The story about the 15 UK marines that Iranian forces apprehended in their own waters has been furiously swirling around on the internet and on television (although the Imus scandal has recently replaced it on the front pages) and I have been a little late to discuss its significance on my own blog. But let’s face it, this hostage crisis, and in particular, the way the Iranian forces and our own media have been focusing on the female of the group has strong implications for Women and War.
First of all, why was the female soldier wearing a headscarf? The rest of the marines were wearing their uniforms. I wonder, was she forced to wear it, or did she choose to put it on out of respect for the Iranians? If the Iranian forces did indeed force her to wear the headscarf, I think that they were doing it so as to make an example of her, to show that she was different from the male soldiers with whom she was traveling. She, after all, was the only soldier allowed to speak on camera, to give her account of her experience while in captivity. Were the Iranians trying to show that they give women the freedom and power to speak?
Is wearing the headscarf in Iran being respectful of cultural difference, or is it an acknowledgment of the inequality of women in that country? Should the female soldier have refused to wear the headscarf? I had a personal experience with this kind of cultural difference when I was visiting churches in Russia. The Russian orthodox church requires women to cover their heads and requires men to remove their hats. I felt OK respecting this custom, even though I am not Russian orthodox, and not even Christian. When I wore the headscarf in the churches, I did feel a little fake. But how far can we take our respect for cultural difference before we feel as though our own rights are actually threatened? How much cultural difference will we accept before we feel as though we must fight back and refuse to adopt symbols and culture that we do not stand for, that perhaps we stand against, and instead stand up for the culture that we believe is right?
I am not sure whether the UK soldier was wrong to wear the headscarf. But it seems to me that by forcing the soldier to wear it, the Iranians were trying to insult to our culture, our white, Judeo-Christian tradition. They were showing that they could dominate our female soldier, but that they could also give her special treatment because she was a woman. Will we, women, continue to accept this dual-natured treatment?
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April 30, 2007 at 10:01 pm
[...] more explication on this, check out this post on the blog “Women and [...]