"... exposing her legs and midriff in violation of the country’s strict dress code for women,"
the NYT reports.
The video of the woman, identified online only as Khulood, prompted a debate on social media soon after it was uploaded to Snapchat over the weekend....
Some people on Twitter called the woman brave and accused Saudi Arabia of hypocrisy for often celebrating the beauty of foreign women while denigrating that of its own citizens.
Other Saudis condemned the woman not just for flaunting her figure but also for flouting the kingdom’s well-known rules. “She shouldn’t be out in a conservative country looking like this; she should respect the laws, or her destiny will be known,” wrote one person who shared the video despite those comments.
Here's the video:
Posts
58 comments:
Don't offend the mob. They're like Democrats.
exposing her legs and midriff in violation of the country’s strict dress code for women
Look, she'd be doing that if she were wearing an ordinary skirt, or indeed an ankle-length skirt. The Saudi standard is no leg at all. We mock the Victorians for covering up their indecent piano legs, but we seem to get along fine with the covering up of female human legs.
When the Saudi prude said if she will dress like an American, " her destiny will be known..." he doesn't mean she will be on the cheerleader team. He means her brothers will throw acid on her face.
It's Sharia Town, Jake.
Is she Saudi? I think the article implies that she is. If so, she knows the rules and the risks. You play the game, you lose, game over. She's not some dumbass American tourist who thinks her values are normative everywhere she goes.
Well, police officer Noor of Minneapolis would know how to deal with her.
Maybe Sally Kohn can comment how this is another example of how Islam treats queer persons better than the Christian right. Or something.
She's Saudi. I like the person who republished her with Ivanka Trump's head pasted over (since the Trump women were allowed to freely go about in Western clothes on their recent visit).
She claims the video was posted without her knowledge.
The only reasonable response is for her family to kill her. That's what Allah would want, isn't it?
Hypocritical? No way.
Check out the Etihad flight attendants:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552319/Qatar-Airways-asked-women-come-SHORT-skirts-recruitment-day-Norway-men-told-wear-business-suits.html
or Qatar interview request:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552319/Qatar-Airways-asked-women-come-SHORT-skirts-recruitment-day-Norway-men-told-wear-business-suits.html
Other Saudis condemned the woman not just for flaunting her figure but also for flouting the kingdom’s well-known rules. “She shouldn’t be out in a conservative country looking like this; she should respect the laws, or her destiny will be known,” wrote one person who shared the video despite those comments.
Hate to say it, but they're right. The laws are what they are.
Suck it, Abdul.
She needs to be arrested. The video made my man parts tingle.
We mock the Victorians for covering up their indecent piano legs
That would be limbs, Michelle. My grandmother once confided in me that my [post-Victorian] grandfather, when courting her, was shocked at her use of the term 'legs' to describe the lower appendages. She grew up on a cattle ranch and, to her, a leg was a leg. They sustained a pretty good marriage, though.
If ALL Saudi women would agree to doff their burkas in an Aristophanes-style protest, they might get somewhere. But that won't happen. NOT because the women are too powerless or oppressed but because they are just as committed to the program as are the men. Make no mistake. Muslim women, for the most part, don't want the kinds of freedom we value.
Wait!?!? Snapchat?? I thought that was just for dick pix?....and isn't the video supposed to self-destruct, and can't go viral?
Hate to say it, but they're right. The laws are what they are.
And how oppressive and unjust does a law have to be before you take the other side and believe that breaking it is the right thing to do?
Remember this picture, taken on the liberation of Kabul from the Taliban?
It doesn't say it there, but I think she saw the cameraman and whipped off her mask as a silent way of commemorating their new (relative) freedom.
Saudi porn. And it works.
If 1000's of women don't come and protest in the public square in Riyadh, then she is toast.
Until Saudi women *want* to be emancipated, then individuals will continue to pay the price for going against society.
But the Women's March organizer thinks SA is much more progressive than America:
Cameron Gray
@Cameron_Gray
"10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame." - Linda Sarsour https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/887361368785121281 …
12:27 PM - 18 Jul 2017
The women who claimed evil Paul Ryan made them cover their bare arms won't say a peep about this. And Linda Sarsour will come up with some other inanity.
