In Defense of the Burqa: A Gay Perspective

By Eric Heinze
professor, University of London

One grey day last winter I was waiting alone, for what seemed like hours, to catch a bus. When someone joined me at the stop, I turned hoping for a smile, perhaps a word of banter. But the woman wore a burqa. I turned away.

There is no public sphere without spontaneous communication. We often look to another's face before breaking the ice. Does it seem welcoming? Cautious? Annoyed? Psychologists have ranked our responses to others' facial expressions among our basic means of deciphering the social world.

Yet the burqa proclaims a resounding 'No' to outsiders. It says 'Keep away', even if the woman beneath is the world's gentlest soul. Like a mirror with one-way transparency, the burqa allows my face to be observed by someone whose face I am barred from seeing in return.

So why do I support a woman's choice to wear it?

For decades, anti-establishment protesters in France, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere have included so-called 'autonomes' (roughly: 'autonomous groups'). They are mostly white men from middle class backgrounds. Their politics are loosely left-wing or anarchic. They often dress in black and sport balaclavas. They attract the occasional media spot, but are otherwise ignored. Europe has witnessed no fierce debates about whether they should be entitled to hide their faces.

Granted, they cover up only at protests. But while most women who wear burqas in Europe accept liberal democracy, the autonomes openly wish to tumble it. Young white men in balaclavas, in open combat against European culture, are less feared than ethnic minority women wearing burqas, who seek only acceptance within European culture. (Yes, special questions arise around facial coverings, for example, at airport identity checks or university exams. But such instances are limited and easily remedied.)

We tend to assume that our choice of clothing is personal. If there is one daily choice free of politics, surely it is what I wear? Nothing could be less true. Clothing rarely seems political because nearly all of us sheepishly conform to established dress codes. When enough people adopt a practice, it comes to seem apolitical. But watch someone cross-dress in public--it is still very rare--and you'll see how political clothing is. A hallmark of totalitarianism is the suppression of unconventional clothing as 'contrary to public order'.

The Stonewall riots that occurred in New York 40 years ago marked a turning point in gay rights. Some of the protesters wore drag, a sub-culture that has always lurked on the margins of gay life. Many people feel queasy near a man in drag. For them, drag is a loud 'No', a 'Keep away', which precludes social exchange. Similarly, many punks or Goths, though not veiling their faces, often mask them in layers of makeup -- not technically concealing, yet in some measure still hiding their faces, not to mention designing their entire bodies to provoke viewers' insecurities. People who wince at the burka probably also cringe at drag queens, Goths, punks, Rastas, hippies, dreadlocks, Hari Krishnas, Kurt Cobain's blue jeans, and anything else that is sufficiently unfamiliar.

No wonder unconventional clothing so easily shocks. It casts a deep freeze over 'ice break' moments, which we prefer with people who look and act familiar. Yet public dialogue is supposed to negotiate our differences. It is self-contradictory for that activity to impose purely conventional dress codes as its preliminary condition. As a pre-condition for chatting with the woman at the bus stop, I unfairly expected from her a sign of obedience to a dominant norm. I was contradicting the foundation of the exchange I sought, namely, with another human being, and not with a carbon copy of myself.

Spontaneous communication, at a rally or at a bus stop, must always be safeguarded, but never imposed. My right to express myself, by speaking or merely by exposing my face, is no right at all unless it includes my right to refrain from doing those things. I would have liked to chat to the woman at the bus stop, but I had no special entitlement to do so. Even without a burqa, she might have wished to be left alone.

Some gay men hate drag. They describe themselves as 'straight acting and appearing'. They revile drag queens for pushing stereotypes of effeminacy and freakishness. They fear that drag gives gays a bad image. Similarly, some Muslims who deny that the burqa is required by Islam worry that the facial covering feeds stereotypes of Muslim sexism or extremism. They fear that the burqa gives Muslims a bad image.

Both groups balance precariously between conformity and dissent. Who is the dissenting Muslim? The one who shuns the burqa, seeing it as a token of subordination? Or the one who challenges the prevailing dress codes of secular society? Who is the dissenting homosexual? The one who opposes the effeminate stereotype by refusing drag? Or the one who embraces drag as a challenge to convention? 'Conformity' and 'dissent' are slippery concepts.

Some will reject my comparison between drag and the burqa. They will insist that burqas, unlike drag, express the sacred. From that perspective, I may seem to be degrading the burqa, by comparing it to a burlesque form of dress, often aimed at parody or ridicule. Yet my aim is not to pass judgment on the ultimate status or value of these or any other choices of dress. My focus is more on the observer, within a pluralist society, who is confronted with the unfamiliar. The sacred is an ineffable thing. If it points to that which defines one's primordial being in the world, then the cross-dresser's choice may well be as heartfelt as the Muslim's.

Others will argue that drag is ironic, aimed at challenging traditional sex roles, while the burqa simply acquiesces in the traditional gender divide. But that argument revives feminist debates that are no more resolved today than they were decades ago. Stilettos or skimpy halter tops have long been charged with casting women as sex objects. But most women's desire to keep that choice free has remained unchanged. Because I must decide for myself how to dress as a gay male, the woman at the bus stop must choose for herself how to dress as a Muslim.

Eric Heinze is a professor on the Faculty of Laws, University of London.

By Eric Heinze |  July 10, 2009; 2:45 PM ET
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