Like many Western feminist women of my age, I find some items of Islamic dress for women problematic. Actually, “problematic” is an understatement; the word I’m really looking for is "offensive".

When I’m out shopping in town and I see a woman in a niqab – the veil covering everything but the eyes – or a burka, which requires the wearer to peer through mesh, it makes me feel physically sick. I try not to judge the individual women wearing these garments, or indeed the husbands next to them (who are often wearing European clothes) since I know nothing of their lives. But regardless of whether it is a religious or cultural imperative the burka is perhaps the most severe challenge to progressive thinkers since the message it appears to convey is so clear and brutal: women should be invisible.

Despite this, I find myself rallying round those women in France currently under attack for wearing another arguably offensive piece of Islamic dress, the burkini. Let me be clear, I don’t believe any woman - or indeed any man - should have to cover every inch of their body to enjoy a swim in the sea. And I also find the argument used by some who support the garment, that burkinis make women safer because all men are basically sexual predators unable to control their appetites, to be ridiculous.

But, and surely this is the crucial bit, it is not for the state to tell anyone what they can and cannot wear. End of story.

In banning the burkini, the mayors of at least six French resorts – including Nice, Le Touquet and Sisco in Corsica - have shown that they not only don't agree with such simple freedom of expression, but that they are also prepared to open a silly, unnecessary and potentially dangerous can of worms. And the silliness is spreading - Germany is also now considering a partial ban.

I say silly because the reasons quoted by the French officials in defence of the ban are not only variable, but downright laughable: where one talked about “protecting local women from enslavement", another intimated that the garments were not hygienic; a third said it was about preventing extremism and terrorism.

What strikes me first off is that just as in Victorian Britain, when women were forced to cover themselves up, just as in parts of the Middle East and under the likes of the Taliban and Islamic State, yet again men see themselves as the arbiters of what women should wear. How extraordinary that these mayors – representatives of the male-dominated establishment of France - can't see the simple irony of this. And how worrying that large swathes of the French population appear happy to go along with such blindness.

But it is surely this notion of preventing terrorism that is most ludicrous of all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall the murderers at the Bataclan in November, or those who gunned down the journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo - arguably the ultimate symbol of French freedom of expression - months before, being dressed in women’s swimsuits. That’s because they weren’t. Wearing clothes doesn’t kill people - murderous ideologies and guns do.

Not surprisingly, all this has upset France’s five million-strong Muslim population at a time when they already feel under extreme pressure. It is well known that France’s constitution accentuates secularism and puts great emphasis on the separation of religion and state. The authorities took this to the extreme in 2010 with the banning of the face-covering veil. With this latest move against the burkini it's looking more and more like straightforward religious persecution and/or plain old racism.

Tensions are already running high in the wake of the latest terrorist attacks on France. The violence in Corsica following the burkini ban, which included stones being thrown at women on the beach, cars being set alight and someone being stabbed with a harpoon, certainly doesn’t help matters. Yet again, you can’t help noting that all of those arrested in connection with the clashes – a mixture of white French and locals of North African origin - were men.

It’s important, too, to see all this in the current context of the rise popularity of far-right politics in France. Not surprisingly, Front Nationale leader and Presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen - a politician who makes Nigel Farage look progressive - was on hand to exploit the moment, declaring “the soul of France" to be in question. No doubt the likes of ISIS are also currently making hay with the propaganda opportunities offered by all this.

France would surely be well advised to resist the temptation to allow itself to turn the wearing of a swimsuit by a tiny number of women into an issue that further divides and antagonises an already divided and frightened population. Is any item of clothing really worth this? I think not.