oppressed? who's oppressed?

For a class, my wife has chosen this article as worthy of comment. The upshot: Karen Hughes, speaking to female Saudi Arabian university students, finds herself unexpectedly defending the American evangel of freedom.

I'm interested, but lazy, so I'll post choice tidbits from others, for your appraisal.

[responding to letters attacking Hughes] Is this what the left (I assume the letter-writers are left of center) has sunk to? Defending one of the world's most oppressive patriarchies -- where in 2001 15 teenage girls died in a fire at a school and dozens were injured because the religious police prevented them from leaving the school without their headscarves and tried to bar male rescuers from entering the building -- rather than allow that some "American values" may be worth emulating?

Is this an expression of principled multiculturalist idiocy, or would these women be singing a different tune if, say, Hillary Clinton rather than Karen Hughes had been the messenger? Either way, this is disgraceful.

Cathy Young, The Y Files

This is generally the point where I’m suppose to enlighten you all on how much America sucks and how you poor products of the inferior American education system just don’t understand. However, I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’m going to radically change the subject to anti-American snobbery. As this post is quickly getting too long for an enjoyable read, I will defer this next installment to a future post. Tune in next time for my theory on American self-perception that I call:

"Going Round the Twist"

?????, Life in Beirut

The last quote is by far my favorite. It is important to understand that this audience was not full of the conservative demographic of Saudi, but rather the liberal elite. I believe this goes to show a huge disconnect within the liberal ideology. The disconnect appears when the mantra of

We want equality
You do not have equality
Therefore you want equality

is faced with the liberal-culture mantra of

All peoples are created equal
Therefore all cultures are created equal
Therefore no culture is better than any other culture

J. James Mooney, In Search of Purple

As a Malaysian woman who has never had to seriously question my status in society, I have difficulty understanding how any woman can be happy with a gender-based driving ban. And I don't know if the 500 women picked to form Ms. Hughes' audience were hand-picked for their opinions but certainly, if a significant enough portion of women in Saudi or anywhere else in the Arab world are happy with the laws that affect their lives, then there should be no need to disbelieve them because of our own cultural baggage. If women in Afghanistan still prefer to wear the burqa because it makes them feel safer, then no one should be denigrating that choice just because we think it's silly, oppressive, uncomfortable and archaic. Similarly, if women in Saudi think they're getting a better deal by having men chauffering them around then we should keep the conviction that driving is integral to our freedom and equality to ourselves.

If the women affected are not that concerned, should America be concerned? Freedom is only freedom when the individual feels it.

Elina, Random Journey

Readings for one of my classes have recently been focusing on the artificial categories imposed on indigenous cultures by societies with universalist ambitions. Some of the writers argue, for example, that the British colonialists emphasized religious difference 1) because of their own particularistic experience of inter-denominational hostility, which they then projected onto others; and 2) because it was a useful tool for initiating sectarian animosity in a context where religious difference was not an overriding consideration. I can't help but think that something like #1 is maybe what is happening here. It is to some extent true, isn't it, that non-western women don't really feel oppressed until they are exposed to the ideas of western women, themselves motivated by the heavily-charged debates surrounding western patriarchy?

Then again, I'm sure the "happiness" of those who attended Hughes' "public" meeting is in no small part a function of the careful decision made to pick the "privileged elite" of Jeddah, "one of the more liberal areas of the country." A lot harder to accept one's lot when you are doubly disadvantaged as a women and of lesser socio-economic standing in a heavily class-based society. While it may be that Dr Nada Jambi, public health professor, is "not in any way barred from talking to the other sex," I have my doubts that this is the case in other, more conservative areas of the country, where the infamous "religious police" have much more sway.

Junaid, Prima Facie

The dialectic: always just a few mouse clicks away.

Update: Bruce Reed of Slate contributes.