I’m saying people won’t be represented. Not just disappointed. Representation is important. That’s my argument. I said it very clearly. Representation isn’t problematic and my argument is literally that I think representation is more important than the risk of cultural appropriation and exclusion. Tucking away minorities to save them from cultural appropriation isn’t it. Its infantalizing. Also, we can fight for inclusion and representation and still call out cultural appropriation when it occurs.

So then they should never have the chance to perform their sports at the Olympics or on an international stage? Representation matters. It wasn’t just white ladies break dancing at the Olympics.

I’m not an expert, but I had an expert explain that an unlocked boot loader is only risky if you think someone nefarious is physically able to get their hand on your phone. Is that true?

I think its a way to argue that sports developed by certain groups shouldn’t be allowed in the Olympics because then those who didn’t traditionally develop said sport might compete in them. It results in exclusion, which is worse than the risk of cultural appropriation IMO.

Hmm, it seemed to be a problem with subsistence crops too. We were working on black rot resistance in sukuma wiki which isn’t a cash crop. We were working on resistance specifically because it reduced the need to rotate crops. People could grow it more continuously without risking yield loss.

Years ago I went to Kenya and Tanzania to asses some fields for trials of new cultivars my group was developing. There were a lot of issues with people seeing a yearly decrease in crop yield. But the major issue was actually the lack of crop rotation causing a buildup of disease in the soil which was weakening the plants each year.

I don’t know this guy or his field. And, not carefully fertilizing fields can cause root burn for sure. But poor agricultural yield in Africa is definitely impacted by poor crop rotation.

A rise in homelessness is great?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that the key difference between the two is that the proposal by hamas wanted to negotiate dead hostages for living hostages.

Either way, I agree with the rest. These cease fires are a facade because neither side trusts the other to keep it and so they dont keep to it themselves. There is no trust. There needs to be more than pinky promises to guarantee the end of this genocide.

If they actually cared, they would take the time to understand the actual situation and realize that puberty blockers aren’t experimental or dangerous.

Actually, many parks do allow drinking. If you check the cities bylaws, they often state explicit locations where open containers are allowed and it often tends to be the major town parks.

The us literally distributed religious texts to extremists to encourage them to hate outsiders because communists were the outsiders we wanted them to push out at the time:

CIA and State Department have been criticized for publishing textbooks intended to indoctrinate children with racism and hatred towards foreigners and towards non-muslim Afghans.

In an effort to aid the anti-Soviet insurgency and inculcate a hatred of foreign invaders in Afghan children, the US government covertly distributed schoolbooks which promoted militant Islamic teachings and included images of weapons and soldiers. The Taliban used the American textbooks but they scratched out the images of human faces which were contained in them in keeping with their strict aniconistic and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. The United States Agency for International Development gave millions of dollars to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the 1980s and the university used the money to fund the writing and the publishing of the textbooks in local languages.

To be fair, this was in Pakistan and Afghanistan and I know less about Iran. But, yeah. “The west” 100% encouraged this behavior. And we backed mujahedeen extremist warlords in Afghanistan all the way until we pulled out.

It was clearly a strange example to give a point, to which you didnt make any comment.

What would I comment on when there is little to no relation between your example and the issue at hand?

So in your opinion, how are we going to help these girls that being forced into it?

i think, at this point, I will just re quote things I’ve already said since it seems you’re just not reading?

" I really think there should be a system of support for Muslim girls in western societies so they can deal with and navigate these issues on their own terms and with their own autonomy."

"Offer these girls mental health resources and a way to escape their families and religion. Offer them a way out of their oppressive situation. Offer them the power to overcome their oppressors on their own terms. Have consequences FOR THE OPPRESSORS if you want to be forceful. "

why are muslims not fighting for that?

You’re saying this like they don’t? There are support systems in western countries too for Muslim women by Muslim women. People can be mad about multiple things at once. And, you will find that many Arab and Muslim women do fight as hard as possible for women in countries with Muslim governments that try to oppress them. Just like they fight the French government who tries to control them in the opposite direction. People don’t like authoritarianism in either direction. I don’t know what to tell you.

but I wonder if they are also enraged by the fact that some girls are being forced into it.

Yes. Yes they are.

The difference here is that there is not a group/religion forcing girls/women to wear jeans.

France is not Afghanistan. Girls are not being forced by religion in France the way they are in the middle east. You are not saving the little girls in Afghanistan by bullying the ones in France. Again, there’s a lot of feminist writing on how these clothes have a very different meaning in the west compared to the middle east. These women often wear these clothes for different reasons.

If you actually care, please read this: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/immigration-law-journal/blog/the-war-on-muslim-womens-bodies-a-critique-of-western-feminism/

All these “but my daughter wants to cover her whole body, its her choice!!”, its coming from their parents.

