Social Roles and Headcovering
When you see someone say something incredibly stupid, you always have at least two choices. You can believe that they are that stupid, or you can believe that, for some reason, their mind and/or voice either can’t, or doesn’t, go in the direction needed. So when the two hundred pound girl with the short cut purple hair talks about how no one seems to ask her out on a date… you ask yourself… is she really that stupid? Or has she been that ideologically captured? Or is she laying some sort of trap, hoping you will naively mention her weight and her hair? And her feminist ideology, and….
So when I read the absolutely brilliant article that is the subject of this post I was faced with a similar dilemma. Starting from a (ludicrously false) starting point of evolutionary biology, the author goes on to make some brilliant (if fatally flawed) observations about the way that various aspects of morality fit together. I immediately wrote to
and said he should read it in light of our ‘Pizza and Sushi’ discussion.But several times in the article he references a particular incident: the lashing of a woman in Iran who failed to cover her head. And the ways he referenced it were light, trivial, and totally out of keeping with the rest of the article. Above all, he failed to ‘fill in the blanks’ as far as how that particular issue fit with rest of his thesis.
Ranks and Roles
If you have ever been in the military, played wargames, read books on military history or military historical fiction, or even just watched The Lord of the Rings on video; you will know that, in the military, different people do different things. The more you watch or read or have personal experience, the better your understanding of this will be. The soldiers standing there with their pikes or muskets depend on:
a) The soldiers standing next to them standing in line
b) The Sergeants and drummers boys instructing the line
c) The Officers directing the line
d) The cavalry, artillery, scouts, and all the various other parts of the army playing their particular roles.
IOW in order to have a successful military campaign, or even a battle, there are a large number of people that have to do a large number of different things, and do them well, in order for your side to have victory and, hopefully, for you to not die. A failure of one or more of the parts of this machinery can lead to disaster and death.
And frequently these roles are not ones freely chosen by the individual. The newly joined recruit might wish to be a scout, or an officer… but he is instead handed a pike and told to stand in the line, idiot! Or he is told he has flat feet and needs to drive a wagon with goods back and forth to wherever the army is going. Or he is taught how to fire a cannon.
We could call this ‘rank and role’. There are various ranks, people who tell others to do things, and people who are told to do things, and a vast number of people in the middle doing both; and there are various roles: pikeman, archer, cannoneer, scout, logistics, general’s aide de camp, etc etc. And a well-functioning army depends on everyone doing their roles and acting their rank. At all times.
And in support of that rank and those roles, armies have invented uniforms. When you are a pikeman, you wear this shirt, these pants, this hat, with this insignia. As you rise in rank, your insignia changes; as you are transferred to another role, your uniform changes. So when all is chaos on the battlefield, you can look at someone and, by the totality of how they are dressed, have some idea of what they should be doing.
Gender Roles
Outside of the military, we do the same thing. It is often less important, but we have police, fire, and even Walmart checkers who wear this or that to help us identify them.
And every society since the world began has had roles for men and women. Different roles. And pretty much every one we have ever read about or dug up their artefacts from the ground has dressed their men and their women differently. From pink and blue blankets to pants and skirts to bra and jock straps… they have all done it.
Practically every society has always treated these in the same way as military uniforms… as if there were roles to play in society and, by wearing the clothes that go with your role, you were agreeing to perform your part. The Chinese went through a phase where they deliberately tried to break this down… and it didn’t last. The US pretends like anyone can wear anything… but the Walmart bathrooms still give this the lie.
Out of Uniform
It is a common theme in military drama for people to be caught ‘out of uniform’. Perhaps a night battle and you are roused from sleep and have to jump up in your underwear grab a chair and run out and try to fight hardened steel. Perhaps you were caught in the shower. Perhaps in town. All funny or dramatic, depending on how the story is written.
But there is a very different scene where someone is ‘out of uniform’. That involves a spy, or a deserter, or perhaps someone that ‘won’t fight your war anymore!’ This person might be out of uniform… intentionally. Their lack of uniform is a mark of a lack of compliance, conformity, or honesty. They are not merely caught with their pants down but caught wearing the wrong pants.
In every society, this has been frowned on, and the more serious the breach, the harsher the frown. The spy might be shot, the deserter imprisoned, and the objector lashed. When society is counting on you to wear your uniform, a failure to do so can have grave consequences. Or wearing the wrong uniform.
Explanation
So the explanation for the woman lashed for not wearing her headcovering was… she was out of uniform. Her society (not ours) mandates a certain form of dress for people. (Well, ours does, too, but it is much more vague, and the consequences are largely social, not judicial. Unless you wear too little. Or put on a uniform you aren’t entitled to and use it to commit fraud.) And in her society that includes strict differences between men and women. Which includes covering her hair when out in public.
It is all very well for the average person to mock another culture for how they dress and for how much fuss they put on it. But it has no place in a serious paper, let alone one that claims to be explaining the evolution of moral behaviour. There is a reason for the reaction, and it is not irrational; it is not out of tune with the supposed rules of moral behaviour that they are pushing.
She was out of uniform. She was rejecting the role that her society put her in. She was waving the enemy’s flag. She was an artilleryman showing up to work in the uniform of a sergeant of logistics.
She was out of uniform. And the penalty for that can be death.
Caveat
No one should read the above and think that I am in favour of a woman, of whatever country, getting lashes for not wearing her head covering. What I am opposed to is the inability or unwillingness of the author to cover this issue in a manner in line with the rest of his article. Or, what might be better but is still appalling, his inability to understand it.
There are many other interesting issues in the article, and several fallacies and missed explanations, but this one seemed to be the worst.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
