How brave is this woman?

[shimmerysilverglitter]

I have already posted this on the In The News Board but I wanted to discuss it here. I knew Saudi women had a hard time of it but I did not realise that in a so-called developed country that women are not even allowed to drive!

saudi women beats up virtue cop.

As I said on the other thread I cannot imagine how desperate this woman must have felt knowing how severe her punishment would be for doing something she has every right to be doing. I can't begin to imagine this kind of life.

It says at the end of the article that there are changes happening in Saudi with regards to attitudes towards women, does anyone know anymore about this subject? because I am woefully ignorant and I don't think I should be.

Appletrees,
I was just making the point that if interfering is what the West wants to do then sanctions are the most efficent way.

As I've said, I don't think interfering particularly helps Saudi women, it has to come from them. Western women have to be careful; there could be a backlash if Saudi women perceive that they are being told how to live

But you are saying that campaigning is a good thing. So can I ask; Who are you campaigning to? Is it the Saudi government, or your own government?

Riven, interesting point about Saudi women's situation changing.
I have been unable to read anything about Saudi for about 10 years now, but I suspected that the time would come when the women would begin to revolt.
Are they organizing themselves in some way? Do muslim women around the world talk to them about their situation?

Sakura: at the moment I'm am very troubled by the whole issue and very unsure about it.

You seem to be unsure yourself. Do you back sanctions or just think they are more effective than direct action? (would probably disagree with you about that btw) You don't seem to be at all clear, though well intentioned and a little naive.

YOu have said that I'm naive and that my opinions is worthless and that my opinion doesn't count.

My POV on the Saudi women issue is outlined very clearly in my Mon 23-Aug-10 06:00:25 post.

IF there is something you don't understand about that post, please ask me.

I don't think you have expressed your own POV very well.

Why do you think campaigning is such a good thing?

Sakura, your opinion on half the sky is worthless because you haven't read it. That's what I meant. Hang on a sec.

Appletrees,

This is what I think:

I think the notion of sanctions as a way to force the saudi government hadn't crossed your mind until I mentioned it in this thread

YOu wouldn't engage in any questions about it until Samnyuni explained in her posts what economuc sanctions meant

I am not certain whether sanctions are the right answer, however one can't deny that would be the most efficient approach

I am not clear about what you are arguing here?

I don't understand how you can condemn direct action as "imperialist" but support the idea of sanctions. It is because you can't see that while they are different routes, the end ..that is, changing g another culture.. is the same.

Don't get mw wrong. I deplore the treatment of women in the Asian sub continent and in many Islamic countries. It makes me sick to my stomach.

But I am confused and troubled about the possibility of being accused of racism and cultural discrimination. After all, we were guests: we are not a colonial power deciding how people should live.

Can you see that to treat the issue as simple, demanding yes and no answers, IS indeed a little naive. I am more interested in discussion than winning or losing but you carry your posts as if it's a battle to the death.

I think a vital question concerns WHO can raise these issues ..for example as a white British woman, I am very easily accused of memsahib pretensions if I criticise the host community. After all I can have no objection to imams visiting Britain and telling me I ought to wear q burkha, if I decide to campaign.

But not to campaign is appalling. Do you see why it is so difficult?

No, you're not quite right about me and sanctions. But it doesn't matter. We are the only women left on mn who are interested in this vital issue and I am not going to fight.

I'm glad we are on the same page now.

I am not asking for a yes or no answer; I wanted you to engage with what I was actually arguing.

I dissed half the sky because when you have not been targeted by their campaign because you live abroad (and remember, it is also a marketing campaign for the authors), and when you know nothing about it, it doesn't make sense that a book will have any effect on the might of the Saudi Arabian government. I mean, do the Saudi's care about Half the Sky book. Do they know about the book? Is the book trying to shame them into action?

My first question would be: who are you campaigning to ?

I mean, either the Saudi gov or the British/US gov have got the power to make the changes. The Saudi gov directly, and the Western govs by force. Who is the target of the campaign?

listen I've got to go out for a bit, but would like to continue this discussion later

Excellent

Sakura you obviously feel it is right, you have the right, to intervene, culturally. Can I ask what gives you that certainty? I feel very vulnerable to the missionary accusation.

