Another Problem: Hold-Outs Among Saudi Women

Arab News ^ | Lubna Hussain

[wgflyer]

.....Find an idiot on the street (I’d be spoilt for choice), pay him a bit of money, enter into a “friendship marriage,” get the travel permission signed, dump the idiot on the street and leave. Hey presto! What a wonderfully practical solution. What’s absolutely shocking about the whole concept is that this is what women have been reduced to in our society. It’s unthinkable for a woman to try to function as an independent entity irrespective of her capabilities, inclinations, or preferences. In fact, judging by the responses that I received it is wholly deplorable for a woman to even think of traveling by herself even if she is going to meet her parents.....

[wgflyer]

For all you ladies who would like to convert.......

[DJ Taylor]

My understanding of why these Muslims require their women to have guardians is not for their women's protection, but it is because they do not trust their women to conduct themselves properly if left alone and without male supervision.

[gcruse]

Well, when I read about airlines that will not seat females or children next to single males, on what I have to assume is the belief that men are routinely bestial, Islamic misogyny is western PC civ in high heels and dancing backwards.

[Moonmad27]

How horrible that system is. A Texas co-worker of mine years ago worked in Saudi, and when his wife visited, he warned her in advance that when they met at the airport after six months of separation, not to hug him or anything. There were watchers at the airport with their sticks. She rushed forward and raised her arms - and so did one of the watchers raise a stick. Luckily she remembered in time!

[sgtbono2002]

Its like the old catholic joke about why Nuns traveled in pairs. So one Nun could watch the other Nun , to see she didnt get None.

[wgflyer]

As an aside, during the seventies I spent a couple of years over there. I remember the first time I went...the plane was only half full, and a number of attractive women were aboard, scattered throughout the plane. I fell asleep.

When I awoke, to the garbled chatter of the pilot informing us that we would soon be landing, I noticed that the women were gone. In their places were "black ghosts", for the women had all donned their habayias. It was all new to me at the time and somewhat troubling.

In retrospect, I imagine that the women are quite happy to go wild, as do their male counterparts, when out of the watchful and contemptuous eyes of the matawa. The Saudi men I taught all had tales of adventures in the USA, complete with pictures of their American girlfriends, which were related only after they trusted me.

Those were more lenient times, too. The religious police have gotten a much greater influence over the years.

Human nature tends to favor sampling the forbidden fruit, whenever it appears unguarded. We consider it our right to do so, whatever might the folly of it be. But Saudi women pay a price for their circumstance.

[Alouette]

Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh

Someone is cruisin' for a bruisin'

[wgflyer]

"How horrible that system is. "

"...when I read about airlines that will not seat females or children next to single males..."

Yes, indeed. Now, understand the crazed behavior of muslims when they leave the shackles of Sharia. When I left Saudi, after only a little over two years, I found myself looking at normally dressed western women as if they were nude. It took a while for me to contain the urge to stare. Men who live under Sharia consider unescorted women to be whores and will stare and touch at their pleasure. More, if not quickly discouraged. This is, after all, what they've been conditioned to believe. It is no wonder that some airlines might hesitate to place unescorted women next to unescorted muslim men.

[wgflyer]

I marvelled at that as well.

[AppyPappy]

I knew a gay guy who swore Middle Eastern men were always willing. They didn't seem to have a taboo against sex with me although they rarely "received".

[dirtboy]

Just as long as you went 'baa-aaah' during the act.

[AppyPappy]

Ooops, sex with MEN!!

[FreedomPoster]

LOL, I was wondering about that!

[gcruse]

It wasn't muslim men. It was all men. The airline was in New Zealand, as I recall, but they are not the only ones treating all men as uncaught criminals.

[Moonmad27]

One missing letter and you've got a whole new reputation!

[wgflyer]

Interesting. Personally, I've done a lot of flying and I haven't seen that. But that doesn't mean anything. With muslim men I really understand it. There are lots of non-muslim louts out there, though. Maybe that airline had some complaints.