How many weeks of paid leave does one get in SA after receiving 99 lashes?
On a related subject, whatever happened to that Chinese shopper who held up the column of tanks?
Yup western culture is just the same as Islamic culture. Exactly the same.
On a related subject, whatever happened to that Chinese shopper who held up the column of tanks?
No one knows. Hopefully the Chinese government doesn't either.
If 1000's of women don't come and protest in the public square in Riyadh, then she is toast.
A bunch took to the road soon after the first Iraq war, all on the same day, to protest the driving law. It didn't work.
If so, she knows the rules and the risks. You play the game, you lose, game over.
When did we decide that human rights are no longer universal?
When did we decide that human rights are no longer universal?
When we decided that all cultures are equal.
MarkW said...
Hate to say it, but they're right. The laws are what they are.
And how oppressive and unjust does a law have to be before you take the other side and believe that breaking it is the right thing to do?
7/18/17, 3:29 PM
You go first. Which oppressive law in your community would you risk going to jail for a couple of years for?
Which oppressive law did you break and get arrested for?
Yeah, thought so.
Blogger eddie willers said...
If so, she knows the rules and the risks. You play the game, you lose, game over.
When did we decide that human rights are no longer universal?
Huh?The right to dress as you like? You mean, why can we not apply our values worldwide?
OK to go naked in San Francisco. Try it in your town.
"When did we decide that human rights are no longer universal?"
When did we decide our values are normative?
Islam delenda est.
"You go first. Which oppressive law in your community would you risk going to jail for a couple of years for?
Which oppressive law did you break and get arrested for?"
Iowa State University police had this crazy and oppressive law, that you were NOT allowed to swim naked in the Memorial Union fountain by the Campanile; even if you'd been drinking, and it was a very warm night. Stupid reactionary police, with their stupid oppressive laws.
الرعب
She looks ok from the back. Trump should offer her asylum.
Sort of like men in shorts.
Good thing she wasn't out walking her dog to buy a Valentine's Day card.
Then she'd really be in trouble.
(The holiday is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and the police often confiscate dogs seen publicly.)
Scott asks: When did we decide our values are normative?
Exactly! What we should have learned through the ages is that values are not universal. A lot of grief could be avoided if we would face that simple fact.
She brings some beauty to an otherwise barren world.
I wonder if Althouse can Google view the surrounding area. Look -- more dried mud huts, and there's some lovely filth down there!
Q: should laws be oppressive at all? They should merely protect every individual's rights. Then we would not have a swamp to drain.
exiledonmainstreet said...
"10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame." - Linda Sarsour https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/887361368785121281 …"
Does she realize how few women in Saudi Arabia have jobs?
Blogger St. George said...Good thing she wasn't out walking her dog to buy a Valentine's Day
card.
Good thing she wasn't carrying a Bible.
It's time for this woman's family to send her on a very long holiday to Europe or the US.
All she has done is take off the outer costume for a few moments. Reminds me of long ago article in NYT "Ffor three minutes I felt free" about USSR dissidents.
She has set a challenge to the "Modernizing" prince and heir.
Did Trump Khulood with the Saudis to have this woman punished?
Re: values ... self-respecting Americans should look at words of Emma Lazarus before condoning tyranny, which is their first step in yielding to it.
"self-respecting Americans should look at words of Emma Lazarus before condoning tyranny"
Somebody was condoning tyranny? I must have missed that somehow.
Anyhow, it's a sad story and I hope the consequences aren't severe. I don't have much reason for optimism, though.
Running around and getting upset at another countries religions and customs is bigotry. Its cultural imperialism, and I'm not kidding.
I don't give a fuck what they do in Saudi Arabia. Its their country.
Of course, I don't want people who approve of this in MY country.
But there's no reason, we all have to be the same.
What better way to evince approve than to say . she must pay the price?
Rosa Parks, call your office.
"she must pay the price"
I think that is a case of pointing out the bleedin' obvious, not approval.
