Women should not have to dress modestly | Letters

Where are the suffragettes of New York of 1912 with their ed-painted lips when we need them, asks Pipa Monjardino. And perhaps Muslim women need a #MeToo campaign in solidarity with their brave sisters in Iran who are refusing to wear the hijab, suggests Jill Rooney

It is the women of Iran’s 2018 protests and refusal to wear their headscarves and not the women-dressing-in-black movement in the west of #MeToo solidarity that is the political voice of female refusal to be objectified right now.

Why speak of the two in the same breath? Because in the west the protest is assuming the most conservative attire imaginable, replete as it is with notions of modesty. It is an attire that reactionary regimes, and individuals who feel women should be demure, pacified and ashamed of their sexuality and gender, could only approve of. Meanwhile in Iran women are challenging the notion that they should be demure when faced with being attacked. They are not dressing to mourn; they are undressing to rebel.

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from Islam | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2EVkV0h