Appletrees, no I have said on almost every post as a disclaimer that I do not think "the west" can or should intervene.

It has to come from the grass roots. I have been repeating this in all my posts.

Riven, I am aware saudi women are educated and have internet connection, and live in probably the richest country in the world and can do lots of lovely shopping in their gilded cages etc But apart from Afghanistan, theirs has been most oppressive towards women I have ever come accross, and it's great to hear they can't put up with it any longer and are starting to revolt.

One thing I have to say in favour of the Saudi government is at least they're honest about their contempt for women. The COndems have targeted women for cuts, even though women as a group are poorer than men. THe US hasn'T even bothered to count to date how many women have died having unecessary cosmetic surgery and it doesn't track the maternity death rate either AFAIK, or the anorexia death rate, because women's deaths just ain't that important.
I do feel we need to sort out our own back gardens before we pass comment on anyone elses.

But this Half the sky book/campaign sounds like a bull in a china shop, and Appletrees, you are defending it as a good thing. So I thinks to myself, "okay, maybe Appletrees knows something I don't; but she should know that if the west thinks intervening is a good thing then why not the quickest and most efficient way: sanctions."

BUt the reality is, Western governments do not give a shit about saudi women, any more than they do about their own women, as long as the babies keep coming, there's a good supply of prostitutes and cheap labour for the supermarket check-outs

YOu keep talking about the missionaries. That is a massive red flag to me. The US sends missionaries around the world in the hope to culturaly obliterate those countries, just like Britain did when it had the empire.

Comparing what feminists are doing when they support women to the Christian missionaries is like comparing feminists' view of prostitution to a Christian missionary's view of prostitution. Feminists are worried about the economic circumstances that drive women to prostitution; Christians think prostitution is the root of all evil (not the buyers, just the prostitutes

So I would not be worried one little bit about being tarred with the same brush as the missionaries, because that would be a lie. Christian missionaries do not give a fuck about women; they just want to rid the world of Islam

Disclaimer: I realise not all Christians see the world like that, but the kind of christian who becomes a missionary does

But sanctions WOULD be an intervention. I agree its better to see an internal social revolution. Of course. It's awfully depressing to see acceptance in the eyes of women when there should be fight and determination.

Perhaps I misled you with my mention of missionaries: I meant it as a metaphor. I don't intend a direct comparison with Christian missionaries.

Similarly with Half the Sky. I love its premises. I love, in some ways, its certainty. I share the certainty in what is right: but I am unnerved by its certainty of entitlement to impose and intervene.

The dilemma is: disapprove and do nothing. Or disapprove and help affected women escape, through education, freeing bonded labour, buying and rehabikitaring prostitutes, building refuges (which eases symptomatic but leaves society unchanged). Or disapprove and campaign for societal and cultural change through sanctions, boycotts, political pressure.

Plainly the third is the long term "answer". But bugger me if it don't sound like moral colonialism. It sounds like moral colonialism with knobs on, and just because I, we, approve of the intentions.. doesn't mean We aren't open to the accusation of imposing our moral world view on other countries and cultures.

Sanctions is NOT an intervention; it's a sign of your commitment to not playing along.

However, sanctions are being abused around the world to "punish" countries that do not share the same political views as the US. Iran, for example. Palestine, probably the weakest country in the world, is also under sanction by US-supported and funded Israel

So it angers me that the US is happy to put sanctions on very weak countries, and I think NOrth Korea is a weak country despite what the media tells us. It puts sanctions on those countries because they won't be bossed around by imperialists.

And yet...

The west is as happy as larry to be friendly with Saudi.

So its the double standard that angers me and it's a big message to women that they don't count and their lives don't count.

So I am angry at the western governments for this double standard

Similarly I am angry at Saudi Arabia, because they are also hypocritical. They are happy to wheel and deal with the infidels when it suits them and yet they shit on their own women in the name of Islam

I am worried this book is a type of smoke-screen, to get women all het up and angry about something far away that they can't change without resorting to cultural imperialism, instead of focusing on getting some real power in their own countries.

