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Notes -
In general it seems like people accept extreme religious-conservative ideologies as a way to enforce social order in a ‘basic functionality’ way. I read a report not long ago about the taliban taking territorial control by showing up to schools and hospitals with a list of conditions: censoring textbooks and gender segregated waiting rooms, yes, but also ‘teachers show up and grade papers fairly, or else message us on WhatsApp and we’ll come and beat them’. And I have spoken to missionaries for very conservative sects of Christianity who report that in Latin America, parents are eager to send their girls to religious boarding schools even if they’re far less feminist than they would prefer, because the government is unwilling to do anything about sexual harassment of adolescent girls on roads and buses.
Obviously you can in theory have a system where teachers show up to class and grade work fairly and the bus is safe for adolescent girls without that system being religious-conservative in nature. I mean, that’s more or less how the USA works. But it seems like people would prefer a system where women are veiled and textbooks must be sufficiently Islamic/Christian/whatever to one which lacks those basic things.
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