The hallmark of advanced civilization is its full participation of women in the public sphere. You may find profoundly beautiful women in oppressed regimes. But if you can’t see them about, do they really exist?
Put another way, if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? Is sound generated simply by the compression and expansion of air waves? Or is it sound only when one receives the noise signal?
Bounding women in headscarves or draping them in burqas obscures their beauty to be sure. What's worse, it blots them from public expanse like a swarm of blind spots. An invisible woman is a fallen tree that registers no noise in its ruin, so no one notes its demise.
Obliterating women from view has its place in the lowest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It is the fight for survival. (Perhaps it occupies its own rung in Dante’s Inferno. This where liars are below thieves for stealing from people the truth.)
Women freed from the toil of securing food, shelter, and security can pursue higher levels of self-fulfillment. And maybe fulfill their purpose here on earth.
Tethered to the fear of daily life keeps women penned as unwanted pets, possessing ideas like animals do instincts.
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