In international politics, and economics: the G20, the IMF there are almost no women. It is men using us all like pawns. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that Half the World is nothing more than a moneymaker. It also deflects women's attention away from their own plight. I think women would be better off running for election, or even joining the anarchist movement and scare the ruling elite a bit. That is the way women can really start changing things

The sanctions I am talking about are trade sanctions, so all that means is saying you are not willing to trade with a particular country.
Just like you wouldn't be friendly with a wife-beater. NOT being friends with a wife-beater is not the same as imposing your moral view on him. He is still free to beat his wife. But you don't have to support him economically, and drink with him and laugh and joke with him if you think him beating his wife is wrong.

Yes I see your point about not playing along, get much so: well put. Your idealism and energy are obvious.

But then, knowing what you do about the likelihood of sanctions (you are a bright woman), knowing what you do about the effects of sanctions, knowing what we all know about the religious and cultural passions underpinning poor treatment of women, is it hard for you to then see, count, have names for the numbers of women helped every day by direct action? Which has just got on with saving women?

Saudi is rather different from, say, India. What kind of remedial approaches would you approve of in a country where sexual equality is enshrined in law but woefully lacking in reality, and not only that, but deeply linked to social injustice. So that women have no resources, no education, no weaponry. And to challenge that situation is a direct assault on the local culture.

Sakura what evidence do you have that Christian missionaries are particularly fired up about getting rid of Islam, as opposed to people not believing in their brand of Christianity? I've not got that impression from missionary stuff I have read or missionaries I have met - in fact the latter, although a very small group were mostly fired up by social justice type issues (ie running orphanages and schools, where granted conversion is a high hope, but is not the sole aim).

I'm not by the way saying that missionaries are good (I'm an atheist myself so that would be odd, and many of their orders have been responsible for some terrible things in the past) or that they don't go to Muslim countries (although places like Haiti also attract missionaries and are strongly Christian).

Re the sanctions or other ways for countries to influence their trading partners I think the jury is very much out. If the US for example stopped buying Saudi oil there are other customers, such as China that would probably step in as has happened with Iran. The US would lose any leverage it had, and the country would probably become more anti-American, which given that it is the Saudis that originally funded Al-Qaeda would be a little concerning. Historically intervention has proved a very mixed bag - for example the Iranian Revolution probably wouldn't have happened without repeated Western intervention.

So yes whilst I agree that the moral case for doing something is often very strong (thinking more of places like Rwanda or Burma really) it is very tricky in practice and highly likely to be counterproductive.

I've not heard of half the sky either, I looked at their web site which seems to have an awful lot of celebrity endorsements but no real content which seems rather odd and puts me off very much. They say that they lay out an agenda, and ask you to read more, but there doesn't seem to be any more to read, apart from rather some vignettes. What is it they are trying to do? I looked on Wikipedia too and am none the wiser.

Nooka there is a link to a guardian article earlier in the thread.

Is there? I'll take another look. The only link I saw on first reading was to the website. It just seems a pity that the website seemed so lightweight. It felt like book blurb to be honest, and that might be totally unrepresentative of what they are trying to do.

nooka, well Bush was a sort of missionary wasn't he? I mean he actually used the word "crusade". A crusade to Iraq! To have a crusade you need a crucifix.

And why are Christians in other countries anyway? I have a friend who met mother Teresa and mother Teresa told her that she'll find plenty of problems on her own front door step if she would only look.

If Christians are bothered abotu the third world, they should lobby their government or run for election.

And I did add a disclaimer to say that not all Christians were like that, but it's the ethos I'm not keen on.

And missionaries have historically been deployed by the west to teach the "natives" how to be civilized

nooka, I feel exactly the same as you about this book. In fact I keep feeling my posts are going to get deleted

Germaine Greer disses the book

"Women hold up half the sky" ? from Mao Zedong to receive such critical and popular acclaim in the US as Half the Sky, by Pulitzer-prizewinning American journalists Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It's not until page 177 that we learn who actually said the words that figure on the dedication page simply as "Chinese proverb". Then it turns out that husband and wife team Kristof and WuDunn don't really believe them anyway, for the last words of the book urge us to "get on with it and speed up the day when women truly hold up half the sky."

Well there's no point attacking Saudi for funding Al- Quaeda (I still have no idea what Al-quaeda actually is)

When we have clear evidence that it was the American's who set up, organized and gave weapons to the Taliban...only in those days the US called the Taliban "freedom fighters"