So Merkel is going to ban burqas? That’s fantastic news. You can’t expect violence against women not to increase in a society where it’s ok to mark women visually as somebody’s property that’s not to be touched and nobody’s property that is open for grabbing, mangling, and assaulting.
By the way, I’m almost finished with Zizek’s book on refugees and a review is coming shortly. For now I can say that Zizek is at least a bit less terrified of the subject than everybody else. He still follows every sentence with a PC slogan but at least he has something of his own to say.
Clarissa's Blog 
Waiting for the review of Zizek’s book.
As for Germany, Merkel is simply reacting to the public possibly moving in the Right wing direction. I suspect women rights are not the biggest concern of most those people (to say the least), even though they like to use “they rape pur women” argument.
Uri wrote about the world-wide political situation:
The Call of the Nation
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1481289470
And this link seems appropriate after Uri’s post:
The Legalization Bill Is Not Just About Settlements
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I don’t care about the individual motivations of people who advance feminist causes. I care about results, not ideological purity.
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You can’t expect violence against women not to increase in a society where it’s ok to mark women visually as somebody’s property that’s not to be touched and nobody’s property that is open for grabbing, mangling, and assaulting.
This is a continuum. You could say the same about wedding rings to a much lesser degree, or the fact that most street harassment is when women are not with some dude (ymmv).
However it’s hard for me to feel sympathetic to the slippery slope argument that it gets people used to restrictions directed at a particular religion. It’s so intensely weird to have someone exist in public without having a visible face (burqas & niqabs) if the ostensible purpose is to ensure “safety”, when all it does is mark both unveiled and veiled women for physical attack by extremists.
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Wedding rings are worn by both men and women.
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So they are! That’s relatively recent though. Traditionally, all of that is to mark that women are married. I think only women wear engagement rings as well (and that started when men started to wear wedding rings). And I’ve never heard of men donning fake rings of any kind on any occasion to cut down on harassment.
Married Hindu women I know here combine Hindu and Western marriage symbols not only for sentiment and love of jewelry but also so that everyone knows they are married. So they end up wearing three to seven different things that say I’m “married” from head to toe [Western: engagement ring + wedding ring, Hindu: mangal sutra, (dependent on region, traditionalism: two toe rings, bangles, vermillion in part)]. Men just wear the wedding ring (if that).
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