Gender apartheid? Are men and women required to live in different suburbs to each other? Are they forbidden from marrying each other. At least read up on apartheid before throwing the term around in a context that makes no sense.
I hate these post-modern redefinitions of terms. By this definition, US is gender apartheid (men are subject to involuntary draft), as well as the UK and many other EU countries (men have to work longer to get pension).
That's as ridiculous as when some people equate rape with drunk sex or sexual harassment with catcalling. It really reduces the the victims of actual crimes (rape, harassment, and apartheid).
Clearly, there are ways in which all states do this and for different reasons. Men having to work longer to get a pension is a historical relic, and one which most countries are moving away from.
The laws covering conscription in the US also date back to the early 1980s. Since there has been no involuntary draft since the 1970s, it has hardly had an effect on life for most Americans.
Compare this to Saudi Arabia where women continue to be severely punished for breaking laws that apply only to women, have much curtailed rights compared to men, and clearly have very 'separate' lives to men in Saudi Arabia. Whether you call it segregation, apartheid, or whatever you want - there is much greater gender inequality in Saudi Arabia than there is in most of the EU and USA.
Women in Saudia Arabia are subject to severe repression, in the same way that blacks suffered from severe repression in South Africa during the Apartheid era, and in a way that few people could genuinely complain in the USA or EU.
As you can imagine, some politicians do everything they can to maintain the status quo, while others try to get the legislation banned by the Supreme Court.
Would it be harder legally to "want to conscript all people (men and women)"? What I mean is even though women are not registered for selective service, if you were to "enable" conscription couldn't you just also require that they register? If this is the case isn't it fair to say instead of "men are subject to involuntary draft" it is more accurate to say "men are one record-keeping action closer to an involuntary draft"?
If there's a bigger difference I'd like to understand that difference.
I don't think you have any clue how bad women have it in Saudi Arabia, or you wouldn't be denigrating them as "not actual victims".
Here's a hint: There are no prohibitions against statutory rape or marital rape. In other rape situations, the woman is more likely to face punishment for speaking about it than her rapist is. Women also cannot drive, vote, or travel freely in public alone, and must always be wearing clothing that covers them from head to toe lest they be harassed by religious police and scores of men.
If your argument is that we shouldn't be calling the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia "gender apartheid" because it isn't really all that bad, then you're just flat out wrong.
I don't think that anyone argues about shades of wrong here. The argument is about the word "apartheid" because it actually denotes something much more exact than "being a dick to some group of people".
The only purpose of trying to redefine apartheid to refer their situation is because it's a scary word that has more universally negative connotations.
"Women in Saudi Arabia are currently the victims of an ongoing genocide"
A genocide of their freedom and liberty as individuals.
We can do better than this kind of rhetoric -- it's already horrifying on its own, there's no point in trying to associate it with other terrible, unrelated acts in history.
Seems valid to me.
Sadly no. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a33751/occidental-justi... is a recent example, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-r-marsh/why-college-drun... is a "victim's rights advocate" literally arguing that all drunk sex is rape.
Consenting to one type of sexual interaction does not mean you consent to everything else. Even assuming that the victim did voluntarily and knowingly remove her clothes, this in no way means she consented to a kiss, let alone full-blown sexual intercourse. Consent is an ongoing process. Even if she had initially consented to engage in sexual activity, any subsequent request to stop needed to be respected. Otherwise, that’s rape.
It nicely avoids the semantic fuzziness invoked by "drunk", which might mean different things to different people.
The girl involved was, by independant reports, about the same level. Both had vomited repeatedly(!) as a result of their level of intoxication.
This is far away from the bizarrely popular notion that any sexual activity after a couple of beers is considered rape.
If either of these people had ended up having sex with someone who was sober, then that person would clearly have been taking advantage of them in their compromised state. The only reason it's any kind of gray area is because both people appear to have been utterly out of it, and it seems the only reason that this particular case got picked up was because the college had a history of ignoring and downplaying sexual assults and rapes to such a degree they were getting sued over it.
More generally, though, don't you realize how badly it comes off when we're talking about a truly terrible situation for millions of people, and the only contribution you can offer is some semantic nitpicking? Do you really think that is being helpful or productive? Pick your battles, man.
We're sitting here talking on a discussion board. The readership of this site in general is not in a position to do anything about the fucked up situation in Saudi Arabia. We are in a position to do something about people (arguably) misusing language in our own back yard.
That's one thing we don't have to worry about any time soon.
How are being beheaded or executed with lethal injection different? They are one of the few states that retain the right to kill their own people left today, among the US, Japan, Iran, Belarus, China, etc. Further, Saudi Arabia is a kingdom, not a nation. Its political system was installed by the occidentals after WWI.
For women, yes, they have less rights de jure, but de facto, we don't know that very well. After all, different people have different cultures, and if we do not respect that, where is the demos in democracy then?
Additionally restaurants, banks, and other places are segregated by sex.
What a bunch of bullshit. You respect a culture that enslaves, rapes, and murders its women out of pleasure? You think that's somehow a "culture" where women might be treated equally? Or are you just pandering to the idea of absolute cultural relativism as if there are no morals to be had in the world (some would call this trolling)?
Saudi Arabia is a disgusting "culture" and society. Defending their barbaric, primitive, idiotic practices is almost as equally disgusting.
The culture of theirs is sure unbearable to you, and to me (I'd be beheaded for atheism before I could ever talk about women there), but its their problem. And when you utter the words barbaric, primitive, idiotic, be sure that you can logically answer the question: to whom?
And stop confusing the state with the people, and making blanket statements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-is...
People pointing fingers at the wrong folks for something like 9/11 for political purposes is more of a problem than offending a culture that doesn't respect our culture or basic human rights.
(Suing Saudi Arabia over 9/11 does seem like opening a can of worms, and there sure are a lot of anti-Muslim bigots in this country. But whataboutism should have a limit. You can tolerate a religion and still say some things people do in its name are effed up and not consistent with democracy and human values)
See also Atkins v. Virginia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_v._Virginia