Don’t judge a country from a single governement decree.
Democracy is not a binary thing, that’s here or not here. It’s a spectrum. Yes, last time the French people had to vote and had the choice between someone they really didn’t want and someone they didn’t really want but had no choice they voted for the later. Does that make every governement decree an expression of the French people as a whole? Of course not. Decrees like this tell you more about the political power of the meat industry than anything about the culture of the country.
> Ironically, in many contexts you are required to wear less clothes, such as at the beach or in a swimming pool.
Citation needed. There isn’t any law requiring you to wear less clothes on the beach; it would be ridicule and contrary to the Constitution.
Burkini ban: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-court-rules-burkin...
And in that article, on swimming pools:
> Clothing rules in public pools in France are strict, for what authorities say are reasons of hygiene: caps are required, and baggy swim trunks or other voluminous clothing is generally banned. Wetsuits are not allowed in many pools too, as are some sun-protection suits.
Officially this is a matter of public health, but it's a pseudo-scientific law that likely has more to do with French culture and national identity as a more libertine place (or else)
It’s a law from 1981 that says that for hygiene reasons bathing clothes must adhere to your body. Burkinis were invented in 2004.
Tell that to the courts.
"So far a small number of women have been fined (€38 in Cannes - £33; $43) for wearing a burkini on the beach at Cannes."
What an awful place to live. I was commenting with a friend the other day who was claiming the old "food in Europe is better for you because they have more regulations". I countered that they also have the most regulations about all the ways a website has to harass you with absolutely Zero (0) legitimate justification, so why should we expect their food regulations to be any better founded? He seemed to find that line of reasoning well founded.
For the hundredth time, the regulations do NOT tell companies to harass you. They do that to make you angry at the laws that prevent them from data harvesting you to the extent they do in the US. It's that simple. You can comply with GDPR and the cookies law 100% without ever asking the user anything.
If a website is asking you for consent for anything, they're trying to treat you as cattle they can harvest data from for sale. That's the only reason. That or utterly incompetent lawyers.
Any website who asks you about cookies or tracking thinks they are collecting more information about you than they need to do their work. Meanwhile the EU has signaled through lax enforcement that they aren't interested in going after anyone but the largest players, and seemingly more for recovering lost tax than shutting down their data collection.
There is no justification for the cookie and tracking prompts. By definition, they are direct evidence of a website trying to track you in ways they aren't allowed.
Also fun fact: just navigating to https://www.lemonde.fr/ already sets the cookies (which don't matter at all and are a 100% non-issue to everyone else in the world) without you interacting with the popup at all.
All in all a complete shit show. Kids of today will never know what it's like to go to a website and just. see. content.
Also, never underestimate the ability of lawyers to be utterly incompetent.
That was illegal and the city has been forced to reimburse the people it fined.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/arret-anti-burkini-la-ville-d...
> And the point still stands for swimming pools, which is basically the same.
There’s no point here; for hygiene reasons you are required to wear clothes close to the body in public swimming pools. As I wrote in another comment, this is a law from 1981, while the burkini was only invented in 2004. You are free to wear religious clothing (some do), but it has to respect the basic hygiene measures.
A precinct where tradition prevails over reason would find "ah-ha!" gotchas from over 40 years ago as justification for their inherit sexism/racism and refuse to budge on them (so long as only the "inferior" race/gender/religion is affected).
Various spokepersons from the French muslim community have repeatedly said that it’s ridiculous to make a controversy out of the burkini because virtually nobody wears it. When the numbers are so anecdotical that estimates are impossible to make it’s hard to speak about "changing demographics".
Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
It would be illegal for the police to do so, so no that’s not a valid argument.
> Also, "the people who might disagree with me probably don't actually exist" is the lowest form of argument, combining it with an unlawful activity is rhetorically ridiculous. You are saying, quite literally: "People haven't been free do this, and they (mostly) haven't done it, therefore they (all) don't want to do it, so we shouldn't let them be free to do it".
All I’m saying is that people who know the matter say this is an anecdotical thing.
"People who support my side say they support my side, so my side is right". K.
Also your entire argument is "the Government would never do something illegal! That'd be wrong!"
But I don't really care about France, the French, or their burkinis. Good day.
France is simply more authoritarian. It does ban burkas but it also bans hate speech. The US bans neither.