Reply #87: I don't think I'm saying anything of the sort

[okie]

I understand women live under harsh oppression in fundamentalist cultures. I also understand Western imperial powers have been propping up those fundamentalists, and cynically playing them off one another for decades. The only assumption I make is that these women are not infants. The woman mentioned in the OP does not sound like a passive victim. She sounds like someone who believes she was wronged and is fighting back. Even if you think she's off base here, that's not always an easy thing to do.

Where does that assumption about meeting women come from? That seems unfair

What I meant about sartorial regimes is that Western women are subjected to all kinds of silly, anti-feminine rules and expectations in how they are meant to look and dress. Just think about the ideology that lies behind things like stilt-like high heels, and face lifts and aging women dying their hair. Or shaving legs and armpits! People are deciding what clothes will be produced, what the ideal body type for those clothes is, what will be exposed or concealed. People's jobs depend on these rules that exist for no good reason at all, but we just ignore that and focus on what Muslim women are doing because the sexism seems more overt.