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My feminist and militant atheist woman friend, posted to Riyadh, says Saudi girls tell her it is the best place in the world to be a woman. Women, they say, are treated like queens there and, my feminist friend says, there is a lot of truth in this.
She does not forbear to point out though that many Saudi girls are fat. My feminist friend is a standard issue left-wing Yale graduate but she is also a Romanian girl and cannot help noticing these kind of things.
She is a passionate anti-racist who hopes that in her lifetime the majority population of Italy will be African. This she thinks is a just consequence of Italy's colonisation of four countries in Africa for less than half a century. But her anti-racism falters when it comes to gypsies. I am not anti-gypsy, although almost everyone I know in Romania is, but this does remind me of Kingsley Amis's remark,
Everything flows.
She does not forbear to point out though that many Saudi girls are fat. My feminist friend is a standard issue left-wing Yale graduate but she is also a Romanian girl and cannot help noticing these kind of things.
She is a passionate anti-racist who hopes that in her lifetime the majority population of Italy will be African. This she thinks is a just consequence of Italy's colonisation of four countries in Africa for less than half a century. But her anti-racism falters when it comes to gypsies. I am not anti-gypsy, although almost everyone I know in Romania is, but this does remind me of Kingsley Amis's remark,
Everyone is reactionary about the things they know about.She is in her twenties and part of a new generation of clever young Romanians educated abroad who believe in the left-wing orthodoxies of Western universities and the ideas of the Frankfurt School of Marxism, despite what Romania endured under two generations of Marxists.
Everything flows.
Hahahahha! I am not anti-gypsies. At all. I always preach tolerance towards them and I correct my mom when she teaches my niece that gipsies are bad. But nice post, I am flattered. We all have our incoherences, don't we?
ReplyDeleteHere's an informative post on Gypsies by a guy who seems to be one the world's leading intellects as far as I can tell:
Deletehttp://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/godwins-law/
This gives more info on Greg Cochran than the lame Wikipedia article:
Deletehttp://takimag.com/contributor/gregorycochran/304#axzz2XBtMEX3D
Gregory Cochran grew up in a small town in Illinois, picked up a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois, and worked for years in aerospace, mainly on advanced optics and laser systems. He later segued into evolutionary genetics and anthropology. He collaborates with Henry Harpending (University of Utah): and they put out a book in 2009 about the recent evolutionary change in humans: The 10,000 Year Explosion.
Also, you put a different spin on the immigration. My theory is that, if colonialism meant the exploitation of far away lands by Western powers, immigration is now doing the opposite. The world tends towards a more equal distribution of wealth. Which is why people from poor countries are immigrating to richer countries. :-) Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI do hope the writer of the blog is tongue and cheek!
ReplyDeleteTongue in cheek about what?
ReplyDeleteSaudi Arabia is an evil regime. Executions are the problem, not whether women are allowed to drive.
ReplyDeletethere is no perfect system. I lived in KSA and know it below the surface. I think that girl is a mall bunny-compound girl who..
ReplyDeleteI know Saudi Arabia below the surface as well and, no, I am no mall bunny. Do not forget this is a piece written by Paul based on the ideas he gathered from his conversations with me. Very simplistic indeed, but everyone hears what they want to hear.
DeleteI merely reported on what I saw and after having numerous conversations with Saudi women, ranging from government- yes, they exist- employees to Everest climbers. The intricacies of the Saudi culture are such that it's impossible to understand it from where we stand. Human rights reports written by Western agencies don't begin to scratch the surface. There are numerous shortcomings women face in that country, driving being the least serious of them, the lack of protection against domestic violence being one of the more serious.
I could not draw you out to speak in detail about SA but simply, rather than simplistically, recorded what you said. I applaud your nuanced view of SA and wish people would be equally nuanced about other subjects.
DeleteYour friend is funny. Maybe you can suggest that she reads the chapter titled "Women" in Section 6 ("Discrimination") of the "2012 Report on Human Rights Practices in Saudi Arabia":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2012&dlid=204381
As I say I think the Saudi regime is an evil one, but these young Saudi women think it is a good place to be a woman and I think their point of view is worth recording. I do not think the lack of a law against sexual discrimination is a restriction on freedom, but the floggings, public executions for adultery and innumerable other barbaric and wicked things certainly are. How very much better were the secular Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, by the way, objectionable though they also were. Slavery was officially abolished in SA in 1962 but i wonder whether it still continues there.
ReplyDelete> "these young Saudi women think it is a good place to be a woman"
DeleteThe North Korean think North Korea is a good place to be living in. And I think their point of view is worth recording. And dismissing, one second later.
Only North Korean leaders can become fat. North Korean women don't have to worry about that. Saudi women can't
Deletedrive but can go to the malls and buy provocative burka's. North Korean women can drive if they are issued
a car but can't hang out at counterproductive malls.
