Angela Merkel is running for re-election in Germany. Playing to the extreme anti-immigration right-wing in the style of Trump, she just called for a ban on the burqa because “The full-face veil is not acceptable in our country.”

She told delegates at her party conference: “In communication between people, which is of course essential to our living together, we have to show our faces.”

Social psychologists & satirists need to have a go at this crap of merging anti-immigration policies with Islamophobia & misogyny. Something so deranged has to be mocked on the way to opposing it. One Islamophobic fruitcake on Fox news said a male or a terrorist could be hiding behind those veils. They might be good for shoplifting or sneaking your kids into the movies free too. But what the hell does that have to do with anything when there’s no criminal intent?

As for the rubbish about wanting to look at women’s faces when they talk to us? Young women have to constantly ask men to stop starring at their breasts & talk to the face. It’s a cliche we have to live with, but not comfortably. The constant complaint of older women is invisibility; no one wants to look us in the face after the wrinkles come. We don’t need a burqa to shoplift or transport a bomb. Wrinkles work just as well. They wouldn’t notice us carrying a bomb if we were in hot pants. Maybe if we really miss that “male gaze” thing we can wear a full-faced veil & hope they’ll want to look at our faces again. Yeah right!

There are always those who blither on about the veil as a symbol of male or religious dominance but they consider banning it & forcing women to unveil against their wills as a sign of women’s liberation. Thousands of women in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain led the Arab uprisings fully veiled. Maybe those who’ve never led a revolution ought to let grown-up women decide for themselves what they want to wear & what they feel oppressed by. If you’ve never taken on a dictator, what the hell do you know?