saudihominid:

A tolerant generation of young people is rising. Men and women who are keen to change and are eager to challenge the status quo. But all they do is rant. Ranting is good and healthy. It shows that people are sick of the current situation, but it’s not enough!

Take our feminists for instance, most of them are distorted copies of American feminists. It seems that they’ve somehow lost their identity. They tend to form closed loops with almost identical mindsets and with people who happen to share the same “social class”. They alienate who disagrees with them. And they intract with the rest of the people using (literally) a language that the people don’t understand.

To be a Saudi feminist you must be spiritual enough to NOT be an atheist, and liberated enough to NOT wear hijab. For a Saudi feminist religious girls are not cool, to them they don’t “understand” feminism even if they demanded equality and basic rights.

And don’t even get me started on the “issues” that they raise and brag about! What bugs the saudi feminist is not the fact that they are treated as second class citizens by this so called government, nor the fact that they lack their basic human rights! No, no. It’s those filthy uncivilized men; their gazes, the way they address women, the words they use, and so on. For a Saudi feminist what’s heart breaking is not the fact that the French government was able to ban the right to choose niqab, It’s rather how American tv shows and films portray women. And it’s no surprise since the main source of information that the Saudi feminist has is YouTube. If it’s not on YouTube then it doesn’t exist.

We need a feminism that people can relate to and understand. A feminism that doesn’t feel like the product of an “outside country”, especially in a culture that fears anything new. We need a movment that is based on a solid philosophy. An organized, well coordinated and intellectual one. A feminism that is not named “Feminism”.

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I hear what you’re saying. You should check out this TED talk linked below. I couldn’t help thinking about it once I read your post. You know, in a way, I envy you guys. The Arab spring belongs to the youth, the progressive and technologically connected. You can see the world and pick the best ideas to implement. We are entrenched in old ways that are hard to break. I know it sounds strange, and I mean no irreverence, but I wish you all the best over there. I hope you far exceed the USA’s current societal condition. Please, if you take any advice from us, do so with a grain of salt at best and logical skepticism at worst.
 

Kavita Ramdas: Radical women, embracing tradition