This whole thread is so....

https://twitter.com/orikkunn/status/1754831427903074488?t=WbVE9Fu585pxZFXPbr_JlQ&s=19

It's pissing me off actually and I search the word hijab on their account and in one of their tweets they said "I think hijab is a bad thing" ??? I need non-muslims who speak on Islam without any knowledge to stfu

i'm going to apologize beforehand if this is upsetting in any way bc i'm sure you were expecting a different response but while i feel like op's wording could have been better in this thread specifically—i like their wording in this thread more—i do generally agree with them. i definitely understand there's a gut reaction to any critique of islamic practices esp in the context of modern orientalism and islamophobic sentiment, but i also think that muslims (and people of any religious faith, really) can simultaneously acknowledge that some criticisms of faith, while driven by racism and/or xenophobia, are also validly driven by a worthwhile contention with women's material circumstances over the course of history. in the other thread i linked above i think op is very much correct in that it's not constructive nor useful to criticize individual people. many individuals do choose to dress more modestly of their own volition and are privileged enough to have that available to them as a choice and nothing more bc of the environment they grow up in and the familial interpretation of religious tenets they're taught. but i don't think people are wrong when they acknowledge the larger context within which women are advised to dress modestly and how those standards of modest dress compare with those imposed on men in comparison. there's an undeniable dichotomy there and at least in my islamic upbringing i've been taught that the way some of these things diverge along the lines of gender is preordained and not meant to be perceived as inherently oppressive towards one gender or the other. a thing is simply bc it is. but religion isn't really something you can view within a vacuum much as that would be ideal. it is connected to the material circumstances of women in the real world and i do allow myself to sit with that reality even if it's weird to process at times bc i still consider myself a muslim and have no plans on ex-communicating myself

personally i like to dress modestly in the sense that i don't wear very exposing clothing. i've grown up wearing pants for my entire life. my parents are lax enough that i'm allowed to wear t-shirts but i can't wear anything where my armpits are directly exposed so that means no sleeveless tops. i can't wear anything with a deep neckline either unless i have a higher positioned undershirt on underneath. and again, i'm not particularly bothered by any of that. i do toe the line on a few occasions but generally i'm ok with how i dress bc by now i'm used to it. that being said, i know the reason i've come to be okay with dressing this way is bc it's how i was taught to dress, and towards the specific end of maintaining modesty and emphasizing on the shape of my figure as minimally as is possible without having to outright wear a bag lol. that is at large a structural reality of muslim practice towards women, regardless of what individual women choose to do in their own homes where they have the liberty to choose. and as i mentioned above, i do think we have to sit with that reality even if we acknowledge it opens us up to abuse by other people who may not have the best intentions. this is why, for example, i've really come to frown upon the way ex-muslims (esp when they're women) are almost mocked by the extant muslim community for logically reacting to patriarchal oppression under the guise of religion. bc at the outset, materially, there is no choice presented to these people. and even if there is ideologically a choice within the tenets of the religion itself, with respect to women in particular, there is still a defined gender dichotomy and hierarchy that cannot be denied and that is quite regularly used to perpetuate the oppression that many of them try to escape

what's hard to do and what requires a knowledgeable, concerted effort on our part as muslims is trying to balance the nuance of the oppression we are accessory to against the nuance of our own oppression for who we are. it's certainly cruel that we have to do so much to parse all of this because racist, xenophobic imperialists are incorrigible people who will co-opt anything if it's beneficial to them. but all the same, we do have that responsibility at minimum. we have to learn to sit in the uncomfortable reality that while many of us as individuals may choose to practice the way we do, that choice may yet be colored by how we grew up within organized religion, and it obscures our ability to recognize that while we think it's a choice for us as individuals, it's certainly not a choice on a structural level, and that's something we should vehemently argue against maintaining the status quo of

