Freedom Sucks

A coworker of Vanessa's told me recently that new developments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are built with separate parking lots for the ladies, even though they're not yet permitted to drive. According to this same person, KSA is very close to giving women, I mean womyn, the right to drive-- there's just one potentate who objects, so they're currently deadlocked on this issue.

I don't know how accurate that is, as I've never been there and I don't particularly want to go. While there are things that are objectionable about the UAE from a freedom loving, or even just freedom fry munching perspective, this country is much more tolerant than it typically receives credit for. Women drive, hold important positions in government, and are not forced to cover up, at least not by Johnny, nay, Abdul Law. Walk around Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and you will see women from all different cultures wearing all different styles of dress. There are prohibitions on certain types of revealing clothing, but in Dubai, for better or worse, those rules go largely unheeded. 

Recently women in KSA have threatened to nurse their hired drivers because, according to religious guidelines, this nullifies the taboo of the two genders mixing outside family bonds. When someone dines on your breast milk, they are rendered family. You've heard of common law marriage, well this is common law adoption only, there's no 18 year expiration date on the "baby."

I'm not sure if the ladies of KSA will go through with it, but I have to wonder, do the drivers have any say in the matter?

Masked Swordsmen and the Reluctant Prostitute

This story caught my eye today, not just for it's swashbuckling bravado and abusive misogyny, but because it's the first time I've read anything about the Dubai Police breaking up a prostitution ring. The standard water-cooler rumor is that Dubai, despite occasionally imprisoning its largely law abiding residents for displays of public affection, tacitly approves of prostitution in light of the city's huge guest worker population, many of whom are ostensibly away from their wives for long stretches. I don't see how someone making around $250/month by high estimates, in what is one of the world's most overpriced cities, could possibly afford the attentions of a working lady, but others have suggested that there's a certain amount of sharing going on. And yet the economics of that arrangement seem unlikely as well, since no one ever got rich offering a 'twenty-five for the price of one' special.

While all this is purely speculative, it seems unfair to blame (or thank, depending on your perspective) Dubai's poorest, least mobile residents for the city's reputedly large sex trade. It seems more likely that, not only must there be a large segment of middle income clientele, but that someone at the, uh, top is making quite a lot of money running these brothels. I don't mean to make light of the real issue here; human trafficking, FKA slavery. This is a problem that the United States should be doing a lot more to address, including offering asylum to the victims, rather than sending them back to their abusers to try again. What is unique to Dubai though, is the complexity of moral tight rope walking around issues of what a professor of mine once termed, "applied friction." Bravo to the Dubai P.D. for breaking up this mob of knife wielding slave-drivers, but as long as the government is going to turn a blind eye to a bustling trade in sex for money, could they also think about unblocking flickr?