Saudi law sucks, Saudi culture sucks, but me or anyone else saying that on this blog isn't going to make a damned bit of difference.
Narayanan Subramanian said...
Re: values ... self-respecting Americans should look at words of Emma Lazarus before condoning tyranny, which is their first step in yielding to it.
Let's leave the "thinking something is not our problem = 'condoning' something" to washed-up neo-con hysterics, okay?
Emma Lazarus? [Rolls eyes] Emma Lazarus was a bit confused about what the Statue of Liberty was meant to represent. (Hint: it had nothing to do with "invade the world/invite the world".)
Americans started down the road to "yielding to tyranny" when they started believing that our own unique, historically and culturally embedded understanding of freedom and rights was not only universally desired, but our duty to universally impose. If we don't want tyranny, we'd better turn our attention to protecting our own way of life on our own soil. It's not our job to "fix" the Saudis, or anybody else in the world who doesn't do things they way we do them. Just like it's not our job to adapt ourselves to them if they manage to wash up on our shores.
exiledonmainstreet: But the Women's March organizer thinks SA is much more progressive than America:
Cameron Gray
@Cameron_Gray
"10 weeks of PAID maternity leave in Saudi Arabia. Yes PAID. And ur worrying about women driving. Puts us to shame." - Linda Sarsour https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/887361368785121281 …
12:27 PM - 18 Jul 2017
Lol. Who's this "us" ur talking about, kemosabe Sarsour?
California girl is not in California. She has no sense of where she is.
They're barbarians following an unreformed 7th Century religion, where women are considered chattel and second-class citizens at best. This mindset shows an incompatibility with modern Western customs and mores, and also shows why we should discourage further immigration from Muslim countries.
Islam is a backwards religion. They can't handle women, they can't handle alcohol.
Two of my favorite things! God Bless America.
This strikes me as extremely subversive, because it implicitly undercuts what I understand to be some of the rationalizations for making women cover up.
One is that she's going to inflame men beyond their self-control and provoke them to sin. However, there are no men -- indeed, there are no other people -- in the video. She might as well be alone in her bedroom, where (I assume) she'd be allowed to dress like this.
The other is that she's bringing dishonor and disrepute on herself by acting immodestly and posting a video of it. However, you can't see her face, except for a second or so, and even then it's overlaid by sunglasses, distant, and very generic. I doubt that her own mother could recognize her.
It's the Wahhabist analog of those ethics studies that ask people if brother-sister incest would still be wrong as long as it's done only once and with birth control; people insist that it's wrong, but they sputter when they're asked to explain why.
" When did we decide our values are normative?"
"We hold these truths.........................."
But it goes all the way back to the Greeks and democracy.
Or some such shit.
Althouse knows.
Condoning is when people of countries with some grasp of what freedom means do not object when their governments establish diplomatic relations with the ruling gang in such regions of the world.
For example Trump ladies could have made a point of having other Saudi women on 'stage' during public occasions ... That would indicate long term strategy in deal making to subvert tyranny.
The US shouldn't have diplomatic relations with any country that doesn't meet our standards? Or do you find the Saudis uniquely evil in this respect?
I don't think even Robert Cook reaches these heights of unrealistic idealism.
"Which oppressive law did you break and get arrested for?"
If I don't think a law or regulation is just or reasonable, I don't think the enforcement of it is either -- so I would try to avoid arrest, not invite it. I were gay and had lived a generation or two ago, I would have violated anti-sodomy laws and encouraged others to do so. I would have also pushed for reform. But I wouldn't have gone out of my way to get arrested and jailed over it. And I definitely wouldn't have lead a completely celibate life because a tyrannical majority passed evil laws that said I had to. The same goes for drinking during prohibition -- I would have done it, encouraged others to do it and also tried to avoid getting caught. Ditto for unjust drug laws now, as far as I'm concerned. But in none of these cases, would I ever say, "Serves them right, the law is the law" as you're apparently saying about the Saudi woman.
She is culturally appropriating western dress. Social justice demands she stop.
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