I think this is a very western take on feminism. There are many Arab atheistic women who write on the liberty of wearing clothes that cover their bodies without it having anything to do with shame or religion. Look into Leila Ahmed for example, a professor in Women’s Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. She is very against women’s oppression in Islamic tradition and majority countries. She’s based an entire career on it. She once opposed veils on women as an oppressive symbol, but has further dissected it’s role in western society where women are not oppressed by their religion and how it even represents freedom in a way. Because that’s how some western Muslim women feel when they wear it. Its their choice to decide what these clothes represent to them.

Some girls are forced and I won’t deny it. And I don’t think we should be tolerant of it. I really think there should be a system of support for Muslim girls in western societies so they can deal with and navigate these issues on their own terms and with their own autonomy. I wish we saw more of that.

But, acting like a girl living in France choosing to wear an abaya in a healthy Arab family setting (Or any loose dress popular in any culture) is any different from a girl choosing jeans in a healthy western family setting is disingenuous. We are all shaped by our upbringing, but that doesn’t inherently make it some kind of brainwashing or force or abuse.

Also, like… kids wear funky things to school. I don’t know enough about unicorn costumes in France specifically to say anything. But, depending on the costume I assume it would be left alone or stopped if it impeded normal school activity. This seems like a strange example.

An edit for your edit:

Yes, authoritarianism is the answer to authoritarianism. You are not going to win to authoritarianism with kind words.

Part of me barely wants to entertain this. I already explained how anti authoritarianism could be violent and how I wasn’t appealing to kind words or tolerance of intolerance. I offered tangible non authoritarian and even aggressive alternatives. Its scary that, even with this explanation, you think the answer to people behaving the way you don’t like is to control those that they abuse.

Woooow. The mental gymnastics. Are you actually comparing the french government telling little girls what not to wear to the Ukrainian army forcing out a militant government trying to overtake them?

This so is incomparable I don’t even know where to start. First, the Ukrainians are choosing for themselves how and why to deal with their oppressors. I have never suggest you have to be nice and hold hands to fight authoritarianism. I only said that more authoritarianism is not the answer to authoritarianism.

What the french are tying to do is pander to the far right and distract form other issues within their government with culture war BS while willful idiots like you act like the government is playing white savior helping these poor girls from their oppressive clothes. This is actually peaceful AND AUTHORITARIAN at the same time. You do not need to be violent to be anti authoritarian or violent to be authoritarian. Your weird appeal to force to deal with everything… weird and makes no sense.

You don’t liberate people by being authoritarian. Yes, be intolerant of authoritarianism. Use violence when necessary even. But again, MORE AUTHORITARIANISM DOES NOT COMBAT AUTHORITARIANISM. Forcing people to combat authoritarianism under your control and terms does not work. If it did, the US would control a lot more of South America and the middle east. Instead, they just killed a lot of innocent civilians.

This is not some paradox of tolerance I am appealing to. Be intolerant of authoritarianism. Offer these girls mental health resources and a way to escape their families and religion. Offer them a way out of their oppressive situation. Offer them the power to overcome their oppressors on their own terms. Have consequences FOR THE OPPRESSORS if you want to be forceful. Because banning a “square shape” loose dress does nothing to the actual oppressors. What, you think they’ll send their daughters to school in jeans now? No, lol. They will send their daughters to school in a slightly different style of loose dress now. Nothing has happened to the oppressors forcing girls into the abaya.

But, forcing these little girls into “what is good for them” is not helpful. THEY should have the power to decide what is good for them. Everyone deserves that. They should decide what they want to wear. Not their parents. Not the french government.

Do you actually have anything to argue what I said though? Like… really. Your best answer to oppression is more oppression? And that makes me an idiot?

Well, a bunch of men are certainly forcing them not to wear it now. I find it interesting that your answer to men controlling women is to have different men control the same women.

Edit: Honestly, fuck people who use religion as an oppressive tool. But, I find it really frustrating that people are acting like they’re liberating women and girls by controlling what they wear. That’s not liberation. These kids should be given access to confidential in school therapy and resources to report and deal with abusive parents if we’re actually worried about them being oppressed. But that’s not really what this is about.

Additionally, banning the abaya doesn’t prevent oppression. If these girls are being forced to dress modestly and being made ashamed of their bodies, they will just be forced to dress modestly in a vaguely different way now. Acting like this will bring meaningful change to these girls lives is just theater.

Such a brave statement.

There are better ways to prevent oppression than controlling what people wear (which is ironically exactly what their oppressors are doing). These girls and women should feel comfortable and free to wear whatever they want, without being forced by religion or the french government. The answer to oppression and authoritarianism isn’t more oppression and authoritarianism.

The problem is, theres no definitive distinguishihg description of an abaya. It’s a loose dress. How do you distinguish someone who wants to be comfortable in a loose dress from a girl being oppressed by an abaya?