{"id":373,"date":"2008-12-29T22:53:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T02:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=373"},"modified":"2008-12-30T14:05:32","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T18:05:32","slug":"feeling-the-veil-a-womans-reporting-in-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/12\/29\/feeling-the-veil-a-womans-reporting-in-saudi-arabia\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling the Veil: A Woman&#8217;s Reporting in Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[And sometimes we find pieces for which we simply never hit the &#8220;Publish&#8221; button.\u00c2\u00a0 This is about a year and a half old, but still perfectly relevant.]<\/p>\n<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/world\/la-fg-women6jun06,0,5491632,full.story?coll=la-home-center\">this<\/a> excellent piece by Megan Stack, reporter for the LA Times, on her experiences in Saudi Arabia:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I was ready to cope, or so I thought. I arrived with a protective smirk in tow, planning to thicken the walls around myself. I&#8217;d report a few stories, and go home. I had no inkling that Saudi Arabia, the experience of being a woman there, would stick to me, follow me home on the plane and shadow me through my days, tainting the way I perceived men and women everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>[ . . . ]<\/p>\n<p>I spent my days in Saudi Arabia struggling unhappily between a lifetime of being taught to respect foreign cultures and the realization that this culture judged me a lesser being. I tried to draw parallels: If I went to South Africa during apartheid, would I feel compelled to be polite?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"imagefloatright\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/42\/96956597_620d67f0ec_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" \/> That last question is something I&#8217;ve considered myself, especially during my travels this past year.\u00c2\u00a0 The photo on the right was of a Dubai-based newspaper that I read on a flight from Mumbai to Dubai.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a little jarring, to see that as front page news (and not free of irony, with its position right under headline about &#8220;Fashion Week&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/12\/30\/feeling-the-veil-a-reader-response\/\">Here&#8217;s a response<\/a> that I urge all to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[And sometimes we find pieces for which we simply never hit the &#8220;Publish&#8221; button.\u00c2\u00a0 This is about a year and a half old, but still perfectly relevant.] Check out this excellent piece by Megan Stack, reporter for the LA Times, on her experiences in Saudi Arabia: I was ready to cope, or so I thought. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","category-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2125,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/2125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}