Hello everybody, my name is Annelies Moors and I'm very happy to present to you
here on my work about face veiling. I am in the the section on the politics of the face,
and I have decided to focus mainly on face veiling, but I have decided to also say a little bit
about the recent developments with face masks
What you see here is an image here of Kawthar Bouchallikht. It's an image of a Facebook post
that she posted on the 11th of April. She is a newly elected member of the Dutch Parliament
for the Green-Left Party. I have translated a small selection of what she posted into English.
That is, "Haha, with that face mask you look as if you're wearing a burqa.
Right-wing member of parliament first sentence, a joke,
after he approached me to introduce himself."
"Context, I'm alone in the canteen for the parliament building minding my own business,
grabbing some cutlery." Now I'm going to tell you what I am trying to say
with this particular Facebook post. The next slide and
will tell you the context in which you need to see this.
And the context is actually the face veil ban which was implemented in The Netherlands
on the 1st of August, 2019.
Actually, the official term of this ban is not the face veil ban, its the "partial ban
on face-coverings in public transport, in education, in the health sector and
in all public buildings". Now, the main line of my argument with respect to the ban itself
is that it's a case of symbolic politics. There were no real problems, and if there were any
kind of problems in transport etc., then there could have been other less-far reaching solutions such as house rules.
That doesn't mean to say that symbolic politics do not do particular kinds of work.
What this kind of a ban does is it produces problems. And it produces problems at a number of different levels.
It produces problems for the face-veiling women themselves, of course, because they are excluded
from participation as citizens in the educational sector, in the medical sector etc.,
and also as an effect of the ban, they were increasingly harassed in the street.
In the street, I say, where in the street the ban is not valid. The ban is only for these particular locations.
Another effect was not simply on women who wear a face veil who were bothered
but also for women who only wear hijab, for women who wear covered styles of dress.
They were also much more regularly bothered in the street by the general public.
The last issue that immediately emerged was that it led to a certain kind of polarization
because of problems for street-level enforcers. What I mean here is that, for instance, in the
public transportation, those whose job it was to enforce it said that they were not really going to enforce the ban.
Also, the police said they were not very keen on enforcing the ban. They said they had other priorities,
but because the ban is existing, that means that the public would go and push them into action.
So, you got all kinds of unpleasantness in the public sphere. Now, how did face-veiling become a problem?
Actually it was very actively turned into a problem by Girt Wilders, our anti-Islamic politician,
when in 2005 he proposed the first ban on burqa in all public spaces. This was a proposal that
was accepted in parliament but it never became law because it was clearly unconstitutional
because it goes against the freedom of religion. So after a lot of negotiation, he got his partial ban in 2019.
The main arguments that are presented are: first of all women's oppression, or the veil as a sign or tool of women's oppression.
Now, I've done a lot of research with face-veiling women and the women argue themselves
that it was their own choice, they opted for it themselves, that they want to wear it themselves
and that their family was often against it. They tried to forbid it,
their husband were also not in favor of it. The second line of argumentation was that it was an
objective security threat. But the sectors involved are the security; like police, the security services,
and so on all pointed out that there was not really a threat from any of these face-veiling women.
The numbers are very small in The Netherlands, the numbers are between 100 and 450 women
throughout the whole country. So that was not really a threat.
So the next statement of a problem is that it produces a subjective sense of insecurity, and it hinders open communication. And there's t
he argument that we need to see each other's faces, otherwise we will be feeling
uncomfortable in public. I will return to that in a second.
It was striking that no attention was ever paid to the safety of the women themselves.
So now, I will turn to what actually happens with
the politics of the face.
Is covering the face naturally a sign of women's oppression? Now, if you think about the Knrurecht (?),
and in that case men are covering their face and nobody ever makes the case that because
men cover their face that it is a sign of oppression.
The only way to understand how come this becomes signified as a sign of women's
oppression is that it is Moslem women, and with Moslem women there is already a long
colonial genealogy in which the figure of the Moslem woman has become overdetermined as oppressed.
So that is basically a central issue that is at stake here. And then you see with these bans,
you see a continued iteration of the need to save Moslem women from their own men.
And also because it is considered such a moral issue, it also provokes such a use of affective language.
It's not simply a rational debate, but it also evokes emotions that you can see in the language,
because people use "its disgusting", "its ugly", etc....
The other point is that you see the face for open communication, is also in many ways problematic.
The argument is that if the face is present in the public, then it shows the person's inner state
of being, and it makes us feel more comfortable on the streets. But of course the whole idea that
you can see a person's inner state of being when you look at their face is problematic
because a face can of course reveal all sorts of feelings, but it can also conceal all kinds of
feelings. And do we really get a more pleasant public sphere if people were expressing all their
feelings of anger, etc. in their facial expressions? Many questions emerge there.
