Love, Heartbreaks and Deal Breakers

A change in direction of blogging and embarrassingly inspired by Rebecca Ferguson, who was in the Metro today and said 'nothing is real but love'.

Two people who I hold in high regard in my life have recently had their hearts broken, both men and both good people who adored their wife and girlfriend. My friend is only 24 and has a marriage and a child under his belt, so clearly he is that rare breed of pro-commitment man. He slaved away working two jobs, putting in 60+ hours a week to pay for his rent, his wife and child, whilst she did not work at all. Then one day his pregnant wife simply informed my friend she wanted a divorce. He did as she requested, left, slept on his friend's floor and cried at the marriage breakdown. After some soul searching and prayer for a sign, he found one.

He checked her email and found that she had aborted their child. Returning home and giving her chances to come clean, she claimed and continued to maintain she had had a miscarriage. He also received verbal abuse from a mother in law who did not even bother turning up to their wedding and whom he had never spoken to prior to this particular ambush.

My cousin on the other hand, is not the committed type, he's in no way a douche bag to women but he has always been a free spirit and notorious in my family for most likely to stay unmarried. Yet he found a young lady who he considered his soul mate. He called her one time and asked her where she was, as you do, she replied that she was at a mutual friend's house, he then asked to speak to her as he had something to talk about with this friend anyway, and she promptly hung up.

It was later exposed that she was cheating, not only that but she offered that she was only with him because she felt sorry for him. My cousin is NOT the type to take pity on, he comes from a great family, with money, has had his own business before the age of 25 and has one of those charismatic, carefree and funny personalities. It's the equivalent of a girl 'taking pity' on I don't know, Robert Patterson, or George Clooney or insert your own heartthrob here.

Women often lament the lack of good men and quite rightly so for the majority of the time, but the women who do get the good men also seem to be fond of taking the piss.  

Sometimes all it takes is one epiphany moment to realise that the person you thought was THE ONE was not. The all-defining deal breaker. For me, one day I woke up and suddenly realised that the person I became, and the person I was with, was not the person my parents raised me to be and be with. And that was it.

See http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

Saudi Women Driving

There has been a lot of hubub about this issue, which I feel is disproportionate to the subject of equality and treatment of women around the world, e.g. female genital mutilation, mass rape, rape leading to women being legitimately punished... I have a lot of sympathy for Saudi women but the fact that they cannot drive is the least of their worries regarding gender equality so the publicity that this particular issues garners is actually patronising toward them.

Some clerics advising the legislative assembly in Saudi recently concluded that lifting the ban on women driving would lead to no more virgins, prostitution, homosexuality, pornography and divorce.

This adds fuel to the fire that this ruling has on the outside world's already Islamaphobic impression of the Middle East, it was a popular citation of 'pastor' Terry Jones, has been a source of protest of those idiot topless protesters (see previous blog) and is one of the biggest topics of the region in the West. It has become such a point of symbolism that I fear exactly because of it, the conservative authorities of Saudi will be even more resistant to lifting the ban.

Yet I somehow do not think that women driving would be a slippery slope, I think that they just may be a little more preoccupied with things like you know, being able to drive their own children to school, running errands, going to work and visiting their family and friends.

It is noble that one should want to physically protect the women in their family and society but not trusting them to resort to prostitution shows that it is not protection that they are concerned about, they actually literally believe that without legal bans women would want to whore it up. How homosexuality and pornography relates to women driving I do not know, can someone please explain this to me?? And God forbid women would want to divorce terrible husbands! Yet men there can divorce women without their presence or knowledge. Other ridiculous double standards include but are not limited to;

Women's testimony in court not being equal to that of a man; they almost always receive harsher legal punishments than men; gender dictating what ministries and restaurants they can enter; they can only do certain subjects at university; and at age 12 girls are forced to wear burkhas in public schools, the list literally goes on.

The argument for the other side of the argument is rarely cited so this is what I have gathered from the little sources I could find; Saudi is an extremely conservative country so the ruling befits this particular society just as liberalism and legalised prostitution befits other countries. Furthermore, they would not want their women to be treated as they are in the West i.e. sexually exploited and made to believe their entire self worth is from their looks. Finally, not all women want to be able to drive hence the relatively low numbers that attempt to defy the ban.

There is credence to both points of view but moreover, letting women drive as a token gesture, just as allowing them to vote was, will have no effect on the worse aspects of inequality.

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ and http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/