Laura Kacere

A SYTYCB entry

I was at a rally in Washington, D.C. last weekend called We Are Woman, organized by a national grassroots group of women with the vision of calling on policy makers to end the rollback of women’s economic and reproductive rights.  Amidst the sea of shirts imprinted with feminist slogans on the West lawn of the U.S. Capitol was a single woman wandering the area in an American flag-printed burqa.  Covered from head to toe, this white, non-Muslim woman was one of the organizers of the event.  As I approached her, others from the rally stepped up to take pictures with her, laughing in good fun, in agreement with her. I couldn’t believe others weren’t offended by what she was wearing. I went to question her on it, attempting to explain why her mode of dress was offensive to me and others, that she was making the feminist movement look bad.  She laughed it off, saying, that the burqa is, quite simply and universally, a symbol of oppression.

A year ago, I was at the Women, Money Power Summit put on by the Feminist Majority, where Rep. Carolyn Maloney, self-identifying feminist and champion of (U.S.) women’s rights, went on stage to discuss the oppression in the daily realities of the women of Afghanistan. It was a patronizing speech, meant to appeal to donors and activists in the crowd, to get them to feel sorry for the women entrenched in Muslim culture ...