The New York Times runs two articles, yesterday and today, on the problems young Saudis face in looking for love. Both are worth reading as they take first, the opinions and attitudes of young men, then in the second piece those of girls.
There’s not really much new here to anyone who’s read Girls of Riyadh, excepting perhaps the emphasis on Bluetooth technology. The article tend to focus on those aspect of young Saudi lives that are so very different from those in the West, but how these young men and women behave would seem pretty ordinary to a traditional Hindu in India.
More than a look deep into Saudi culture, the pieces are a look into traditional, conservative societies where parents rule their children well into adulthood. This is a point missed by most of the commenters to the articles who generally use them to bash Islam or Saudis.
There’s no doubt that being a young Saudi is a tough job and that most Westerners would happily avoid it. But the articles do capture, slightly, the pleasure and comforts of living in a restricted realm.
Young Saudis, Vexed and Entranced by Love’s Rules
Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide
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23:05,
Hi John,
I’ve been following the series and while interesting and well-written, I think it should have been made clearer that the first article on Young Saudi males is only representative of a small slice of Saudi society. For example, most Saudi families ARE NOT comprised of a mother, father, father’s second wife and various relatives ALL in one house. I also thought it was a bit degenerating to the young cousins with remarks about not being comfortable in a restaurant as they were more accustomed to eating with their hands. I guess to me, it made them sound almost barbarbic and I wondered what others who have not been to the Kingdom at all will ultimately think and remember when reading about the young Saudi male?
Regards,
American Bedu
23:21,
I agree. These guys don’t seem typical, though they certainly do represent an honest slice of Saudi society. Sort of like how the TV show ‘Dallas’ wasn’t untrue… it just wasn’t completely true for all Americans. Or even partly true.
01:03,
I’m surprised that the reporter did not add any kind of caveat that the article represented a slice of Saudi society and that there are many facets to the Saudi culture, customs and traditions.
01:58,
“If you want to know what your wife looks like, look at her brother,”
Why doesn’t he just marry her brother because he’ll probably end up being more intimate with him anyway in terms of sharing time, fun moments etc.
He even wants to go on their honeymoon which proves my point!
This comment is not directed personally to the people in this article but it is a statement of how women are viewed by many in society that they should be so separate and locked away. Why even bother having her? I have an even better idea why not just bury her alive as an infant like they used to do in the days of ignorance or the days of jahaleya because obviously that mentality still persists today under the guise of Islam. I say Woman Haram that you even exist because you are so vulgar and repulsive.
And believe me because Sarah sneaked communication and messages prior to marriage most likely he will treat her like a whore the rest of their marriage always fearful she will do the same with someone else because this is the sick mentality. And to every man I can proudly say to hell with your stupid romance I just want what I want. Peace!
05:33,
Greetings,
I’d have to say I found the article pretty accurate about many young men. My students told me that the majority of young men have had sexual relations between themselves, including them. In my experience a large percentage have people they call “girlfriends” on their phones they call a lot. Some carry on relationships with married women (definitely rare, but not unheard of, one of my friends completely freaked out when a Saudi women propositioned him with her husband present.) The married women know that their husbands have other women they consort with or maids (rape of house help is common here, just ask the Filipinos who have run away to the embassy, the indonesians sent home pregnant, etc.) Stop by the red light district in Bahrain (the bar of Saudi Arabia), you will see it full of Saudi males of all ages.
The young men who don’t engage in this kind of behavior are becoming less and less common.
Observe the Saudi’s interacting together as they work in the hospitals.
If the New York Times did a piece on the male gender separation dynamic and the addiction to pornography here that would be a good follow up. It is truly frightful.
In the NYT it seems kind of cute…the reality and results are quite different. And I wouldn’t say the Mutawwa are much different when it comes to sexual dysfunction, it’s just more hidden.
I would also like to say that the majority of men I was friends with were very nice to me, polite, loved their children (extraordinarily in my experience), etc. But at the same time, what a westerner might consider completely unacceptable was often overlooked by / among them. Consorting with a prostitute for many is more like smoking in the west.
FYI - I wouldn’t say that eating with ones hands is barbaric…I’ve learned to do it myself there and it is much more convenient for many of the traditional foods they eat…I’d say closer to barbaric is some of the beauty treatments we engage in, whether it be to keep our hair or augment the mammaries…kind of like foot binding isn’t it??
But I would say that the way women are treated here is barbaric. It is true that even the 15 - 35 year old males who shamelessly flirt do not want to marry a girl who does…”she’s loose.”
I used to teach 100’s of kids each semester before I left to teach back in the states and this is what I observed
A fundamental observation I had before I went to Saudi is two fold. #1) Saudi’s are fundamentally like the west in the driving dynamics of their life frustrations, satisfactions, dreams, etc. #2) Islam in Saudi Arabia is concerned about maintaining the perception of good living through prayer, hajj, zakat, etc. but right living when it comes to things like racism, family abuse, etc. is less important.
I’m sure I’ll piss off alot of people with the last one but that is what I saw. I understand that is not what Islam teaches, but I came to Saudi with a better opinion of Islam as a whole than when I left.
08:24,
The men like these two cousins seem to want to keep their ‘women’ covered up and hidden behind closed doors so that they can keep their own ‘manhood’ intact. For if any of their sisters or cousins get out in the open, they are the ones society blames for not keeping them in line.
Thank God I married an open-minded Saudi whose whole family lived in the West for so many years before moving back to KSA. This also helps to explain why so many western women ended up in very difficult situations in their marriages. Their ‘western’ boyfriend had to tow the line when he returned to the fold.
09:01,
The people who wrote this article should have made it clear that they were covering one area and one segment of Saudi society. The picture they paint is not accurate for other places in Saudi.
Like I said on my blog, it would be as if a Saudi covered the US and used the Appalachia area of the US to paint a picture of the entire county. I hadly think it would be accurate.
09:54,
The articles are ‘true’, but not ‘the whole truth’. Part of that, I’m sure, is that newspapers have to reduce complicated stories to simple (simplistic?) ones. Most readers don’t have the patience to go through a lot of ‘yes, but’ or ‘on the other hand’ stuff.
That’s to the detriment of their readers, of course, but it’s part of the way media works. It’s also one of the greatest weaknesses in the way major media works. Countering that simplicity is one of the reasons this blog exists.