Saudi Arabia

[MagicFinger]

Ok, not strictly Aibu, but I've had no answers on chat and I really want to learn about it.

I was reading about Saudi women being allowed to vote for the first time today and googled photos of Saudi.

There appear to be women in the streets without a male escort and some with their heads uncovered.

I was wondering how these laws for women work in practice and whether it is actually as strict as it is portrayed in the West?

backinthebox I suspect we probably do work for the same airline and you're right...I guess we all accept it as part of the job.

I would have loved to have been on your flight though and seen their faces when two female pilots pulled up onto stand

What I don't understand is how a whole nation of men despise women so much. They can't all believe the way they behave is acceptable surely? I suppose they are controlled by fear as can only imagine what the consequences of questioning anything would be.

Its just their culture where they actually believe being born with dick makes them superior. The whole religion is medieval. Sorry to sound racists and tarnish everyone with the same brush but i'm just being honest.

I don't think you sound racist, it's just a viscious cycle of extreme brainwashing isn't it? None of them stand a chance really when they've been fed this shit from day one. Anyone who doesn't comply is dealt with. And anyone else who doesn't agree will play along because they know what will happen otherwise.

Go back a few hundred years and england was not much better. That at least gives us hope that these countries will eventually progress. Not much hope for the women and girls stuck there now though.

I have never heard anything good about Saudi Arabia. Someone in my husband's family worked there for a while but left his wife and daughter in Dubai as the understanding was Saudi was too horrible a place for them to live whereas Dubai was bearable. DH has never really viewed this relative in a good light since. He wasn't desperate for a job. He could have worked elsewhere but he was just greedy.

Politically, it is quite ironic that the whole world is out to bomb Syria and 'destroy ISIS' but Saudi Arabia is no different to how ISIS operates, the same extremist vision of Islam, brutality and hatred of the West. Yet ISIS are condemned as evil and the Saudis are given a seat at the negotiations for a peace deal .

In my view the world will never be rid of fundamentalist Islam and associated terror groups until the West is willing to tackle Saudi Arabia and its funding of militant Islam and evangelizing of the Wahhabist doctrine through the Muslim world. KSA is the original source of all these hateful doctrines.

Spot on Coldtea. Its a vicious circle where fear rules and helps continue the cycle.

Patrick - I totally agree. It's a point that Michael Moore makes very well in his documentary about 9/11. The vast majority of the hijackers were Saudi with (I think) one Emirati. Bush went out and had dinner with some Saudi dignitaries on the night it happened. Wahabism has its spiritual home in Saudi and its clerics spout sexism, anti-semitism and homophobia with impunity all over the West. Then we collectively scratch our heads and wonder how some Muslim youths become radicalised...

More recently, the US changed its visa rules so that nationals of certain countries can no longer get a visa waiver. Unlucky, people born in Sudan, Syria, Iran and Iraq (even if you have a British passport). The West willfully ignores those who are to blame for proliferating radical Islam in favour of duffing up everyone else in the Middle East, because oil.

If sciaticasucks works for the same airline I do, then no, you can't refuse to go there.

There must be some legal basis for refusal to go on discrimination grounds. I cant honestly believe that we have come so far wrt discrimination rights, including sexual discrimination yet a company can still force a woman to go to and reside temporarily in an establishment that openly discriminates against her based on her gender. There has to be a way to refuse that and not lose your job or suffer in some way.

Rude one of my team members has a "pass" for Saudi because she married a Christian and converted from Islam. She believes (probably correctly) that her life would be at risk in Saudi if this was discovered.

Otherwise we are all expected to go (if we can get a visa) on the basis that it is a key part of our business in the Middle East. It's a difficult one because an awful lot of British businesses have a presence in Saudi - I have friends there working for BAE, the RAF and in professional services. I am not looking forward to going there at all but I will think of it as a massive "fuck you" to the medieval fucktards who make the rules. They don't give a toss if people (esp women) visit there or not - they don't want visitors unless they are coming to provide cheap labour.

