BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

WE'VE TRADED OUTRAGE FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS! The Outrage of Allowing American Muslim Women to Hide Their Face For a Driver's License Photo M. Toomey, PhD In 2002, Florida allowed a Muslim woman to have her driver's license picture taken with her face hidden. In the name of civil rights, religious custom was allowed to supersede a woman's human right to exist as an individual with an identity of her own. With her face hidden, a woman is declared the property of a man. Sexism of this magnitude should never be tolerated, yet without any public outcry, it is not only tolerated it is given legal sanction, in the name of freedom of religion. Why do we use a picture as identification on a driver's license in the first place? For the same reason I am decrying the permission to have a woman's face covered for the picture. To make it possible to identify us from our picture. Our face is the primary basis for this photo recognition. Not our hands. Not our feet. Not our ...

Freeing Afghan Women Will Take More Than Allowing Them to Take off Their Burqua Michele Toomey, PhD The graphic pictures of Afghan women walking around covered and hindered by their burqua is so painful to see, but as they become free to take them off, that may be pain that we don't see. They have not only been forced to be hidden, they have grown accustomed to it and to the violence directed at them as women. What will exposure feel like? Will it feel freeing or frightening? I would like to address the prospect of fear. These women have been raped, beaten, and even shot, at a moments notice and at a man's whim. They have known slavery and captivity, all because they are women. Now they are going to uncover for all the men to see. How safe is that going to feel? How freeing does that seem? For some, probably not freeing at all, only more frightening at the prospect of such exposure. If we really do care about the plight of Afghan women, we had better provide them with psycholo...