Women in America live a life that is about as diametrically opposed as can be from the life that Saudi women live. I lose patients when I hear American women, who have the right to do about anything they want, including kill their own unborn babies, complain about whatever issue has their panties in a bunch when I know how women in Saudi Arabia are forced to live. See, women in the House of Saud are treated like chattel. They can’t go anywhere alone. They must have a male chaperon with them at all times when they are in public. I remember when Katie Couric reported from Saudi Arabia several years ago. There she was on live television doing interviews with a male chaperon at her side the entire time. It was shocking and offensive that the government and culture thought she was so inferior that she could not be allowed to do her job independently.
As a result, one Saudi feminist is trying to draw international attention to how oppressive the Saudi rules are toward women. From CNN (Link via Hot Air):
Wajeha al-Huwaider picked up her passport, got in a taxi, and headed from her home in eastern Saudi Arabia to the nearby island kingdom of Bahrain — a 45-minute drive that many Saudis take to get away for the weekend.
Despite having a valid passport, Saudi authorities at the border sent al-Huwaider home. That’s because in Saudi Arabia, a woman needs permission from her male guardian before she can leave the country.
Al-Huwaider — a vocal women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia — knew before she left that she would be turned away at the border. Her attempted trip was simply to make a point about the Saudi guardianship system that she says “controls all aspects of women’s lives.”
“Either you treat us like mature citizens or let us leave the country (permanently),” she told CNN.
She’s urging all Saudi women who are tired of “being oppressed” to go “to any border and try to cross it without permission from their male relative.”
She wants to end Saudi Arabia’s strict guardianship laws in which women must get permission from their husband, father, or closest male relative before doing the most mundane of tasks — including working outside the home, going to school, maintaining a bank account, or leaving the country for a weekend getaway.
As expected, the Saudi government is telling Human Rights watch that it is reforming rights for women while it continues to enforce its draconian, hateful rules toward women.
I can’t imagine living in a country where I had absolutely no rights and the men viewed me as a piece of property. The men clearly hate women so much they don’t want to so much as look at them in public, which is why women must be fully covered. Take a look at Saudi Arabia’s “Miss Beautiful Morals.” She’s praised because she submits to being reduced to nothing but a shadow with no identity whatsoever. Then again, she doesn’t have a choice really. If she wants to have any kind of life at all, she has to submit to the rules the men have made for her.
Women are blamed if they are raped. Women are killed if they do anything that the men think have brought shame on them. I am convinced that if the men in these cultures could manage to propagate the male population without the assistance of women, they would get rid of the girls and women all together.
