It appears that Barbie has found religion. After rebelling with Harley Davidson Barbie and bikini Barbie. There is even an S & M Barbie in all leather and fishnet stockings. Now, however, there is Burka Barbie.
Of course, this could be a surplus GI Joe in a Burka but the covered Barbie is on display with 500 other Barbies at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy. To complete the image of subjugation for feminists, Burka Barbie will be auctioned off to the highest bidder as part of the fundraiser by Sotheby’s.
For many, the doll teaches girls to accept an obnoxious practice of women covering themselves — a practice common in areas where girls as young as ten are routinely married off. Then again, many Muslims would likely argue that, if Mattel markets kinky Barbie, why shouldn’t it also make Barbies for conservative Islamic families?
Would do you think?
For the picture of Burka Barbie and full story, click here.
To Mike Spindell,
The main problem with your argument is that it can be applied to on-religious “secular” societies like the US as well. The laws that are obeyed are also enforced by the few. In fact, they are written by the few.
Now, you may argue that the divine laws that Muslims live under are not really divine because there is no God etc…, but the fact that most believe in the religions, means that they believe in their divinity, which gives the laws certain authority.
By contrast, an American may be a believer in the Democratic Republic, but that doesn’t mean he believes in the specific laws governing it, but still he has no say.
Further, the implications of your views is that there is no such thing as social mores and group/national traditions. What then? On what basis the legal laws are to be based?
BobEsq:
“but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth”
wasn’t our constitution established by consent? We put ourselves under the protection of the federal & state government by virtue of our consent.
[Since the nature of the constitution is to establish individual rights, it would not allow you to embrace slavery even if you wished to sell yourself to the highest bidder. So we really aren’t free at all.] said tongue in cheek.
But actually I was responding to Dar about the control over human liberty that sharia law has and it’s subjective nature.
Byron,
In Re: Locke
“The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth;”
ON the issue of slavery, the problem with using this quote is that it validates clauses of the constitution that were void ab initio by the very definition of our republic.
Just like a boat is designed and constructed to as to fend off its first and foremost enemy, i.e. water, so to is our constitution FRAMED so as to fight its first and foremost enemy; i.e. tyranny.
Thus on issues such as slavery, we don’t look to legislation or amendments created on mere assent alone. We look to the defining aspects of the framing itself and determine whether any legislation, constitutional text or later amendments contradict the principles of the founding.
Fugitive slave clause; three fifths compromise? Void. Why?
From section 5 (on property) & 18 (on tyranny) respectively:
“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every[one] has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself.”
“AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to.”
No state, citizen thereof or the federal government may exercise power beyond right which no one may have a right to; whether by consent of the majority or not. The underlying social compact, forming the hull, if you will, of our republican ‘boat’ so to speak, does not allow it; via legislation by consent or not. The exercise of power over the inalienable right of self ownership is tyranny, and within the framework of our republic, is tantamount to drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Buddha: “And you, my dear Raoul Duke, also know I like to play Devil’s Advocate sometimes just because it’s a hoot. Especially when I’m hitting the ether. Sometimes it’s not the end of the ride that counts. It’s the ride itself.”
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Gyges:
western culture needs no defense against people who pay no respect to individual rights and tyrannize half their populations.
Elaine,
As always, a poetic gem.
Dar,
Right, back to that. This is the part where I get to repeat myself. If you want to be intellectually honest, you don’t get to use your culture as a shield and a sword. You don’t get to say “my culture’s different then yours, so you have no right to judge it” right after calling women from other cultures whores because of the way they dress (assuming you mean whore as an insult) and expect me and others here not to point out your inconsistencies.
So unless you either stop deflecting and respond to what I actually said (something you completely failed to do), or admit that you’re NOT o.k. with women dressing however they want in the West (if you were, you wouldn’t be calling them whores), I’m done talking to you. I’ve no desire to defend Western Culture, which is the only conversation you seem to want to have.
Back to the issue of of the way “Western” women dress: I believe all that indecent dressing and temptation started with Eve–who didn’t even live in the “West.” That poor woman really wasn’t aware of the effect that her naked “naughty bits” had on the fellow who resided in the Garden of Eden with her.
A Clerihew of Biblical Proportions
Eve
So naive
In her birthday suit
Tempted Adam with forbidden fruit.
Dar:
you guys need to read some John Locke, here is a sampling:
“Sec. 22. THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.”
He does not say God or religion but nature as in the nature of man which is to live in freedom, with a free will and a free mind.
your boys have a top down rule which is what we would call a dictatorship. We in America like rule from the bottom up with an objective standard of law respecting individual rights. your boys like subjective law.
I’ll take a few half naked women holding glasses of beer if that is the price I have to pay to live in a free society subjected, not by the whim of unelected oracles of God, but by an objective rule of law dedicated to the proposition that all human beings are equal . . . Seems a small price to pay and I don’t have to look at the billboard if I don’t want to.
Are you serious?
“but you should no longer be allowed to have any public standards that enforce them.”
