After years of residing in a few forums and listening to others speak their opinion and respond to mine on them, I find myself abit dissatisfied with the whole forum concept and the people attending them except for a few exceptions. Mostly the dissapointment comes when the conversations start to lean to towards the topics of religion, immigration and politics. The conversations (and I use that term loosely) turn into raging rants from the uninformed and often bigotted, racist, sexist or whatever cross the ignorant bare. I sort of realised I hadn't attended for a month the I use to be on daily. Now I am sure that there are alot of good people on there still but it would seem that they too have sort of left the building because of all the noise going on.
So I found myself needing to express myself and say something but without the whole ranting and raving from others and so I start my Blog and realise I have finally grown up enough to think before I speak.
One of the latest "concerning" issues for these concerned crazed ranting citizens is the "Burqa" tirades, encouraged of course by our wonderfully "unbiased" (NOT) media who I found after abit of googling that they have been raising this whole burqa issue for some years. There is even a "Ban the Burqa" Facebook page. Complete with all the hate, anger and ignorance you can imagine. I guess it doesn't help when people like Carnita Matthews, who tried to get out of a driving offence (not displaying her P's) by telling the cop he was only doing it because he was racist. He asked her to take off her Burqa for identification while booking her. In the end she got away with it all because no one could prove it was her that made the complaint and all charges dropped against her. I have to wonder what photo is on her drivers licence ?
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/judge-could-not-be-sure-who-was-behind-the-veil/story-fn7x8me2-1226078801032
This woman already has a pretty shoddy driving history and has already been suspended for speeding and other traffic fines. So she isn't some pristine innocent. Thankfully video evidence showed that our fine officer was indeed not been racist and she was a lying bitch. Mind you of course she later apologised and said she didn't "realise" she had behaved in that way. WTF ? she was there and sober.
Now of course, a new law in NSW where you have show your face and identify yourself on request by the law. It is not specific to burqa's, Which is as it should be, I have to show photo ID numerous times during the course of my normal life.
A friend mentioned on the Facebook "Ban the Burqa" page that she didn't care what they wanted to wear, her only concern was that men would wear them into womens toilets and maybe rape women or to do other nefarious deeds. Which is a reasonable concern in this day and age. But she was abused anyway.
So how do we handle this ? it makes no sense in the land of freedom to Ban people from the freedom of expressing their religon, well as long as it doesn't hurt anyone and doesn't stop them from expressing theirs. We would be no better than the old witch burning christians hundreds of years ago.
I will admit to having a knee jerk reaction to the burqa, as a women I do feel threatened by it. My world as a women is a fragile thing, I am limited as a woman as to where I can go and what I can do, if i wish to remain safe and alive. It sucks to feel fear but it is a real thing, I have felt it on a suburban(mt druitt) train station, sitting alone as a bunch of boys of "islander" appearance hurl abuse at me for no reason except I was there and I was white. I felt it as my old drug dealing neighbour was shot dead in my front yard, one of the reasons I left Sydney was because of the constant fear and limitations to my freedom and safety.Why should I feel scared of a 9 year old, well if he is holding a knife at me, hell yeah I feel scared.
Getting back to the point about the Burqa, well I have never even met a woman wearing one to be honest, it is what it represents (oppression) that makes me dislike and fear it. My fears of course are incited by media bombardment about islamic terrorist and muslims seeking sharia law "recognition" in Australia.
I don't believe that any other law should be recognised in Australia except Australian Law, I don't think a person should swear on a bible either, I mean really people lie in court all the time don't they after swearing on the bible, even so called christians. Though what do we make people tell the truth ? another one of lifes big questions. but once again getting back to the burqa, if a woman wants to wear it, so be it, really I don't care if she does. I would be interested for my own sake, how I will react if I have to talk to some one in a burqa. It would I imagine be hard to talk to a person where you can't see their face, no matter how the face is hidden.
I do think it is sexist because the women have to wear it and not the men and I know a few who probably should cover themselves up. But all religions seem to favour men don't they. You have to wonder what it is about us that they a scared of. It is why I have no religion, just can't get my head around the double standards and dogma.
But I don't have any good answers to this particular dilemma, only opinions, so it is lucky I am not the prime minister isn't it.
