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Why doesn't "what if the roles were reversed" ever work? I mean it works for me. I actually am convinced when people bring up that argument. But it never works when conservatives say it to progressives.
Why I'm bringing this up is that recently Abdul El-Sayed's wife appeared on stage wearing something not dissimilar to an outfit from "Handmaid's Tale".
https://x.com/FedPoasting/status/2118389760070725932
What if the roles were reversed? What if Mike Pence or Mitt Romney or J.D. Vance of Pete Hegseth showed up like this?
I have a hard time explaining why this line of reasoning just does not land at all with progressives. To me it seems like a slam dunk. What am I missing? And is there a conservative equivalent to this, i.e. a meta role reversal where conservatives are the one being hypocrites?
I don't think most people arrive at their conclusions about what is good and what is bad through a process of inference from first principles. Because most people don't have principles, per se. They have beliefs and habits handed to them through their peer groups, families and culture. So El-Sayed's wife's appearance is good because that's what my team believes. To drop down a level and ask, could her appearance be concerning because it might be a visible sign of an overbearing, controlling husband, which is bad? just doesn't register. It's received views all the way down.
I think it does register. They understand, conceptually, that radical Islam oppresses women by putting them under the control of their husband and forcing them to cover up. They just don't think that Abdul El Sayed is that kind of guy. They think they know the kind of person he is, and so if his wife appears in public dressed as she is then it must be because of her own cultural or religious reasons.
There’s progressives that will swear up and down these clothes are a personal choice and not oppressive.
Something can be oppressive and still be a personal choice. Ilhan Omar cheated on her somali husband with a married white guy, and then divorced her then husband and married this new guy. Her hijab is obviously not due to some husband/male family member controlling her.
Obviously not every person who wears this compelled to buy a huge percentage are either by law or by social pressure. It’s impossible to know how many, but it is a high enough number that it should be seen as problematic if people were being honest with themselves. Also, the genealogy of it is certainly patriarchal and that isn’t even debatable.
Ofcourse, but we are talking about a very specific subset of muslims here, the ones who rise in the ranks in the democratic party.
By wearing it you are implicitly endorsing the bad parts too. It’s like having a Confederate Flag and saying it’s just about Southern Pride.
So you're saying the meaning has changed enough that the former explanation no longer works, since everyone should be familiar with the more commonly held opinion of it even if the bearer thinks differently?
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