A Saudi historian explains why women can't drive.
You'll probably want to check out early, but you really should stay to hear his solution to the danger of them being raped by their chauffeurs. Also, to see the program's hostess unable to respond from laughter.
10 comments:
"Our women"--how I appreciate that expression.
Great illustration of the rationalizing mind at work.
The best part was when he was trying to convince her that women live like queens in Saudi Arabia, and need only lift finger and all the men in her life will jump through hoops to give her whatever she desires.
The sad thing is that this is so reminiscent of some of the arguments I've heard from men about how the past was so much better for women and how we'd all be so much happier if we returned to a time when women didn't have so much problematic freedom of choice.
While it's true that a lucky few women in happy marriages DO have husbands who, in most cases, do everything they can short of servility to make their wives happy, that is not the common lot of married women. Neither are they (as some radical feminists would have it) uniformly oppressed and miserable.
And that's kind of the point: you can't justify public policy by only looking at the best case. You have to look at the average case, and also the worst because in real life, outcomes are anything but uniform.
I should have added,
You have to look at the average case, and also the worst because in real life, outcomes are anything but uniform...and the people who need just laws the most are those who personal lives don't look anything like the best case scenario.
OK, so what happened when the camel broke down?
... we'd all be so much happier if we returned to a time when women didn't have so much problematic freedom of choice.
I had a female friend from China make this argument to me on the subject of Americans in general (not just American women). She said women in China are much happier than American women, and Chinese people than Americans in general, because we have too much freedom of choice. In China, you either have no choices or maybe two choices.
She cited this book on the subject as evidence. She herself is a very smart woman, with a graduate degree in mathematics from Oxford, whom I met while she was studying an entirely different discipline at the graduate level in America. So she's well traveled and well-educated also. She's a Chinese patriot, though, and seems really to believe that her government is helping ensure the happiness of her people in this way.
I don't think it's an option Americans would really entertain -- too much out of order with our national character. Honestly, I have trouble entertaining it even though it is advocated by someone I like and have very good reasons to respect.
It's an integral part of my religion that freedom without obedience can't lead us anywhere good. The big problem always is to whom we're prepared to offer up our freedom in obedience. If my proposed master is a human being or a human institution, I'm pretty skeptical: much more than someone would be who was raised in a thoroughly communitarian and authoritarian tradition.
Decades ago I worked with a Korean guy whose parents were putting heavy pressure on him to come back home and submit to an arranged marriage. It seemed so incomprehensible! I couldn't imagine owing that kind of allegiance to my family. He found my attitude puzzling: his family was everything to him, and my rootless existence looked to him like meaningless alienation, not freedom. But then the northern half of my country isn't ruled by a crazy dictator, either.
The best part was when he was trying to convince her that women live like queens in Saudi Arabia, and need only lift finger and all the men in her life will jump through hoops to give her whatever she desires.
I freely admit that I did not make it that far into the video before turning it off in disgust. But if that's his premise, there where does this great fear of a woman broken down on the side of the road getting raped come from?
I had a female friend from China make this argument [of too much choice]....
That's not unique to China, or even to Asia. See this interview.
Mr. Hines,
Well, the book I linked to is not Chinese or Asian either. It's not a ridiculous argument: there's some science behind it, and a certain amount of plausibility.
It's just difficult to take seriously a solution set that involves eliminating those choices. An American is very likely to respond, "No, thank you, I'll deal with the unhappiness." Which is fine.
But we're also likely to think, "Really, they'd be happier too if they had more choices: they're just rationalizing accepting a reality in which they don't." That's the part that's hard to entertain: that they might really know their minds, and really are happier with fewer choices.
As a formal argument, 'You don't really know your own mind, and the fact that you disagree with my position proves that you're too oppressed to think clearly' is called false consciousness. It's originally a Marxist argument, but you hear it everywhere these days. I've always hated it, but it takes a real struggle not to fall prey to it.
Tex,
I agree on the importance of willing obedience. I think there are levels of duty to obey, at which the duty to God is surely the highest. Sometimes these duties conflict, and we have to disobey lesser bonds in order to be true to the King of Kings.
Like your friend, though, I'm very glad of my family ties. The duties often entail things I don't enjoy, but they're at the core of the meaningfulness of life for me. I accept the duties gratefully, even if sometimes with some grumbling in the moment! To be 'liberated' from these bonds for me would be to be cut off, not cut free.
I have read it postulated that lots of choices can be paralyzing because one cannot be sure if the choice one has made was the best choice.
I think I'd still rather have to worry about that, rather than have everything decided for me.
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