Gender & Sexuality / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Culture

Legislation and identity politics: The case of France versus Muslim women and the facial veil

By Rachael Liberman As any respectful Western feminist knows, meddling in the affairs of non-Western women is a theoretical faux pas. Concerns, of course, are one thing, but condemnation outside of historical and cultural contexts, or “border crossing” has been ruled as downright oppressive (see Chandra Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak and Uma Narayan, among others). Issues such as genital mutilation have been fiercely debated among feminists, focusing more on the matter of Western normalizing judgment than the act itself. Discussion over...