Observations # 18: The Hijab Issue Demystified

Ordinarily, in gender non-segregated societies, men who are sexually aroused by physically or sexually attractive women have countless ways to release built-up levels of sexual desire by means of sexual relations with their girlfriends, wives, mistresses, colleagues or even from one night stands involving just about anyone. If that wasn't enough, casual sex was available on a strictly professional basis.

However, it was an entirely different story in patriarchal male-dominated gender segregated societies.

Let's take a look at India, a patriarchal male-dominated gender segregated society. From an early age, males and females are kept apart in public except amongst close relatives. As a result, rape, and in some cases, violent rape, is common, as men have no legal way to release built-up levels of sexual desire as men in non-segregated societies do except with their own wives.

For unmarried men, the only other alternative is to be found in a brothel, which in some parts of India, and possibly linked to its caste system, is someone's house, someone who conveniently disappears so that his wife and daughters may entertain customers in peace.

Now, let's take a look at patriarchal male-dominated gender segregated Islamic societies such as Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name a few, where wearing the hijab is mandatory for women in public. 

Without the hijab, a woman is generally considered to be physically or sexually attractive from head to toe, which in turn sexually arouses a man whose only recourse for sexual release is in the arms of his wife, should that be the case.

However, as unmarried men have no such legal or legitimate means of sexual release except via illegal or illegitimate means which shall not be discussed here, making it mandatory for women to cover themselves up from head to toe in public solves the problem of unintended sexual arousal on the part of women, thus enabling men with the ability to control or behave themselves in such patriarchal male-dominated gender segregated societies.