DeleteI am surprised at such a callow comment from someone as wise as you Vali. I am very sure N Korean women do not at all like the regime they live under and I am not at all surprised that many Saudi women like theirs. If this is true of many of the young women then it is not to be dismissed at all. Do you imagine that women in Victorian England were upset because they did not have the vote?
Among other unmanly practices rape is real popular there.
ReplyDeleteOne thing we can be sure of is that there will be no U.S. effort to stir up a revolution for democracy and human rights
ReplyDeletein Saudi Arabia. The U.S. would be covertly putting down such an insane idea.
:)
DeleteShame faced I admit, I don't know what :) means. It must
Deletemean, you know what I mean.
It's what the young people type to signify a smile. It often or usually turns into what is called a smiley face (dread words).
DeleteThank you. It was one of my guesses but just wasn't sure. I'm a bit of an internet dummy. :) to you too.
DeleteIn his book "Stumbling on hapiness", Daniel Gilbert gives the example of 2 siameze girls that declared to be very happy with their lives...
ReplyDeleteNeither your friend or any of us that do not have the experience of living in a Saudi regime can clearly state that the majority of Saudi women are either happy or unhappy.
However, if the NSA would drive a statistics asking them, we would probably find out
My friend is living there but in a compound for foreigners/infidels.
DeleteI wish you had more fully presented her argument.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately that was all she said.
ReplyDeleteit does not matter what her full argument is because her statement is insane: she is lying, not to others but to herself. I am quite tired of all those people with university degrees who want to believe that black is white while every illiterate peasant knows it isn't. (cf. officials of USA and EU supporting the most gore jihadists and islamists in Syria and Egypt)
ReplyDeleteNo, you are talking nonsense, even if you know Saudi Arabia well. She is reporting what she was told.
ReplyDeleteSo how do we have to react to someone who tells us that "women are queens in SA" and "that there's a lot of truth in this"? (cf. Sarte coming back from USSR 'most righteous society') She's an university student so she isn't stupid, she must know better. Isn't lying an agression? Isn't lying impolite? Part of the problem is that we are polite against her kind. She never gets reprimanded for her disgrafull discourse, not worthy for someone who will one day have an university degree.
ReplyDeleteI posted this as evidence that she was not as feminist as she wants to be - my point was an anti-feminist one I suppose, insofar as I had a point, which is not very far. But perhaps it is because Arabs have sallow skins that she goes easy on them but in either case she is reporting what she has been told and why do you imagine girls from well to do families in SA are unhappy with their lot?
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Why would well to do and I'll add "thin" girls...
DeleteIt's the harem mentality. It is ingrained in the culture.
My arguments got soooo twisted in your posting and comments, not least because of your propensity to simplify other people's arguments and put words into their mouths. If you recall, I also said that SAUDI WOMEN ARE NOT TREATED AS PEOPLE/ CITIZENS, BUT AS PRECIOUS OBJECTS. And I further elaborated on my arguments regarding women in Saudi Arabia, colonialism, and so on....What did you do? Write a blog about me, putting words in my mouth, severely simplifying my arguments based on your own biases and what you would have liked to hear me say, only to have all your friends, few of whom have ever set foot in the KSA and therefore have NO IDEA about how that country works, comment and critique me based on your recounting of our conversation. Needless to say, this makes me very angry, but it's your blog, so do as you wish. But it's a lesson learned as far as I'm concerned.
DeleteAngry? When I sent you my blog you said it was amusing. These people commenting are not my friends, by the way - I have no idea who most of them are and they seem to get very cross with what I reported you to say. Yes you did say Saudi women were treated as precious objects and you were no fan of the country as how could you be?
DeleteHowever, your point that Saudi women are not discontent seemed to me a very interesting one. I in any case assumed they were happy but that may just be me.
I wanted to find out much more about women in SA and suggested you write an article for the press or even a short book on the subject. I would love you to write a guest blog post for my blog on this object which I would publish without any comment from me. Would you?
Deleteyou should see the movie 'not quite the taliban' (from a Qatarian homosexual but living in my country now) who has filmed his rich countrymen (his age, around 30) who are living a very western life in the house but walk the streets in niqaabs. They all love islam but they are speechless when they are confronted with the fact that they should be whipped 40 times for their behaviour, they can't criticise the oppresive absurd system they live in. Not only non-muslims are dhimmies, but also muslims themselves. (cf. Czeslaw Milosz 'The captive mind')
ReplyDeleteWell if he's whining because he can't be openly "gay" in Saudi
ReplyDeleteArabia I don't care to see the film.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-executes-19-during-half-of-august-in-disturbing-surge-of-beheadings-9686063.html
ReplyDelete