Reply #5: Yet his issue is not with sexism, but with communication

[mcscajun]

and on that he is correct. Human communication is about far more than the verbal, and unless you can see the full face of the person talking to you, communication suffers. Anyone online has already experienced that particular effect in full measure.

Mr Straw wrote of his fears in a regular column for the Lancashire Telegraph.

A meeting with a veiled woman had made him consider the "apparent incongruity" between her entirely English accent and UK education and the wearing of the veil. "Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone 'face to face' who I could not see," he wrote.

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0300nationalnews/tm_headline=straw--veils-should-be-discarded&method=full&objectid=17882324&siteid=50061-name_page.html