Sobia Ali critiques an article by Amel Abdullah, who interprets a recent study by a Princeton psychologist to support the view that women who don’t veil are treated as “less human” by men:
Abdullah goes on to describe the protective and mandatory nature of the hijab. Stating that the hijab protects women from unwanted sexual attention by using this study as proof is a stretch. Unfortunately, I think we all know women in full hijab who have been sexually harassed and/or assaulted. Using this study to prove its protective capabilities is deceptive. The current study found that images of women in bikinis were objectified, not images of women in pant suits, jeans and tank tops, professional skirts and blazers, and so on. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, average, non-hijab, Western-attired women were not objectified. Therefore, one need not wear full hijab to not be objectified.
Again, I am not arguing against the hijab. I am saying that using this psychological study to imply that any clothing short of the full hijab makes one vulnerable to objectification is nonsensical—not to mention highly offensive to women who do not wear the full hijab. Abdullah’s analysis suggests that any non-hijab-wearing woman is fair game for objectification, whereas all that Fiske’s study does is show that heterosexual men are somehow hard-wired to objectify women in bikinis.
Read the full post here, and be sure to see The Immanent Frame discussion, The headscarf controversy.