Said says that the Orient existed as a set of values, and anything of value is firmly located in the past, as an archive. While Arab women are becoming increasingly politically and socially active, Western women are still wondering how someone behind a veil can constitute her own individuality. I like the imposed modesty of the chador, because one feels that the women are not really modest at all. They stride along in quite a masculine way and look very boldly at you as they pass. They give a much stronger impression of playful flirtatiousness than women do in the West.20 Even behind the veil, women are reduced to their apparent sexuality.
Subjectivity begins with the body.
Any body which is seen or defined as being different to central notions of Self, is automatically constructed as Other. In this mass of discourses, what separates one discourse from another is usually a complex set of contradictions. And when it comes to ethnicity and gender the dominant discourse is still Western humanism. Bourgeois ideology . . He analyses the authority of Orientalism, as a dominating practice.