Full-face burka lifts the veil on Western feminists' insecurities

I HAVE often been asked to write about the veil. NSW morals campaigner Fred Nile would like women to cover up more, one might think.

But Nile has finally succeeded in introducing legislation to ban full-face covering with a garment often called a burka. Of course some veils are burkas and some are not. By the veil I mean the full-face veil.

In Australia, the relatively recent arrival of the full veil is more confronting than any mere ethnic fashion innovation.

It seems anything that inhibits easygoing Aussie sexual expression must be bad. But that is not why Nile wants to ban the face veil. The NSW MP thinks disguised burka-wearers will take bombs on buses under their robes. Fair point, although so far the bombs in the West have been in men's backpacks.

Wearing the full veil does present obvious practical problems. Women who wear it are virtually unemployable if they have to deal directly with the public.

Beyond the practical considerations, the fact is the veil is threatening for many reasons and from every side of the ideological spectrum. It is one of the few symbolic issues on which the Left and Right agree and the responses do not fit into any single pattern.

Nationalists hate the veil because it's so foreign. Pro-refugee activists defend it and point out some women have no choice. Some people, including me, think it is impractical and has security problems, but these can be addressed without banning it.

However, one group does have a dogmatic view. Feminists are deadset against the veil. We know the views of libertarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but at least she was Muslim. In Australia we have had anti-veil arguments from the ABC's Virginia Haussegger and others.

It is interesting feminists feel so threatened by the symbolism of the veil, which might be regarded as a legitimate public manifestation of a private belief. After all, feminists are always banging on about an ideological commitment to making the private political.

So why do feminists hate the veil? Because it is restrictive, uncomfortable and stops women playing netball? No, platform shoes are much more restrictive. The antipathy to the veil is more than that. It is deeply feared because the veil is seen as an oppressive symbol of sexual restriction. The veiled woman can be a symbol of many things but for the Western woman she is merely a symbol of sexual thraldom to her husband in an unequal marriage. For many women -- uneducated, poor and fearful of custom -- that is precisely what it is.

The veil's purpose is to disguise women's sexuality. It does that very effectively. However, Western feminists have always been rather ambivalent about their own sexuality, being happy to display it and at other times resentful of men's interest.

But it is not always so simple. The veil is also a symbol of chastity, a value Western feminists have abrogated.

Although most ordinary Muslim women don't wear it with the intention of making a political statement, ironically a lot of them are doing just that because of laws such as the one Nile wants to pass. There are educated Muslim women who have started to wear the veil as a liberating symbol.

In fact, many Muslim women, as they gain education, rebel against the symbols of Western womanhood. As perverse as it may seem, they take the veil, or at least the symbolic hijab, or headscarf. Social liberals are horrified this move proclaims some women may be clever enough to want something more than what is offered to women in our Sex and the City world. What is the good of values without virtue, or literacy, if all you do with it is read Cosmo?

Most of the liberal Western establishment, who hate the veil for its sexual symbolism, are trying to do something impossible in a really free society. They are using the political symbolism of the veil to impose their Western vision of womanhood on these women. In our one-track world, the veil is more threatening to feminist insecurities than anything our culture has produced.

Nothing else has countered feminists' manipulation of political correctness to mould the culture to their likeness. Against this, the veil stands as a silent, faceless monolith of contradiction.