"We find that the imposition of a dress code on women participating at this NGO forum constitutes an invasion of privacy, a denial of dignity and of our right to choose," declared the women condemning Mary Robinson for not backing their refusal to wear headscarves in Iran. Her critics also condemned her for not negotiating "a space free of all sorts of forms of discrimination".
If the girls think that being made to wear headscarves is a form of discrimination, a denial of their dignity and their right to choose, by God, then they haven't got much to worry about. After all, the wearing of headscarves is at bottom a dress code, which is something common to all societies. If I were invited to the Aras and I arrived in a Posh Spice thong - an uncommonly pleasant sight for all concerned, I'm sure - the chap on the door examining invitations might have a word or two for me. Indeed, I might well have problems getting past him.
Dress codes
That kind of sensitivity isn't confined to the Aras. That's life, in all societies, everywhere; and no society has identical dress codes for men and women, apart from those in which both sexes go round in the nip. Frankly, I think that's infinitely preferable: but alas and alack, 99.99 per cent of the world live in clothed societies, with all sorts of taboos in them, and since they are taboos, they are not amenable to reason.
Why are men allowed to go round bare-chested, but not women? Why did only men, and by the thousand, go naked to the recent Kum Bela festival on the Ganges, as RTE showed us in full genitalian glory on the 6.01 news? Nor do I complain about that; but would RTE have shown naked women in such pudendal detail at that hour? And if it had, would there have been complaints about how degrading this was for women?
Sartorial bimorphism probably first reared its figly head in Eden, and has been going strong ever since. The dress code which across the Western world confines a male to the rigidities of a black tie and black jacket equally allows a women to present herself with half-bared breasts, and naked back and legs. There is no female equivalent to the male requirement to wear a tie on all formal occasions; nor is there a female equivalent to a man doffing his cap or hat, not merely when he meets a lady, but when a funeral passes or when a national anthem is played - unless, that is, he is a soldier or a police officer, in which case he salutes, as does his woman colleague.
Wearing a hat
The essence of sartorial bimorphism is that the rules have some mystical and inexplicable meaning to those who adhere to them. If a man next to me is wearing a hat during the playing of Amhran na bFiann, or for that matter, God Save the Queen or The Spar Spangled Banner, I will gently suggest to him that he remove it. What's more, he'll be grateful for me reminding him that his head is covered, though of course, I wouldn't have told a woman. Why do I expect a man to be bare-headed at certain times, but not a woman? Haven't a clue. For we are at bottom, a deeply illogical species, with deeply illogical rules, and their very illogicality enables them to serve as tribal bonds.
Iran is a country I know next to nothing about. I know it discriminates against men - only men were conscripted to die by the hundreds of thousands in the war against Iraq; but when the girls were complaining about discrimination in Tehran last week, I suspect that was not what they had in mind. No: they were complaining against the dress code, which they felt infringed "on their right to make decisions regarding every aspect of their lives."
Sorry, sisters: you're wrong, and Mary Robinson was right. You don't go into other countries with your own rules that violate those of your hosts. No one made you go to Tehran. Once you choose to go, you submit yourselves to local convention, and respect local susceptibilities. That's the rule for all visitors to all societies all over the world. There is a word for people who arrive in a foreign country armed with the belief that they can behave there as they want, and it is imperialist.
Adolescent cant
And as for your claim that you have the right "to make decisions regarding every aspect of [your] lives", ladies, this is adolescent cant. We make decisions on how we conduct ourselves not as a matter of pure free will, but out of legal and societal requirement, almost the entire time. Such restraints, by consent or compulsion, enable us to have this thing called society.
That is why people who like to swim in the nude do not do so on public beaches. It is why when somebody proffers a hand, we shake it. It is why we don't perform lavatorial bodily functions in the open, no matter how desperate our need. That is what makes social conventions so vitally important; they steer people away from the minefields of inexplicable taboo and make conduct predictable and orderly.
It is why when in Iran, we behave as Iranians do, or otherwise stay at home - which is why Mary Robinson was wrong not to wear a hat when she met the Pope in 1997, but right, at last, on the headscarf issue in Tehran. Top of the class, Robbo.