Don’t throw sand over my eyes. On the burkini ban and European cruelty
Flavia Dzodan
40095

It would take far more time and energy than you’re worth to point out the nonsense contained in your post, when it contains such phrases as “…to inhabit a European beach as a visible immigrant woman you have to be either an anonymous dead body or forcefully stripped by four policemen.”

Never mind the fact that she was never “stripped” by anyone; she was given a ticket. Never mind the absurdity of claiming that one is going to the beach to take some sun, while being completely covered from the sun. Never mind the aggressive and provocative nature of someone imposing their imported cultural norms upon the majority who partake of a different norm.

And for that matter, never mind the morbid fetishizing of commemorating the one-year anniversary of a photograph appearing in the media, or the inclusion of CMNF porn as significant in any way. (Why no mention of the porn niche of foot-fetishism, when the photos of the woman in question clearly show her naked feet? Is she trying to arouse men who have a foot fetish? And why no mention of the niches of fem-dom, or interracial, or bears? Oh right — because they also have nothing to do with refugee bodies on beaches.)

No, you entire post is written like a college sociology major hoping to impress her professor by including as many trendy sociopolitical notions as possible, and jumping to conclusions for which there is no foundation. I was reduced to shaking my head and laughing at the overwrought absurdity of phrases like “sadistic, necrophiliac non consensual nature of European white supremacy”.

But standing out like a siren amongst the shrieks, belches, farts and other unpleasant bodily noises you make in your post, is this basic fact: YOU chose to emigrate from Argentina to Europe — a place with a particular set of cultural norms. And not just to Europe, but to the Netherlands, one of the most liberal places in Europe (“liberal” in the classic use of the word, not the political). And then you began inveighing against the culture of the place that was so gracious as to accept you. Is it that you’re oblivious to the irony? -or is it that you lash out to suppress your self-loathing for running away from home and becoming dependent upon a society that gives you so much more than you had before?

It seems that everything you hate (heterosexuality, laissez-faire society, that 50% of the population is male, etc.), the Dutch are OK with. Whereas the Dutch value laissez-faire et laissez-passer, you insist upon everyone conforming to your particular, narrow model of society, and do little but express contempt for anyone who dares not agree. This is the definition of cultural arrogance. It would be like me, a European-American man, immigrating to Japan and spending my life publicly condemning the Japanese customs of the social harmony of “wa” (“stifling of individuality”), Shinto (“patriarchial”), wafuku (“repressive to women’s bodies”, “cis-heteronormative”), etc. Well sorry, but my mother raised me with better manners than that. Sorry if that wasn’t your experience.

You’re the Anjem Choudary of 3rd-wave feminism. If you find European culture so objectionable, so intrinsically flawed, perhaps you would find life more to your liking in one of those countries where the burqa is mandatory. After all, the woman on the beach did, right? And all of those refugees, whose bodies on the beaches that you so fetishize, preferred those societies too, right? Oh that’s right: they, like you, decided that life was considerably better in a society that *other people* had made, and decided to take advantage of it for their own benefit. But unlike people who have better sense and manners, you, and certain immigrants and refugees from outside of Europe, have decided to spend your lives snapping at the hand that feeds you. No amount of sociopolitical wimble-wamble can disguise that.