[Dean's World] Dean: Escaping Oppression Through Webcams?

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Posted by Dean:
Escaping Oppression Through Webcams?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1178379817.shtml


   Hmmmmmmmm. [1]Here is a very interesting Saudi news segment--and it is
   entirely safe viewing by the way. Yes work-safe, yes family-safe, yes
   safe.

   Yes, it's on Memri, and Memri is not a particularly trustworthy group
   (their slant on things is often savage and wildly out-of-context, as
   countless people who've actually been to the Middle East can tell you)
   but this is a pretty neutral segment.

   The attempted MEMRI slant here seems to be that this is about wives
   escaping their oppressive husbands, a spin [2]Instapundit tacitly
   accepts. Which is odd because if you watch the entire thing all the
   way through it's a story about girls being sexually naughty in chat
   rooms, not about women fleeing brutal husbands. That's not even
   mentioned except in a segment MEMRI obviously edited in, and it's by
   an opinionated commenter not the news reporter. (And of course we hear
   nothing at all from any of the other commenters--typical MEMRI.)

   What I also find here, however, is something a little naive: does
   anyone really think that young women behaving this way only do so
   because they're oppressed?

   So why do girls in America act like that? That's the most amusing bit:
   some will claim they're doing it because America's brutal patriarchy
   makes them do it, which is what the whackjob fringe of feminism
   believes (see the demented writings and hateful philosophy of
   [3]Andrea Dworkin). Others will claim they're doing it to escape
   brutal patriarchy and traditional values (the [4]Playboy/libertarian
   philosophy).

   How's this for an explanation: boys love looking at girls, and girls
   like the attention so long as they feel safe doing so. This causes
   constant challenges for society and for parents, and ongoing debate as
   to how to handle it, and different people will find different ways of
   handling it.

   I'd say the Saudis are discovering that their strict religious
   government is not resulting in what they wanted it to result in, and
   that laying down the law in a brutal fashion isn't a solution. Which
   from the looks of that news segment, a lot of them are figuring out.

References

   1. http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1439
   2. http://instapundit.com/archives2/004864.php
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy