O Contraire

Aside from listening to a male Saudi on the subject, there is nothing quite so exasperating as reading a Western man’s chipper views on what he sees, from time to time, as liberating measures for the lucky ladies in veils. It’s touching, the changes that male outsiders consider revolutionary among women who cannot drive. This time it is, strangely, Thomas W. Lippman of the Middle East Institute in the New York Times, and what Lippman is braying about is that—we’ve all been waiting for this remarkable sign of progress—some Saudi women are now permitted to work in Saudi lingerie shops and sell bras and panties and such to other Saudi women.

This is the kind of advance that, I am certain, warms the heart (or something) of many a man outside the desert kingdom, because, aside from being allowed to see everything of the female form, there’s nothing quite so enticing to those suffering from the heartbreak of satyriasis as glimpsing absolutely nothing at all. It leaves so much to the imagination.

Undoubtedly the most telling phrase from last week’s reportage on Egypt’s infamous virginity tests is this, courtesy of the New York Times: “Until recently, the Egyptian news media, cowed by the ruling generals’ investigations of journalists and bloggers who were deemed to ‘insult’ the institution of the military, scarcely covered the charges.”

Those charges, as some of the world now knows, were actually nine months old. Last March, when much of Cairo appeared on Tahrir Square, demanding the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who was then the country’s perpetual ruler, 200 demonstrators were arrested, of whom 20 were women. They were beaten by soldiers (as were their male counterparts), and then transported to a military base where they were convicted of what Egypt calls “thuggery.”

How inspiring was it that thousands of Egyptian women marched in Cairo last week? That things got so bad in Tahrir Square that Hillary Clinton felt compelled to cut the shackles of State Department protocol and weigh in on events she described as “shocking”?

I’d say moderately inspiring. And also, at the same time, if you plunge into the deeper context of the trigger that actually provoked the explosion among the female protesters, pretty damn depressing.

Here’s why. What the women in Cairo were marching against last week was the brutal treatment of a young victim who has since been dubbed, very significantly, “the blue bra girl”—this, because government soldiers, after storming Tahrir Square, tore off the anonymous woman’s head scarf and a lot of her clothing and beat her supine, half-stripped body. Was it the violence itself against a helpless victim that set off the women’s mass outrage? Apparently not.

Some years ago, when I found myself on assignment in Cuba (an assignment of which the Cuban government, until the articles on it were published, remained oblivious), I found myself the target of an incendiary rage—courtesy my group’s tour guide. He, too, had supposed I was a tourist. And he was really distressed, to put it mildly, that the previous evening I had, to quote him, “escaped” from the tour and his vigilance, choosing instead to drop in on assorted night clubs. It was a defection, he pointed out, that he only learned of a few fatal hours later, from certain club-minders who caught me talking to Cubans who had not been approved for interviews.

“Do you realize what could have happened to you? Do you know how dangerous it is in these clubs?” he demanded. And then, unnecessarily: “At night?”

I repeated his earlier words back to him, uttered on the first day of our tour: “Night or day, Havana is one of the safest places on earth for tourists.”

A general rule of thumb: The more feared the enemy nation, the bigger the lies. Lies told courtesy of the fearsome enemy and lies about the enemy. Read the old US Pentagon reports about alleged Vietcong casualty figures, if you don’t believe me.

Now that (a) Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapon technology and (b) an American spycraft has unaccountably landed in almost pristine condition in that country, the mcwhoppers on both sides are proliferating a lot faster than the stockpile at Isfahan.

Here are just a few:

Italy is one of those countries where a lot of wild contradictions regarding gender, misfortune, and economic circumstance can occur simultaneously. Take the word “mignotta,” which is Roman dialect for “whore,” “bitch,” or “slut”—when referring to a woman. Or a gay man. Or a transsexual man. Or, for that matter, simply an untidy woman. But which originally, back in the Middle Ages, was an acronym referring to an abandoned child whose mother was unknown to the local authorities.

Nothing since that time has changed much in Italy, a country where it is still (a) not a good idea to be a woman, if you can possibly avoid it, and (b) a great place to be a woman, but only under special circumstances. Such as if you’re extremely beautiful, very young, and never met former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.