Dar,
You mistook much of what I wrote. The sexualization of women in advertising and culture in the West is as I stated something I decry.
However, when you refer to enforcing public standards that is where we differ. To me the problem is who gets to set the standards. Historically, across cultures when you have religionists driving the setting of public standards you have tyranny and oppression. “Public
Standards” quickly become religious opinion. While all religions have
religious leaders who are at variance in their beliefs in the particular interpretations, when these beliefs become legal standards it is always the most extreme whose views prevail.
Not all Islamic Religious leaders believe that women should wear burkas and many are tolerant of more freedom for women. However, the examples we see, Saudi Arabia for instance, are regimes oppressive to women to a degree that is morally intolerable to me at least. As I previously stated these beliefs are not only repressive to women, but they exhibit the need for males to paternalistically control them. Beyond the immorality of it is the (to me)stupidity of it because women are every bit the equal of men in all intellectual respects and in general superior to them in their ability to keep the social piece.
Oppressing them has I believe led to the problems that have plagued certain Islamic societies since they are operating without the input of half of their citizenry.
To Gyges,
I shall repeat what I wrote earlier, that I’ve no problem with that, but don’t force them on those other societies that choose to stick to the standards of modesty that they have always had, and which the West itself once had.
To Jill,
The problem with your quoted heroinne is that her very use of the word “feminist” shows her not be some indigenous actor who’s opposition to the covering are self-grown, but rather is someone who’s opposition comes from her being fully Westernized, therefore it’s no different than a regular Westerner criticizing the dress.
I don’t dismiss her views, rather I merely point out that she cannot be regarded as a true voice from within.
To Mike Spindell,
You are mistaken if you think I’ve a problem with nudity, otherwise I’d be spending most of my time attacking traditional tropical cultures where most people dress very little except around the inguinal area, and where women are topless.
The problem is that the modern West isn’t like those cultures, it isn’t a society that treats nudity or much skin exposing indifferently. Rather Western culture still holds the same sexualized views of the human body that it always has (and which other societies still do, such as in the Middle East), it just decided to exploit them openly, largely due to the spread of this extreme hedonistic individualism.
As far as the example of your youth, you didn’t find them sexual because they weren’t meant to be sexual. But when you drive down the street and see a giant billboard of a bikini-clad woman lying down with a beer in her hands (to give and example),that billboard is purposefully meant to be sexual.
As such, I am against such warped standards being applied to others.
In other words, what some Westerners really want to do is to go to Muslims (and others) and tell them in effect: “Look, yyou can continue to keep your views of morality and decency, but you should no longer be allowed to have any public standards that enforce them.”
Again, thank you all for a wonderful thread.
And let me ask you this, Bob.
When faced with an opponent who is relying on volume, what is the best way to counter? Overwhelming force.
Bob,
I think I’ve answered your questions. See above. And yes, I know about consent. I also know that what the law says and how humans actually interact don’t always mesh. Sex laws are one of the prime examples of where theory and reality can be at odds. I’ve stated before that one of my key operating maxims is what Marcus Aurelius said about truth: “I seek only the truth, by which no man was ever harmed.” If truth is your goal, facts and best evidence should come before presumptions, even legal one (good, bad or otherwise). Her lack of valid consent as chattel is a legal presumption and one that could have been modified by Jefferson in ways we do not know for certain. Like you say, she’s chattel. Jefferson could have freed her partially with the same freedom he could have decided to keep the cat in the house or not. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
And you, my dear Raoul Duke, also know I like to play Devil’s Advocate sometimes just because it’s a hoot. Especially when I’m hitting the ether. Sometimes it’s not the end of the ride that counts. It’s the ride itself.
A slave cannot consent or withdraw consent per law and the nature of being a slave. A slave may legally be lashed or killed for refusing anything her master demands. Sally Hemings remained a slave as was inventoried as such after Jefferson’s death. Sex with a slave is rape.
Buddha: “I will settle if you’ll all agree that he was a “possible or likely rapist” instead of “a rapist”.”
In a court of law back in 1700 there would be no rape since the crime wouldn’t exist; i.e. impossibility of raping one’s property.
In a court of equity, assuming the court was enlightened enough to see Sally as a person, then yes.
DAR,
Sorry, I missed your earlier response to me. We’ve had a few conversations in the past, and it always seems to boil down to you thinking that arguments from antiquity or majority should convince me. They don’t.
I get your point, you don’t like the way (you think) that women dress in America. That’s fine, I don’t really care much about your views on fashion. I do generally care about people making lousy arguments. In this case your argument seems to be that Western women shouldn’t dress the way (you think) they do because it shows off their bodies sexually.
My point was that humans are sexual animals. You have yet to show how women behaving as sexual creatures is a bad thing, until you do I’ll continue to insist that Western Women have no obligation to dress a certain way to keep from offending your or anyone’s sensibilities. I also showed that your language shows an extreme bias against women, while implicitly excusing men, as an example of the double standard that almost all cultures have when it comes to prohibitions on acting sexually.
*such as being a slave and being too young to consent; thus the statutory rape laws.