I am going to London tomorrow, and I can’t wait. I’ll get to spend four full days with Lyn, which is probably the longest time we’ve been together. I’ll have to start packing soon, but that should only take half an hour of rummaging, chucking clothes about my room and generally making a mess. Mind you, I’m not sure what to take.
The subject of clothes turned up in the news. I think in Britain we are very fortunate: here, as in other western democracies, we can wear what we want, pretty much. I can go down the pub in a dress, or through the campus gym in a zentai suit. It might turn a few heads or raise a few eyebrows, but I won’t get arrested. In terms of personal expression, I can do whatever I like.
However, it seems that this isn’t the case worldwide. A Sudanese woman has recently been sentenced to 40 lashes and a fine of $100 just for wearing trousers. Such cases, of course, split liberals like me in two: do we respect the views of other cultures, upholding the principals of non-interference a la star trek’s prime directive? Or do we side with the individual and individual freedom? This also recalls my own contradictory stance on religion: I believe that, while religion is a form of mind control that we could all do without, people have a right to worship what, who and how they wish. Nobody has the right to tell anyone what to think.
By the same token, we don’t have the right to tell the Sudanese government what laws to make; yet the same ethos holds that the Sudanese government has no right in telling it’s citizens what they cannot wear. The two positions are mutually exclusive, yet stem from the same philosophy. So, while my gut reaction is to intervene in this barbarity, this is tempered by the knowledge that, to them, it is not barbarous.
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