They seem to have a shaky grasp on what causes what, in Saudi Arabia.
A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.
See? That’s bizarre. If Saudi women drove, babies would be born non-virgins? How? How would that work?
Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.
That too is bizarre. If there’s no actual law against women driving, what can they be arrested for?
As part of his careful reform process, King Abdullah has allowed suggestions to surface that the ban might be reviewed.
This has angered the conservative religious elite – a key power base for any
Saudi ruler.Now, one of their number – well-known academic Kamal Subhi – has presented a new report to the country’s legislative assembly, the Shura.
The aim was to get it to drop plans to reconsider the ban.
The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.
…………..Homosexuality? How?
Anyway – well-known academic Kamal Subhi seems to have a ludicrous idea of sensible risk-avoidance. Letting anyone do anything would increase all sorts of things, but it’s not worth locking everyone up in a small room for life to avoid all those things.
On the other hand, if the Saudi bosses do decide women can drive, I hope they urge them to reconsider the policy of wearing a blanket over their heads too.
You don’t want those women driving a car, for sure.
If they’d just start letting women drive, everybody would turn homosexual and men would no longer get distracted by women with seductive bodies (and eyes!) — voilà! Part of the problem solved! Women do no longer need to wear blankets to protect public safety and whatnot. Of course, they’d then have to require that men be covered in blankets instead, and Dog knows what to do about all the lesbians…
Ooooooooh imagine lesbians driving cars – what would happen to Saudi Arabia then?!
It would become more like Europe, which is probable worse than a swift apocalypse destroying everything!
I note that in 2000 Saudi Arabia ratified the UN convention on teh equality of women. This convention requires all signatories to remove all impediments to the complete equality of women in society. Just sayin’…..
I note also that Saudi Arabia signed the 1956 UN convention on slavery, part of which outlaws “servile marriage” in which a woman is treated as property and can be married off for money against her will or can be inherited by another man on the death of her husband. Just sayin’
The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.
Women could go see their lesbian lovers without having a man knowing their every move.
Hey… What happened to the rest–the part about Homosexuality…how?
I am the Queen of Html Failure.
This is part & parcel of a worldview that sees people in general, and women in particular, as inherently untrustworthy. The only way to be sure your wife will never become a lesbian, or turn to prostitution, or get “up to something,” is by keeping her a prisoner. I encountered a similar, though not as lopsided, notion when I lived in Indonesia many years ago. It was assumed, I was told, that if a man and woman– any many and any woman– were left alone long enough, they would end up having sex. People swore that it was simply inevitable, and that it didn’t matter how well-meaning and trustworthy the people were. Knowing the chaos and broken marriages that must surely result, it was ensured that men and women, unless already married to each other, were never, ever, allowed to be alone together as a twosome. It was assumed that sticking your nose into everyone else’s business was a kind of moral duty.
At its heart, it’s the same notion that Puritanism is founded on– we are inherently wretched, sinful beings that need the watchful eye of authority to keep us from an eternity of damnation.
It’s a miserable and repulsive idea whose time should be long over.
What really could happen of women were allowed to drive and get a full tank of gas at will, is that up to half of the population might disappear over the borders in a cloud of dust, never to be seen again. That’s what they think. Everything else, as usual, is just a screen. If women drive, then Teh Ghey! Yeah, right.
I used to have a wonderful early Soviet poster with a nightmarish winged creature holding up a book, entitled (in Russian) “Literacy is the path to Communism”.
In context, that was a good thing, of course.
This is probably the poster, though it’s obviously not quite what I remembered.
The link between driving and sex isn’t all that far-fetched. I seem to recall Marcuse saying something about the eroticization of the automobile, perhaps because it was the typical locus of teen sex. Freud regarded dreams about copulation in cars as, in effect, a pun on masturbation: auto-eroticism.
I’ve been told that there is a law against driving without a license, and (whether by law or by social custom) women are never given drivers’ licenses. Voila.
I can’t say I was given that explanation by someone I could confirm knew what (s)he was talking about (i.e., it may be bullshit), but that’s what I’ve heard.
I think I might see the reasoning here. Remember that in islamic thought, men are sex-crazed lunatics who will fuck anything that isn’t wrapped in several layers of cloth.
So, you’ll have groups of men sitting around getting increasingly horny with no women around because they’re all out driving. Suddenly Hassan notices Abdullah’s firm biceps and… one thing leads to another.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this was the rationale.
This is one of the many times when I have an intellect fail. I’m just not smart enough to tunnel my way through the thinking that women drivers=increased prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, divorce, and the end of virginity.
Note the article didn’t say there’s no actual law; it said there’s no formal law. Because of the power-sharing agreement between the al-Saud clan and the Wahhabist clergy, whereby the Wahhabists lend the al-Sauds religious backing in exchange for Wahhabism being the de facto state religion of the Kingdom (an arrangement that goes back to the deal made by Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammed bin Abdul Wahhab back in the 18th century), the Kingdom has two parallel sets of laws: a secular set originating with the state and founded upon the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia, and the other being shari’ah as interpreted by the Wahhabist clergy (shari’ah encompassing the Koran, habith, sunnah and Islamic jurisprudence). Both are legally binding, secular laws cannot override shari’ah, and many state-appointed judges are also ulema, senior clergy.
When the article says “there is no formal ban on women driving” it means there’s nothing in the Traffic Code to that effect; the ban comes from the Wahhabist ulema‘s interpretation of shari’ah, not from the state.
I think you must have missed the all important ‘and then a miracle happens’ step between women driving and ZOMG WORLD IZ OVAH!!!!
Understandable, really. It took quiet some time to realize how valuable it is to any revealed truth claims.
I know exactly what they mean. I’m a heterosexual man, but for some reason every single time I see my wife get behind the wheel I start craving cock. Go figure.
Oh wait. That’s retarded.
On a practical basis I think the connection between unrestricted access to motor vehicles and the ending of virginity goes something like this. A motor car provides a one-stop solution to some of the practical impediments to a couple conducting an unsanctioned sexual relationship – namely getting far enough away from their usual haunts to be safe from prying eyes for long to do the deed yet still be able to return in sufficient time for their absence not to be noted.
Silly Saudis, everybody knows that it’s not allowing women in the driver’s seat that gets rid of virginity, it’s getting them in the back seat. Duh.
All I can figure is that it must have something to do with where they mount the stick-shift on Saudi vehicles.
As I understand it in the US there have been several people, both male and female, that have done themselves a mischief experimenting with the control lever on a manual transmission. So there is, evidently, some remote danger to those who are prone to over-enthusiasm in their sexual experimentation. The nearly anecdotal rate of such adventures might be assumed to be disguising a larger trend by the fact that it is only those who ran into trouble serious to require professional intervention that tend to be recorded.
I would think an automatic transmission would eliminate that particular problem.
Just like Jen mentioned in the Godless Bitches podcast: virginity isn’t lost while driving, it’s lost while parked.
pfft
Says you!
This does almost kind of make me think Italy is somewhat slightly ahead of the Saudis in at least some respects. Maybe. But I’d bet women can’t drive cars in Vatican City. (I’ll have to check up on that one. Oops, there probably aren’t any roads there anyway.)
Didaktylos has nailed it: mobility means being able to remove yourself from social control. In practice, long before the current schemozzle, it was not unheard of for Saudi women to kick the chauffeur out of car a few blocks away from the tryst and drive the rest of the way herself.