And that in itself - the suddenness with which we have turned our attention to a group who have been experiencing for quite some time the conditions we have so recently noticed and taken to heart - is one of the things that bothers me a lot.

We seem to have said to ourselves, "Oh, look at Saudi Arabia and the Taliban and other Muslim countries, they have been so horrible to women, they place all of these restrictions on women, they're evil." Well, the oppression of women comes in lots of forms. There are days when I look at all of the cultural rules and prescriptions and proscriptions that define what is "feminine" here in North America, and I look at some of the things that can happen to women who fail to follow them all, and I think to myself - isn't it just a matter of degree? Who are we to be congratulating ourselves about the status of women, and holding these other places up as the evil ones, when things aren't so great for a lot of women here and now where we live. It's so easy to create an evil "out there", and pat ourselves on the back because "we aren't like that." But that also makes it so easy to say that, because we're not like that, then there's nothing wrong with what we're doing.

It's blatant in some cultures, and subtle in others, but there's still a patriarchy everywhere in the world that I know of, and I don't think we have a lot to be proud of yet in terms of women's lives in North America.

And there is a lesson we could learn from some of these other places: that what progress we have made - because so much of it is surface rather than structural - is fragile. Twenty or thirty years ago in Afghanistan, in Egypt, in Iran, there were women who were just as free as we see ourselves to be here and now in North America. Certainly not all of the women in these countries, but then, are all the women in North America as free as the white, college-educated middle-class woman who is *seen* as the typical North American women? I don't think so. But some women then and there had the freedoms that some of us have here and now. They had access to education, to economic power, they had challenged all sorts of traditions that limited women... and see how easy it was to wash it all away. We blame that on Muslim fundamentalism.

Yet fundamentalism is powerful in the western world as well as in Islam, and both Christian and Muslim fundamentalism have pretty much the same opinion of how a woman's life should be lived. It was only 40 years ago in North America that women could not do a great many things without the consent of a husband, that women were expected to stay in the home, that much of the progress women had thought they had made during the war years was swept away by the economy's need to give work to men. Now, do women have jobs because we are irrevocably freed from economic dependence on men, or are we permitted to work because the economy requires us all to have disposable income to keep the growth machine running? What if conditions change again? Is Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale really so far-fetched?

Of course, we all know that deep down, most of the men who are talking so piously about what we've done to save the women of Afghanistan really don't give a shit about the women of Afghanistan, or the women of any other place in the world for that matter. It's one of the things men in power have done for years - fought wars for money or resources or power, and then talked about how they were really doing it for some other, nobler, cause that makes us forget what the whole thing was really all about.

And because it's not a real concern about the lives of the women in Afghanistan, about what they need or want, but a cosmetic cover for what's really happening, then it's only natural that so much of the focus has been itself on something that's only a symbol, a symptom, and not on the key issues at all.

So I really need to say that it's not about the fucking burqa. Or any of the other more or less restrictive coverings that Muslim women wear, not just in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but in countries all over the world.

It's about whether women have autonomy. Freedom. The ability to make choices without fear of how some man, or some men, will react. You can burn all the burqas in the world, but if women don't have those things, then it doesn't matter.

Here in Toronto, there is a large Muslim community. Few women wear the burqa, but many women wear a whole range of coverings, from simple hijab over western-style clothes to hijabs with chadours or abayas that leave only the face uncovered. These women can be found going to school, to university, working, shopping. Some of them may have never questioned their clothing, but others have, and they have chosen to wear what they want to wear, even if we North Americans declare in our great wisdom that our cultural values are superior to theirs.

I admit, sometimes when I look at a Muslim woman dressed in chadour and hijab, and sure, I think to myself that it's restrictive clothing, and that it's the product of a patriarchal tradition. I wonder if the woman wearing it is afraid that she will suffer in some ways at the hands of the men she knows if she doesn't wear it.

But then I look at the woman sitting next to her on the subway, in high heels and a tight miniskirt, her hair damaged by chemicals and her face and expression distorted by makeup and I think exactly the same things.

Now maybe the women in the miniskirt really likes what she's wearing and how she looks, and she's not in any way influenced by our cultural definitions of what is feminine, and she's not wearing it because it reinforces patriarchal images of women as sexualised and relatively helpless beings who dress to please men. Maybe it puts her in touch with her sense of sexual power. Maybe it's a wonderfully free and autonomous choice. Could be. I don't know.

But it's just as possible that the woman in the chadour really likes what she's wearing, that it frees her from having to think about her sexual image and gives her a sense of power to be a full human being. I know that I've spoken to a number of Muslim women, and read the words of many more, who say that's exactly what it does for them. Are they fooling themselves? Could be. I don't know.

Of course, this is, as I said, in Toronto, where women have a choice to wear hijab and chadour, or not. Western cultural codes on dress are not as rigid, and are not enforced in the same way that the dress codes in Muslim countries. [Which reminds me, I haven't seen nearly as much attention paid to the Taliban's restrictions on what men were required to wear, and there were plenty of those, too.]

I am not saying that it's all right if women - or men, for that matter - are forced to wear a specific kind of clothing. Women everywhere should have the freedom to wear chadour, or miniskirts, or anything else in between. But focusing on the clothing isn't the answer. The focus should be on the conditions that give women freedom to wear the chadour, or a miniskirt, or anything else they want - maybe even to wear a miniskirt one day and the chadour the next, depending on how they feel. The clothing is a symbol. What matters is why you're wearing it, and is it your choice.

Nor am I saying that women in North America and Europe don't have more freedoms than do women in many Muslim countries. Clearly, we do - at least for now. And the revolution won't be over as long as women anywhere are under the patriarchy.

But these days, all the focus on what we are - or could be, or should be - doing to help the women of Afghanistan, and all the focus on the oppressive environments women in other Muslim countries endure, starts with the hijab, the chadour, the abaya, the burqa.

Even western feminists seem to be obsessed with the burqa. I suspect this may be something that comes from our being relatively privileged to start with. The symbol speaks loudly to us, who are accustomed to a certain degree of freedom in our dress and appearance. I think that it is possible that a woman in other circumstances might put a higher priority on economic independence, or freedom from feel of assault.

And herein we see another aspect of the Western focus on the burqa and the chadour and that abaya and the hijab. Where are the voices of Muslim women telling us what they want? One group of Muslim women, Afghan women, who had a voice to some extent is RAWA. Well, it's pretty clear that the western powers who are working so hard to ensure the women of RAWA would not have to wear burqas any more didn't care one fig about their concerns that the "Northern Alliance" would be just as bad for Afghanistan - men and women - as the Taliban had been.

I have read, for example, that Iranian women have been working for access to education, to jobs, to political power in the years following the Revolution, rather than on getting rid of the dress codes. Slowly, they are getting those things - there were 14 women (out of about 275 seats) elected to the Iranian parliament in a recent election. Laws restricting access to education, and to the kinds of work that women can do, are changing. Women have been pushing for family law reforms, such as allowing women to have custody of their children following divorce or the death of their husbands and giving women equal inheritance rights with men. Dress codes have not been high on their list of challenges. Perhaps we in the west should look at the priorities chosen by women living in those kinds of circumstances, and support them.

What I'm saying is that the way to make lasting structural changes in countries where women are grievously oppressed is not by focusing on what women are allowed to wear. What we need instead is true solidarity with the women who live in those countries, supporting them as they create for themselves conditions in which women can be full and independent participants in the economy and society and political processes of their countries - and of their world.

That's where I think it starts. Not with the burqa.