I understand that elf but again it's pandering to their ghastly regime.
It's great that British women can go there in airline uniform and demonstrate that we can do the most responsible work. .

Of course all Saudi men do not despise women but they will feel they are superior especially over non muslim women

their love for their daughters, mothers and sisters is as it is elsewhere in the world and marriage is not based on falling in love and planning a life together as it is here it is based on what is suitable usually for the man

they are caught up in the conditioning that men are superior to women so out of the home they take control, women are to be controlled and not to be seen in public I doubt many Saudi men are happy that their daughters once married may have to take another women into her house and not be her husbands priority

not all muslim women need our sympathy lets not be patronising many come from families where men respect women as much as they do other men (i don't know any muslim family where the grandmother is not the most respected person within the family) and they have control over their own lives - though this is not the case for many women from some countries

I will think of it as a massive "fuck you" to the medieval fucktards who make the rules. They don't give a toss if people (esp women) visit there or not - they don't want visitors unless they are coming to provide cheap labour.

I understand that elf but again it's pandering to their ghastly regime.
It's great that British women can go there in airline uniform and demonstrate that we can do the most responsible work.

good points! I hadnt thought of it from that angle. I suppose it is better to keep going and slowly chip away at their rules and practises in small steps than to "let them win" and have no professional women there at all. I agree with the "fuck you, i'm here, deal with it" attitude. It just sucks that you have to deal with theirs while you are there.

How do they deal with things like hospitals were there will be female patients? Are all the staff male?

My exDP worked in KSA for nearly a year. He would be the first to admit that he was very very ignorant of what it was like before he got there. He avoided much of the horror as he was working way out in the desert on an oil refinery, mostly with exPats of various nationalities.

He didn't see a woman from one month to the next. But he was horrified by how the non-Saudi workers were treated. And also by the utter hypocrisy of the Saudi men he met. All pious onthe surface, all with mistresses and expensive drinking habits behind the scenes. As my exDP is Dutch he was constantly asked if he could get drugs for them.

It makes me feel sick to think of how women are treated there

And as for tourism. Non-muslims are not even allowed within x miles of the historic sites of Mecca and Medina

There are female doctors, nurses and medical orderlies over here. Saudi women are not banned from schooling (tho it is segregated at primary onwards), university or working. It's just difficult to get there as you can't drive (but you can have a car).

That said, many hospital workers are expats. And I believe, unless in an emergency, you can't see a male Dr without a (male) relative present. I visit the American hospital, on a compound where I don't have to wear an abaya to avoid this

Saudi Arabia is one of the reasons I'm an imperialist. There are some cultures to sick to persist; conquest and assimilation is a moral imperative.

Now I really have seen it all!

If as black airline staff you were forced to fly to a country were you were not permitted to eat in the same places or use the same facilities as the white staff I'm sure you would have grounds to refuse.

The mind boggles.

Another question, how does Saudi compare to Iran?

I got chatting to a mum in the playground the other day, her DH is an Iranian political refugee. I asked what life was like for women there, she said she has never been but all his female relatives are incredibly strong women who rule the roost and that women so weird a lot of control there. Surprisingly she said that men in Russia, where she comes from, are a lot more sexist and the society is much more patriarchal.

Mephistopheles that is a fucking awful thing to say.

Iran's a better place to be a woman than Saudi Arabia, if you had to choose.

Awadebumbo

It's certainly an unpopular view - but then again, most of the negative judgements and demands for action against Saudi Arabia on this thread are, essentially, evidence of cultural imperialism or attitudes strongly pressing in that direction. We don't like to admit it to ourselves as we have been socialised to view such attitudes as wrong - but the truth is, Saudi Arabia is a blight on humanity, and conquest and assimilation by our society, despite it's undoubted faults, would inevitably improve the living conditions for it's former citizens.

I'm just not being a hypocrite, and refusing to demand that 'something' should be done without admitting what that attitude really represents.