In Christopher Hitchens' impassioned defense of the French veil ban, he claims that veils are, in practice, "a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face." Where, oh where, have I heard this dubious "right" to the faces of others claimed before? Oh! Hitchens is channeling the Smile, Baby Guy!

Hitchens' essay posits some feminist arguments against the veil: In short, it's a cultural expectation made only of women, and it's not always worn freely, as some "mothers, wives, and daughters have been threatened with acid in the face, or honor-killing, or vicious beating, if they do not adopt the humiliating outer clothing." But Hitchens' central argument isn't that veils deny women equal rights. It's that the veil denies Hitchens his right—the "right to see your face":

So it's really quite simple. My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise. The law must be decisively on the side of transparency. The French are striking a blow not just for liberty and equality and fraternity, but for sorority too.

In an essay condemning a cultural institution that prevents men from looking at the faces of women, Hitchens instead argues that men have an inalienable right to stare. Of course, Hitchens phrases this in gender-neutral terms—"My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine"—that assumes social equivalence between the gazes of women and men. In fact, the gender-neutral approach fails to acknowledge the sexist cultural institutions that allow men to exert ownership over women's bodies through their gaze—like street harassment and sexual objectification. When a guy passes a woman on the street and tells her to "smile, baby," he's asserting authority over her face, her feelings, and how she chooses to express them—or not. Those who would declare their "right" to look at women should first note the social context in which women's faces are often examined.

Forcing a woman to wear the veil is one way to own women's bodies; declaring that it is your "right" to force her to take it off is just another tactic in the same vein.

Photo by fabbio, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Brown frames the piece—how else?—by a Middle-Eastern take on the "stuck in the kitchen" analogy:

The lede: "It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa."

Followed by: A bunch of valid points from Tina Brown Brown about Clinton's lack of visibility in the first six months of the Obama administration, and ending with:

The kicker: "You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she'll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety."

While I appreciate Brown sticking up for HRC, I do wish her rhetorical stylings were a bit less offensive, and a lot less confusing. Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State. But more importantly, she is a woman! And thus her place in the Obama administration must be framed as some sort of polyamorous domestic dispute that recalls the traditional subjugation of Islamic women. Wait, what were Tina Brown's great points again? I got distracted by all the mixed race and gender metaphors.