Not to mention that there are all these other forms of body language that also matter in
the public, like intimidating styles of dress, intimidating body language, etc.
And the final point here which I think is worth thinking about a little bit, is like for instance in
educational settings, is what matters of course is the substance of your argument, like if you
have students its, "how do they present their argument, are they convincing"
and we don't really need to see their face for that, right? Its not about visuality, etc.
But it's about the strength of argumentation. Now why then does this cause so much
discomfort? I think the case why this face-veiling causes this discomfort is that it
brings things together that do not fit together very well. There is a category of people that
a majority of people defines as being oppressed, yet at the same time these same people who are defined as being oppressed
– these Moslem women wearing the face veils– also are provocatively present in the public.
And actually, they refused to be saved. So, that is where much of the discomfort comes from.
It's also not communication in itself that is a problem, but it's often the assumption that
goes with that, that is that they refuse to participate in society, and that they refuse
to accept our values. So that is one side of it,
and this is then, as it were doubled because of the visor effect. This refers to the fact that
these women can see others, but others cannot see them.
They can see their eyes usually, but they cannot see their face. And this goes very much against
the convention that it is the people in power who are allowed to remain invisible, unseen.
It is usually the subaltern populations that are the object of surveillance.
So here is an extra layer of discomfort that comes up.
So, what it boils down to is that this is the problem, if you want to define it that way.
The way in which their face veil becomes problematized is very strongly linked
to the question of who are the ones wearing the face veil; and that is, Moslem women.
I will now move to the face mask for a moment because that makes it more salient.
In the first of June, 2021, (info in slide differs),
face masks became obligatory to wear in public transportation.
That is of course and affect of the Covid-19. So that raises the immediate question of if a face veil
is now also allowed in public transportation because previously it was prohibited?
And is it sufficient– does it meet the requirement to cover one's mouth and nose?
So actually, public transportation didn't make that much of a problem about it, they said it was quite ok.
It turned out to be all right. The second point is that now when you see so many people wearing a mask
to cover their nose and their mouth, that immediately it becomes clear that this is not an
issue about security, and neither does it raise any issues about communication
in spite of the fact that it goes together with physical distancing.
So the whole idea that wearing a face veil is a security issue, makes communication
impossible is immediately undermined now by the fact now that covering the face
with a facial mask works. So in both cases, what matters is the signification, the meaning we give
to the particular practice. In the case of the face veil, the women themselves think its beautiful,
they consider it an act of worship, they consider it a morally positive and highly valued activity–
whereas the majority public and that also contains a substantial number of Muslims
who are against face veiling would argue that it is morally defunct, it is a sign of oppression,
it is a threat to security, an obstacle to communication and to participation in society.
So the act is valued very differently by the face-veiling women themselves and the majority public.
Now, we actually see the same thing, in some ways, with the face mask, because
both can evoke positive and negative responses from people. And it depends very much how you
see face-masking. Do you see it as an act which you do because you care for the health of
others? And then you evaluate it positively when others wear a face mask? Or do you see it as
submission to an authoritarian state who pushes all kinds of stuff upon its population?
Then you evaluate it very negatively.
Finally, also because I saw in the title of this workshop that the word "resistance"
was mentioned; can we see face-veiling as an act of resistance? I think it may be tempting to do so,
but it is also important to focus on women's own lines of argumentation.
So women themselves would not say that they do this as an act of resistance, they do it
basically as an act of worship. They have a very strong religious motivation to cover their face.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't have certain elements of resistance in it. Because it definitely
is a way of acting that goes against the idea that there is only one model of being Dutch.
Of being modern, secular, etc. So it's actually a part of the struggle about what it means to be Dutch.
Is there not in Dutch society, too much of a push towards homogeneity?
Is there still a space for lifestyles that are more conservative,
less consumerist, that are not secular and are Islamic?
Is there actually space for that in our society? I think that is an element of where resistance
comes in. It's a struggle about what kind of society we want in The Netherlands. It's also a
form of resistance against the sexualized female body, in the public.
In that way, it's very similar to other feminists who are not at all inspired by Islamic notions etc.,
but who would also argue against this kind of sexualization of the public sphere.
What I finally wanted to show you now, because I think it's quite interesting to reflect on,
is a book that is produced by Saskia Aukema who is a photographer.
It is called "Veiled to Busy Being Awesome". Its a book of pictures which she took,
working with women wearing a face veil. And she asked them, of course they are not too many
ways in which you can depict a person wearing a face veil
you can't show the face obviously– so she asked them to select items of dress
or other particular items that they would like to be pictured with
and that say something about how they see themselves.
On the left hand side is the cover of the book.
And the other pictures are some of the pictures inside the book
Thank you.