The Big City

I find the idea of women walking around covered up with a veil offensive, just as I find the idea of traditional marriage offensive. Of course, some of my best friends are married and I have even attended some weddings and celebrated the love that is expressed at them. What offends me is any suggestion that men and women are not equal and interchangeable. When I see someone marking out their role as a woman in that way it makes me feel that they’re diminishing my role as a parent and an equal partner in my relationship. By suggesting that women should have a particular role - looking after the kids, cooking, staying at home, and that men should be out at work I feel that they are, in some way, attacking the lifestyle that I have chosen.

Of course, I love seeing veiled women walking around because I really enjoy the multi-cultural society I am lucky enough to live in. I know that many women who wear veils consider themselves feminists, they just don’t believe that equality means interchangeability. In the same way I don’t see my married friends’ relationships as any less valid than my own, I’m glad if they’re happy. The point I’m making is that just because someone is a liberal you shouldn’t assume they don’t find things offensive, it’s just that they don’t think they should force you to live your life as they do.

Another thing I find offensive is blasphemy, but I find the attempts by some people to apply religious rules to secular societies even more offensive. The recent outcry about cartoons in a Danish newspaper that poked fun at Mohammed is a timely warning of how unreasonable some people are when it comes to religion. It shows what a good thing it is that the government didn’t entirely manage to introduce this week’s changes to the law concerning incitement to religious hatred.

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