Last week, 32 Saudi Arabian women drove their automobiles on the streets of their capital city to demonstrate that, one said, “this is a right for women that is not banned by any law or religion. … I went out to establish this right, so that it would be up to me to drive or not,” she told a reporter.
Maha Al-Qahtani was bolstered by her husband, who rode in the passenger seat beside her. But she took her toothbrush and nightie along in case she was tossed in jail for her impertinence.
Like the news about the beginning of the end of the earth and Rep. Anthony Weiner’s twitterings, this headline from Riyadh is so preposterous it makes boors like me laugh.
We shouldn’t, really.
The Saudi Arabian ban on women driving may not have actual law behind it, but it is enforced as though it did. Saudi men are condemning their wives, mothers, sisters and all of the rest of the female half of the population to humiliating second class status. That’s weird, but it’s not funny. The men get away with this unique variety of slavery because they are control freaks.
Saudi men abuse Saudi women because their royal family — the one that controls that vast wealth and makes every decision in the country that matters — tells them to. The formal message is a bit longer, but it boils down to this: keep your women barefoot, pregnant and make them hire Filipino drivers. Don’t do this because it’s right; do it because it keeps women in their place.
This bizarre country can have such an extreme culture because of the immense wealth it derives from oil, eliminating the need for work for the vast majority of Saudi men and instead creating a hierarchy of the perverse and more perverse.
As the world’s demand for oil grows, so does this sad situation.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
