Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that forbids women to drive. Even foreign women can’t drive. This is part of the religiously-based conservatism that pervades that Islamic nation. You might have heard about the biological consequences of driving: about a month ago a prominent Saudi cleric declared that driving while female damages the ovaries.
Well, Saudi women have had enough, and yesterday mounted a protest of the driving ban. As CNN reports:
Several Saudi supporters of the campaign told CNN that at least 25 women had driven Saturday, and that more planned to do so.
Five women who were spotted driving in the Saudi capital were stopped by authorities and “each case was dealt with accordingly,” Col. Fawaz Al-Meeman of Riyadh police told CNN.
Al-Meeman, an assistant spokesman for that city’s police department, explained that the women weren’t taken to police stations. Instead, they were kept in their vehicles until their male guardians arrived, at which point the women were released after signing pledges not to drive again.
Their “male guardians”? What a great way to infantilize one gender.
Driving campaign supporter Mai Al-Swayan, an economic researcher, told CNN she is one of the women who drove Saturday — and posted a video of her action to YouTube.
She said she drove from home to a grocery store in Riyadh, and then back with her groceries. “I drove on the highway and was noticed by a couple of cars but they were fine with it,” she said.
“I’m very proud. I feel like we accomplished the purpose of our campaign.”
Al-Swayan, who has taken the wheel before in defiance of the ban, said she was worried about what might happen before she drove Saturday, but now plans to keep driving.
Here’s a BBC video from yesterday showing Al-Swayan during the protest. In 2011, she spent nine days in jail after posting a YouTube video showing herself behind the wheel:
As Time magazine notes, this gender bias rests, of course, on religion:
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ban on women driving is based on a very conservative interpretation of Islam that prohibits granting driver’s licenses to women and requires women to get permission from men in order to travel, open bank accounts, attend school, and get married, among other things.
Humor is a great weapon against this type of insanity. Here’s a Saudi dude using a Bob Marley song to parody the driving ban:
The video has gone viral, and you can read more reaction to it at Twitchy.
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Is this the start of a pre-Hallowe’en series of slash comments? I see a lot of slasher movies on in the next week too.
🙂
I’m going as Freddy Kruger this year.
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Goes to show that the US cares more about petroleum reserves than human rights.
Then again, our foreign policy in the region over the past several decades, what with all the wars and the CIA installing puppet governments and providing Saddam Hussein with his chemical weapons (ostensibly to use against Iraq) and training and supplying bin Laden (ostensibly to fight the Soviets) and what-not, that’s been patently obvious for longer than most of us have been alive.
Cheers,
b&
ostensibly to use against Iran
Yes, of course. As with most Americans, it would seem that my geography can get a bit fuzzy at times….
Cheers,
b&
A fragment of the song was on Surinamese TV yesterday evening. Thanks for linking to it; I had a big LOL.
More, more, more of this sort of mockery.
This mockery is an endorsement for thinking and it is contagious. I love it and I love the idea of it.
I love the song! I can’t imagine living in such an oppressive environment. Good on those brave women to fight it.
When I was a kid in the 70s our teachers wouldn’t let the girls do long jump because they said if we did it would render us unable to have babies. LOL I remember thinking it sounded like BS but I hated long jump anyway so I went along with it. Can you imagine if women were THAT fragile?!
I say “balls” on your teacher’s argument. If men could jump before constricting clothes were invented, I think women with their more protected form would have a lesser problem.
To be fair, I rather suspect it has more to do with the move being “un-ladylike,” and closely related to why women’s bikes don’t have a top crossbar. Can’t have boys looking up dresses to catch a sight of the bloomers….
b&
Yeah but they let us climb the rope and do high jump. The more I think about it, the more I realize my home town in the 70s was a hick town.
Was probably the time more than the town. I had a family budget assignment rejected by a high school home economics teacher in Toronto because I had the wife earning more than the husband. She told me it was “unrealistic” and made me do it over.
My own father thought that being proficient in Math was unlady-like. He expected soaring grades in English and language arts but would make the “dad face” if I did anything better than a C in Math. I was a very lazy student, so his interests and mine dovetailed nicely. I regret it now, though.
Indeed, a friend of mine in highschool came from an engineering family – everyone was an engineer save one brother. Her mom wasn’t allowed to go into anything with math in it when she was growing up so she took an arts degree. Ladies just weren’t allowed to do math!
By high school, when my academic laziness had progressed to academic indifference (for which I blame Led Zeppelin and weed), my dad was also provoked when I brought home F’s in Math. Really, there’s just no pleasing some people.
Seriously?
He was upset when you did well?
The proper response would be: show me the data. Of course most teenagers aren’t yet prepared to confront their teachers this way. Certainly not me way back when, but I bet some are.
It is having a direct and damaging effect on the Saudi economy. In the oilfield there’s no shortage of stories of people who are paid large amounts of money to live and work in Saudi with the specific intention of them providing training, experience and technology transfer into the Saudi industry. and when their families move over and find out what it’s really like, they come back and the contract gets re-advertised (or the person tries doing the job on a 6 & 6 rotation, or something equally destructive). They’re having continuing difficulties retaining competent personnel, and they’re having to pay top dollar for the people they can get.
Sure, I’d work in Saudi, though I hate the desert. But I’d be charging top dollar too, and looking for a better job. I’ll leap, two-handed, when Antarctica gets opened up for exploitation.
Good to hear that the protest got some positive outcomes, the local news weren’t that encouraging!
I’ve heard that many women there are rich enough to have drivers um if only. Can’t imagine though not having the freedom to get in my car and drive.
Reblogged this on aperi mentis.
Reblogged this on aperi mentis.
Has anyone given any thought of how this could be used for contraception? Cheep, easy and no nasty side effects! I just wonder how many pregnancies I might have had if I hadn’t been driving for so many years.
We should get the news out. Infertile women and men need to stop driving asap!
Stopping driving will actually restore fertility? That’s a novel idea. Probably explains all the teenage pregnancies. So, if we get the kids driving at about 12 … that’ll fix the teenage pregnancy problem?
Brothers and Sisters of the Faith does not regard teenage pregnancy as a problem per sè, but yes it would greatly reduce the number of non-marriage pregnancies.
Allah truly works in mysterious ways.
For me, someone very familiar with the craziness of islam, I found the most interesting thing here is that a saudi-guy is doing that song. … it shows that there is hope in islam too! (that they might slowly disappear peacefully)
.. ha! –> think of michele-bachmann singing Imagine .. ha!
You gave a link to Twitchy? Are you aware you are giving page hits (and so dollars) to an outspoken racist? Michelle Malkin is the author of “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror.” She also owns Twitchy.com
This woman is a contributor to such web-sites as “the blaze”, Townhall.com and Fox news. She is outspoken in her denial of reality.
Michelle Malkin would have us marching into a future defined by fascist politics and religious control. The influence of folks such as Ms. Malkin allow incidents such as the Ball State accomodationism. IIRC she also supported Judge Roy More in AL and his quest to define our culture through xtianity.
I hope not to many people follow that link.