With
friends like these, who needs Afghanistan?
posted by Joolya at
11:50 AM
Monday, June 11, 2007
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5 Comments:
Thanks for that Joooooools. We had a bit of a row last week over at lablit, on this very matter.
Thanks, BK, that was an interesting read. I guess we are all cultural chauvanists ... even the relativists (ie relativism is better than chauvanism, haha).
MoN seems like a guy who is doing a lot of thinking, and maybe he will do good things for Jordanian science. But, just as it is necessary here in the US (and in Europe/Australia/Asia), a just and progressive society is simply not possible without the destruction of gender/sex inequality. This means we need child care and flexible hours in the US. In [fucking] Saudi Arabia it means they need to first stop with the burkas and get teh women's suffrage, AND get the free drop-off day care and flex-time and paternity leave and the non-traditional family benefits ...
Thanks for pointing me to Lablit, also!
Oh, one more thing: When I was an undergrad, there was a woman from Saudi Arabia in my lab who wore the full all-but-eyes-covering veil and burka. She had to have (got to have?) her own office so she could work with ehr veil off, away from the prying eyes of the menfolk (who looked at me every day, which I guess was fine?). I went in to talk to her and she startled until she saw it was just me and she didn't have to cover up. She was a post-doc living in the UK with her husband and child, but every term she had to go to the Saudi embassy with a note from her (male) boss (who had no idea what she looked like) saying she was doing necessary work in the lab and have some guy at the embassy approve her staying there. It was really, really weird. It seemed like she would have gotten in trouble (with the embassy? her husband? I'm not sure) if she had failed to comply with Saudi standards while living and (gasp) working abroad. I don't know the whole story but it was freaky, and she was very much isolated from her co-workers (70% of whom were male). Oh, not to mention she had to go all the way to the UK to even do lab work, and even there was under the strict supervision of the bloody Saudi embassy, who she had to check in with all the time. I'm sure she was also under the watch of the UK immigration officials, which is it's own thing. And this was way before Sept 11th 2001.
So my point: post-doc being swathed head-to-toe in black and shut away in own office made it hard to surmount existing language barrier and communicate with, and I was at least able to see her lips move.
Fucking hell.
Oh, and PS - I'm not anti-Muslim, per se. I'm anti- any religion that makes noise about how distracting my presence is to the hardworkin' mens and what I ought to be doing with my body. Which is most of them. Which is a big reason why I am not religious. There are others, but that's a biggie.
Forward Secular Humanism!
Heh. We should talk.
Oh, and this Saudi lassie - if no one (not even her boss!) knew what she looked like, wasn't that a bit of a security risk?
Glad you liked lablit. Please sign up - tell Jenny I sent you. There's a bunch of good guys there and we need more writers for the webstory!
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