Saudi Arabia wants to host a men-only Olympics. What a fun idea.
Saudi Arabia has proposed holding a gender-segregated Olympic Games.
In comments made by Prince Fahad bin Jalawi al-Saud – a consultant to the Saudi Olympic Committee –it was suggested the country could bid jointly with Bahrain, which could host the women’s events.
“Our society can be very conservative. It has a hard time accepting that women can compete in sports,” the Prince told French website Francs Jeux.
“Wearing sports clothing in public is not really allowed. For these cultural reasons, it is difficult to bid for certain big international events.”
Right – and that’s as it should be. It should, in fact, be 100% impossible for Saudi Arabia to host any big international events of any kind. Saudi Arabia bans half of its population from public life altogether. That should make it a pariah state.
In recommendations for reform, published last November, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) opened the door to joint bids in 2020.
But it moved to quickly shoot down Saudi Arabia’s suggestion.
IOC President Thomas Bach released a statement explaining that Saudi Arabia would be denied the chance to bid, unless it complied with rules barring discrimination.
“A commitment to ‘non-discrimination’ will be mandatory for all countries hoping to bid for the Olympics in the future,” Bach said. “This was made very clear in the Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms and will even be in the host city contract.
“If this is not applied, the bid would not be admissible. Countries like Saudi Arabia must really work to allow female athletes to ‘freely participate.”‘
And IOC spokesman added: “You cannot simply ‘outsource’ certain issues to another territory”.
Good. That’s as it should be.
London 2012 was the first time that Saudi Arabia had sent female athletes to an Olympic Games, under pressure from the IOC. But the two women chosen –judoka Wojdan Shaherkani and and 800m runner Sarah Attar– were widely denounced as ‘prostitutes’ on social media by conservatives. They competed with their hair covered and were accompanied by male guardians. The country sent a male-only team to last year’s Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
They shouldn’t be allowed to participate at all on that basis. Just say no.
Dear Saudi Arabia,
Go take a flying fuck for yourselves.
Signed,
World’s Female Athletes
Is anyone really seriously thinking of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as Olympic venues? Who the hell would want to engage in any athletic activity on the Arabian Peninsula in the first place? The heat is just miserable, exertion in that heat would cause serious health problems, and who would want to sit in a packed stadium with the Arabian sun beating down on them? And let’s face it, the place is mostly desert — what else would the fans do when they’re not watching their favorite teams collapse from heat exhaustion?
Saudi Arabia and its virtual puppet-state Bahrain are two of the WORST places for an Olympiad. Banning discrimination would make them preferable to Antarctica, I guess…but not by much…
Why doesn’t Saudi Arabia allow any woman who wishes to compete to participate, except with ankle chains? It’s just as good a way of making sure they have no chance of winning – and it sends a much more clear message than vague headscarves, billowing tent garments, and teams of male guardians. I’m sure the Saudi men would find it particularly entertaining as well.
Raging Bee @ #2?
Let me introduce you to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar:
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/qatar2022/
The World Cup is held in June and July when temperatures in Qatar hover around 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit).
You know that old saying about “a will” and “a way”? Well, “a will” doesn’t hold a candle to buckets of cash. Where there are buckets of cash, the way is wide open and clear.
Frankly, if it wasn’t for the loss of the viewership numbers for women’s beach volleyball and gymnastics, the IOC would probably go for this. If they can find a way to satisfy the conflicting interests of perves who want to watch women in scanty clothes jumping around and perves who don’t want to see women in scanty clothes jumping around, they will definitely give the Olympics to Saudi Arabia, weather be damned.
Hell, they’d even give them the winter Olympics. The women are all bundled up there anyway.
I wish some of them could get in an MMA ring with Rosi Sexton. Consensually, of course.
@4 sambarge
Agreed, any ‘compromises’ with misogynistic, quasi slave States like Qatar and Saudi Arabia will simply reinforce their rulers’ contempt for the Western money-grubbing infidels. FIFA and the IOC spend a lot of taxpayers’ money as well, we should expect higher moral standards from both organizations.
In my neck of the woods we refer to that as “natural consequences of our choices,” and we don’t try to force people to conform to what we’ve chosen to do. Sadly, like the World Cup going to Qatar, if enough money changes hands, they’ll get what they want.
The Gulf states are reported to attempting to get Australia expelled from the Asian Football Federation —Australian teams are too successful, naturally the region’s oily Sheikhs are offended.
*This* In the USA. In my lifetime.
South Africa was banned from the Olympics for 20+ years over apartheid. Seems to me the Saudi (et al) attitude merits the same response.
(Well, I really think we should deep-six the boondoggle that is the Olympics altogether, but as long as we’re stuck with the damned thing….)
Are they blind? Can’t they read the record books? Can’t they see the women athletes competing in sports all the time? Reality and real life are right in front of them … what’s so hard about seeing the real women actually competing, right before their eyes?
I absolutely agree that it is time to ban Saudi Arabia from the Olympics. We banned South Africa for almost two decades for human rights violations. And South Africa at its worst was a dreamland compared to The Kingdom at any time.
No it would not!
Excellent! The Olympics should follow the fine example of the FIFA World Cup and have the male and female competitions in different years on different continents…
…or maybe NO. No no no no no. We should be censuring FIFA, and the IRU and any other sport that has a “World Cup” and then has a “Women’s World Cup” at a different time and place, not pandering to misogynistic countries that want to entrench segregation and make men’s sport the “default”.
That’s a laughable threat. Russia and China? “Rules barring discrimination”? More games will be hosted by brutal dictatorships in coming years. And olympic bid bribery isn’t even hidden anymore. Saudi oil sells for more than enough to do that, even at today’s oil prices.
http://www.vincentchow.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/beijing-olympic3.jpg