Sometimes I agree with Pauline Marois

Like this morning at the pool.  Spotting her, I presumed she was supervising her children as they changed.  I made this presumption because she had just walked in off the street, garbed head to toe in Muslim attire. 

I paid little attention when she waltzed out onto deck with her brood -- both girls similarly camouflaged.  So, imagine my shock when she actually and really and truly and honest-to-G-d jumped in!!^%$#^%&*&*!!!!  I stared at the lifeguards.  They shrugged and did nothing.  My friend D and I just stood there aghast.  "What the f.....??!!" we both said in unison.  Still nothing done.

Fear has gripped the lifeguards at the Crowfoot Y and it's appalling.  With signs posted everywhere about showers being mandatory before entering the water, it is beyond me that this woman just ignored them and leapt in wearing her soiled street clothes.  I got out of the water and approached one of the lifeguards.  "She did?" she exclaimed when I told her the woman had not changed or showered.  "They're not supposed to do that, but we didn't see it," she weakly answered.  Well, how could she see it when she was out on deck??!!  And by the way, no Muslim woman would strip naked in a public shower before changing into some sort of archaic bathing costume.  Just wouldn't happen, so what's the point of that meaningless regulation?    

But we have brought all this upon ourselves.  Societies have to be secular, with separation of church and state, to function democratically.  So why we are accommodating religious and cultural practice and dress in public facilities such as pools is beyond me.  Try going to Saudi Arabia and wearing a western bathing suit, or not covering yourself; you'd be arrested.  That's why we are secular, so women of other cultures can wear what they want -- but within reason and not in a public pool.  And that's why I agree with some aspects of Marois' doctrine because our permissiveness has been taken advantage of to the point where we have been intimidated into shameful cultural submission.

First-generation immigrants in years past clung to their traditions, but their Canadian-born children became, well, "Canadian".  Not the case for Muslim girls.  They are forced to cover up the minute they hit puberty.  They are never permitted to assimilate and be "Canadian".  And don't tell me it's modesty or religion.  It's purely a control and sexual issue, with men calling all the shots about how "their women" dress.  The logic to this covering-up must be that if a man glimpses even a square inch of female skin, he immediately becomes aroused and has to do something about it.  Face it, that's the logic.  What else is there? 

Women are children of God as surely as are men.  We should not have to cover ourselves in shame.