[gcruse]

Here you go.

Airline Seating Policy 'Demonizes' Men
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
November 29, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - Two airlines "down under" are under fire after acknowledging their policy of not allowing an unaccompanied child passenger to sit next to a man.

The policy emerged when a New Zealand man said he was asked by airline staff to move because an unaccompanied minor had been assigned the seat next to him.

Mark Worsley was told to swap seats with a woman sitting nearby, who then moved into the seat next to the boy, about eight years old, for the 80-minute flight.

"I was pretty shocked -- I think most people would be," the 37-year-old shipping manager and father of two said Tuesday.

"I complied straight away and moved seats. But as I sat on the plane during the flight I got more and more angry about it."

Part of the problem, Worsley said, was that the plane was full. When the flight attendant arranged the seat swap, "certainly there was enough disruption that people in the immediate vicinity would have heard what was going on. I felt totally embarrassed."

He had later confronted the airline staff, who confirmed the company policy.

Worsley said someone asked him after the event why he had not simply refused to move. "But these days you can't really do that. With [fears of] terrorism, if you cause any fuss on the plane you're out walking."

"Most males in the world, I'm sure, are perfectly law-abiding, good parents, good fathers, brothers, whatever," he said. "They're basically accusing half the population of the world of being a potential pedophile."

Worsley had been traveling on a flight operated by Qantas, the Australian national carrier. Both Qantas and Air New Zealand have now confirmed that they would not seat a child traveling alone next to an adult male passenger.

Worsley came forward following the recent decision by New Zealand's opposition National Party to name one of its lawmakers, Wayne Mapp, as a spokesman on eradicating "political correctness."

Mapp, whose appointment to the post drew ridicule from the left, has invited New Zealanders to come forward with information about practices they perceive to be "PC," primarily those carried out by the Labor government.

Worsley was one of those who had approached him.

Mapp said the airline policy implied that children were not safe sitting next to men.

He found rare common ground with a left-leaning lawmaker, Keith Locke of the Green Party, who said Tuesday that airlines should recognize that "men are people too."

Decrying what he called "the moral panic about men being a potential threat to children," Locke said it was "prejudicial to presume that men can't be trusted to have contact with children unless they are related to them or are specially trained."

He said the incident clearly is a breach of New Zealand's Human Rights Act -- which prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender -- and he asked a government human rights commissioner to investigate.

Some of the Green Party's policies occasionally have been labeled "politically correct" by conservative critics.

Locke said he was glad the National Party's "PC eradicator" had come out against the airline policy, but he argued that it was wrong to call it political correctness.

"The anti-PC brigade usually criticize what they see as an overemphasis on equal rights, including between the genders. The Greens are sometimes the target of their attacks, so I'm glad to see them supporting equal rights in this case," he said.

'Distrust'

The airlines did win support from one quarter. Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, a government appointee, commended Qantas and Air New Zealand for their efforts to keep child passengers safe.

Kiro said she doubted the policy was meant as a slur against men.

But her intervention drew a strong response from the Men's Coalition, whose spokesman Kerry Bevin said Tuesday the commissioner was not fit for her post and should resign.

"Kiro is telling our children that men are dangerous to children," Bevin charged. He also called for the airlines to make a public apology.

For Worsley, the incident was part of a far broader problem, which seemed to affect Western countries in general, he said.

"Men are being demonized in the media for a long time now. I think probably this is just society's reaction -- they think, 'We'd better start tightening up on everything.' It's getting to the stage when all men are viewed with distrust," he said.

"They've already chased men out of the teaching profession, especially for young children. I wouldn't want to be a Scoutmaster now. I wouldn't want to be a Catholic priest ..."

[Philistone]

They actually don't trust THEMSELVES to be able to control their impulses.

[gcruse]

See #17. Men as a whole seem untrustworthy to many, Muslim or not.

[Navy Patriot]

sex with me

Freudian slip?