sooo….lemme understand you right. maureen dowd gets a free pass to be as condescending, belittling, and downright insulting as she pleases to a whole nation of people she clearly thinks are miles beneath her, because she “RISKED IMPRISONMENT” to do so?

….what??

also, if you’re going to decide whether something is “subversive” instead of flippantly racist, why doncha ask those who are actually on RECEIVING END of the racism instead of consulting with your oh-so-liberal whitey mcwhite friends.

“you’re just too sensitive/over-emotional/rageful/uneducated/unintelligent/missing the point” is not an acceptable response, either. in fact, it’s a ~*racist*~ one! wasn’t that a nice freebie?

A few things:

Risking imprisonment is not in itself a noble thing, as you suggest it is when you say Dowd “at least risked imprisonment.” She also didn’t face arrest without a male escort. I’m not sure where you found that lovely bit. She’s actually known to have a lot of discrepancies in her pieces about her treatment, particularly at the hands of the Saudis. She often complains that she’s not allowed to do things (visiting mosques among them) when in actuality, women and foreigners do them quite frequently without the interference of the state. The difference between Saudi’s professed rules and their enforcement is something that should at least be taken into account, when discussing Dowd’s experience.

I’d argue that Dowd in fact muddies the grave with the frivolous, as she makes incredibly inane comparisons in her piece when she attempts to contextualize the revolutionary spirit of her actions. You’re giving her way, way too much credit as a writer. I’m not sure how familiar you are with her pieces, but she plays with words in a way that, while (arguably) cute, is irresponsible. I think her Orientalist “inflection” is deliberate, yes; but subversive? Certainly not. That would imply that she can separate her own beliefs from a sort of political satirizing of Saudi tourist rhetoric. Her piece is proof that she clearly can’t.

I should have clarified my earlier comment: The Saudi state, like every state, believes that it has only to give its citizens the rights that it considers human rights, and only to those considered humans within the parameters of the state. We all understand that, and every state participates in it. What I said in that comment, though, is that Dowd doesn’t seem to get that—seems to think that in some pathetic protest, she ought to wave her little human rights banner by hopping over divisions in restaurants and then complaining when, predictably, she is rebuffed. There are far, far more significant ways to work toward women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, and there are Muslim feminists and movements both within and outside of the state who are working for those rights. Dowd doesn’t for a second deserve to be lauded for three months of research and ten days of spa treatment in Saudi, especially when she’s virtually guaranteed no trouble (on her previous trips, she’s been remarkably well-connected to American diplomats, all of whom have helped her and given her access to Saudi officials) and has a platform in a huge American magazine.

Finally, Saudi’s tourism does incorporate Orientalist rhetoric, but I’m somewhat shocked that you, Chase, fall for that. You, of all people, should know how deeply aware the Middle East is of what, exactly, sells to Western audiences. You should also know how reflective of Western ideas the Arab tourist industry has become. I’m sure the Saudi government knows exactly how to sell its country—by magnifying a cultural difference that Dowd only parrots.

It does not, so far anyway, seem that she was on a press junket. NPR’s coverage, and Vanity Fair’s, suggest that Dowd was employed by Vanity Fair on a typically lucrative, one-night-stand basis. Were I to wager a bet, it would be that Dowd took Saudi Arabia’s tourism ministry up on its rather vague press offer, or press release, or statement of purpose:

http://www.saudinf.com/main/e9.htm

Yours,
Chase

p.s. I enjoy your use of the question mark.

I do like the phrase “muddy the frivolous with issues of gravity,” though.

And it seems that Sara might have fell for it: By presenting cultural difference as ‘timeless’, static and inert — a very Orientalist trope — the Saudis have been able to depoliticize the sexual apartheid under their regime. Then when Maureen politicizes it again — calling out difference, calling out weirdness and oppression — you say she just doesn’t understand Saudi ‘history’ and ‘culture’.

When you dismiss human rights abuse as “thousands of years of culture and tradition”, you are in fact buying into the orientalist fantasy, not critiquing it.

I appreciate many of the sentiments that animate your letter, but I do not think that your criticisms of Maureen Dowd’s feature are entirely fair. In the first place, you characterize Dowd’s “defiance” of Saudi Arabia’s social norms, law, and theologically-justified sexism as “cultural imperialism.” This seems very ungenerous: Dowd, in defying those non-trivial forces of national governance, at least risked imprisonment. Secondly, you write that Dowd seems “to think the country and its customs should pander to [her] narrow sensibilities.” Her point, in defying Saudi norms and law, was that her behaviour could only be construed as defiant according to Saudi sensibilities in so far as she is a woman. You would no doubt agree that Dowd should be able to travel the world, and walk through the streets of Riyadh, without fearing arrest because she is without a male escort.

Furthermore, Dowd’s piece is, through and through, a Dowd piece: as a columnist, she is beloved and despised for her flair for language, her willingness to muddy the frivolous with the grave, and the extent to which her columns trade in pop culture. It is certainly within everyone’s rights to find her infuriating. But lumping her with Sex and the City 2 on the grounds that both are Orientalist is improper; her Orientalist inflection is deliberate: with it she tries, quite successfully I think, to subvert the self-consciously Orientalist, materialistic, and deeply male-supremacist tales that Saudi Arabia’s tourism ministry has spun and disseminated about Saudi Arabia.

Finally, I am deeply troubled by your notion of political rights and their relation, as you’ve described it, to the nation state. I understand and share your post-colonial wariness of intellectual systems, be they feminist or to do with human rights, that insist they are universally applicable. But you write that “the Saudi government is required to give its citizens only what it defines as rights, no matter how narrow those rights are.” This view reduces the concept of “rights” to tautology, and its consequent, meaninglessness: according to it, neither the holocaust, nor American slavery, nor the annexation of Tibet, nor the mass rape of Bangladeshi women, nor the burning of witches throughout Medieval Europe, nor the ongoing occupation of Gaza, violated peoples’ rights, because the governments that perpetrated these acts defined their victims as without rights.

I think women have rights. You do too. So does Maureen Dowd. For Dowd to complain that she was mistreated while in Saudi Arabia because she was and will remain a woman is not to saddle Saudi women with additional burdens, nor imperil the growth of a Saudi feminist movement, nor muffle feminist interpretations of Islam, but healthy. To do it in the unorthodox guise of a travel piece is clever. To do it at all – to report for eleven days, to research throughout the three months prior to taking her trip, to attempt to engage with Saudi Arabia as an equal and on both its and her terms – is, to me at least, an accomplishment deserving of congratulations, as well as an unhesitating invitation to return to the Middle East, not insults.

Yours,
Chase