.”

Other French resorts and towns have implemented similar bans.  A French tribunal recently overturned Nice’s ban and presumably other bans will fall.  Like the angry rhetoric of Donald Trump, however, the bans have done their damage by igniting bigots into discriminatory and hateful action.  One woman bather was fined after being subjected to taunts of “Go Back Home” from other bathers as the woman’s young daughter cried.

Some defend France’s bans on clothing worn by Muslim women as protecting women from religious beliefs that oppress them.  But the tickets issued fine the bathers for not “wearing an outfit that respects good morals and secularism”.  To date no nuns in traditional garb have been fined.

Controlling women’s swimwear has a history.  In 1957 an Italian woman was fined for wearing an “immodest” bikini. 

The bans and the seeming entitlement to control women’s clothing is nothing less than denying women’s autonomy.  The US does the same in more subtle ways.  Women’s voices are minimized when all women, including a presidential candidate, is subjected to critiques by individuals, journalists and pundits. U.S methods are less direct, but are part of an ongoing global effort to control women by removing their  autonomy over personal choices, even those as fundamental as religious ones.