Dear Mo,

Thank you for sharing your story. Although you are wearing the face cover to feel safe, it doesn't seem to be working for you. I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps covering up to such a degree gave the hungry ghost license to fantasize about the person underneath. What we resist always seems to persist. And the more we resist it, the stronger the resistance gets. This is especially true with regard to sexual repression.

glax

"Until the naturalness of sex is accepted, nobody can love anybody." OSHO

Mo,

Wow! I'm sorry about the experience with the disgusting man.
I worry about you, probably the only jeweler who has really tried to help teach my husband and I was Islamic, he was tried of doing jewelry, and he said he wanted to quit to he could spend his days praying, but he had to support his children. I got to know his daughter pretty well, who wore traditional dress, I guess it wasn't quite a burka, but her head was always covered, and she really had a rough time of it in school.
We talked quite a bit, because we had also run into problems, but at least we were adults, and not targeted when we were growing up like she was.
I have a customer who is a pagan, she wears a pentagram as a symbol of her religion, and she drives a bus for a living. Someone recently came up to her, and yanked the necklace from around her neck, and screamed at her that she was satanic, and threw her necklace into the bushes.
My husband and I have dealt with enough of it ourselves, he is Native American and looks it, and he was a target for the police where we used to live in Oregon, for crimes like walking while brown. He was once almost arrested for potentially recycling soda cans that were from outside the state or Oregon (where they have aa .05 cent refund) and he was also almost arrested at a McDonalds for using the restroom while not being a customer, even though we were buying something from the restaurant. (We shouldn't have eaten there in the first place, but we were on a car trip.) He was also beaten by a cop, and had his front teeth broken, and had money stolen. Now we live in Florida, we have still have had problems with things like being shaken down & harassed in our shop, but we have finally found a location where we aren't bothered as much. But neither of us have forgotten what it is like to run into real problems. (Real being life threatening, less than that is just loss of money and time.)
I don't have one bit of feeling against wearing whatever you want to wear, for whatever reason, I will always be greatful to our friend and his family, and they certainly were dressing according to Islamic traditions. And BTW, I didn't see any subjugation of men towards women in that particular family. (The term henpecked does come to mind.)
I wish things were different, but we are living in a dangerous time, and I'm afraid the USA is only the land of the free sometimes, for some people. I am sure that you have to deal with all of this every day, and it can't be easy. I know that I told my customer that it might just be time to wear her pentagram under her shirt, and we found her a long chain, so she could still wear it close to her heart, but no one could see it.
After 9-11, my Islamic friends had much more trouble because of the traditonal dress than before we got into the war. Most Americans really don't realize how much of the world follows Islam, and they think of anything Islamic as automatically being connected with terrorists. Which is just stupid, but there it is.
I would just suggest that you be cautious, because there are a lot of people
who aren't tightly wrapped right now. It's tough, and I'm sorry things are the way that they are right now.
Please take care of yourself. There are worse things out there than men making fools of themselves.
Julie