Once again seeing posts about radfems only criticize hijabs and not any other religions’ forced modesty like okay lol, this is my time to shine, I have such a bone to pick with Christianity. I had to veil in a Catholic Church to attend my aunt’s wedding. There was a little pamphlet explaining that veiling was a mark of respect towards women, since they were the vessels of life, and compared it to the veiling of the chalice used for the eucharist. My aunt was told by the priest that she better hurry up and start having kids before her womb shriveled up, haha. (She was in her late thirties and desperately wanted kids). I tore off my veil as soon as I got outside and refused to put it back on until my mom made go back inside for the pictures. I was an angry teen girl, and I was made angrier that I would go home in a few days, and have to face more modesty restrictions at my school and in my town. Now, we didn’t have to cover our heads, but shoulders and knees were verboten, and we would make fun of another school where girls had to wear ankle length skirts, because that school was “too strict”. We at least got to wear pants. I remember when my best friend, who had gone through puberty a little bit earlier than rest of us, was pulled aside by a teacher and told in no uncertain terms that she was showing too much cleavage and that she had to go and change. We were in middle school, and she was wearing the same simple crew neck shirts as the rest of us. She cried in the bathroom, and for years afterwards, she would always wear a camisole underneath all her shirts. I just gave up and wore nothing but long pants and skirts so I don’t have to endure the humiliation of having my shorts or skirts measured. I wore jackets all the time, so I wouldn’t have my shirts’ necklines scrutinized. We had similar rules in regards to our sportswear, certain length skirts and shorts, no bellies showing, and no wearing just a sports bra ever. This was particular issues with the girls tennis team, as we started training in late august in the American south, and would get so hot we wanted to strip off our shirts and pour cold water over ourselves. One girl did this, and brought out the school’s principle to yell at us about disrespecting the game, ourselves, and the school. Her shirt went back on. This was really irritating as the boys track team trained at the same time, and not only did the boys run shirtless, they wore the tiniest shorts that left nothing to the imagination. And they were never told off for being immodest. One year, the girls swim team had to take their yearbook photo in their school uniforms instead of their racing one pieces because it was too immodest. The boys team was photographed in their speedos and swim caps.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Bible Belt, but I am always hundred percent ready to levy any criticisms at Christianity’s modesty standard. We just didn’t cover our hair, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t still policed with same accusations of “slut” and “whore” when we stepped out of line. I was lucky, in that my parents didn’t particularly care what I wore as long I was neat and clean, but I knew girls whose parents would check over their clothes to make sure that they were modest enough before they went out the door.

I still struggle with wearing certain kinds of clothes. It’s summer right now and I’m wearing jeans, as I never show my legs unless I can help it, lol. The amount of times I skipped out of swimming bc I didn’t want to wear a bathing suite in front of people fills me with regret. My sister struggles from the same issues, and we didn’t even come from a religious family, this is just the attitude our town and region had towards women and girls’ bodies. I think head coverings and face veils are easy to point out, as the face and head are such important parts of human interaction, but modesty standards on general are terrible and should be critised regardless of religion, and I don’t think radfems pull any punches when it comes to Christianity lol.

There are some good books about American Christian modesty and purity culture that helped me to move forward, and well as making me extremely grateful to my relaxed and loving parents, especially my strong and independent mother who did her best to combat what the rest of the world was teaching us. “Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free” by Linda Kay Klein is heartbreaking personal account of the American evangical purity movement, and I really recommend it to anyone who has been or is going through something similar. “The Purity Myth” by Jessica Valenti discusses how American culture deals with the concept of female virginity, and it’s consequences, and highlights a lot of the religious aspects involved therein. “I Fired God” by is Jocelyn Zichterman is the author’s personal memoirs of her life in and escape from a fundamentalist Baptist cult and it does touch on modesty standards and the consequences. And finally, there’s a book that I think every American radfem should read, which is “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement” by Kathryn Joyce, which is a harrowing documentation of far right Christianity in the US and the wider world. It’s a tad bit outdated, as some of the major figures discussed, like Doug Phillips of Vision Forum, have fallen in scandal and disgrace, but it’s really important to read, especially in light of how politics in the US are moving against women right now.