Saudis. Don't mention the war
One of the best shows ever is Fawlty Towers’ The Germans. In that episode Basil Fawlty goes at great lenght to avoid the topic of the second world war while he has german guests in his hotel:
Basil Fawlty says to Polly in conspiritorial toens “Don’t mention the war. I did it once but I think I got away with it” (which he delivers to his off-screen wife Connie Booth who plays the chambermaid who in effect runs the hotel)
He returns to the dining room and the older German says “Please stop mentioning the war, you’re upsetting the girl” (who is in tears)
Fawlty says “You started it” and then the rebuff “No we didn’t” from the German triggers the line
wait for it
“Yes you did – you invaded Poland” (cheers and applause!!!!)
I had to think about that scene while reading Gender Relations, Sex and Perversion: The Dark Underside of Saudi Arabia at SAFspace with an interesting account of her stay in Saudi Arabia:
One of the puzzles that arise out of the Muslim’s obsession with modesty is that in a rather subverse manner it breeds an over-sexualized, perverse society. Women wear the veil and stick close to home, and yet Saudi society places the imperative on women to observe modesty, to keep themselves in check so that men don’t have to do so. Well, how far will we go? There are parts of Medina where young men with gelled hair and tight shirts stand about idly and whistle at any black veil that walks by. Sadly, the only body parts visible are the eyes. So what must we do? Hide ourselves away from sight lest the men, God forbid, find themselves unable to control their insatiable urges?
This strange contradiction, a society that has become oversexualised by banning all kinds of possible references to sex (with the burden on the shoulders of women), brings disgust and fascination:
At some point during the trip, I actually started to hate the entire male population for the discomfort I was feeling. Stripped of my independence and objectified, scrutinized, perpetually under the male gaze, I only realized how very bitter I’d become when I caught my brother chatting away with a random Saudi fellow and irrationally thought, how could he betray me so? There is something very wrong with a society in which men and women are so strictly segregated. It is near-impossible in such circumstances for individuals of either sex to refrain from thinking of the other as anything beyond sexualized beings and potentially corrupting temptations – men imagining women as enticing seductresses, women thinking of men as ravaging brutes. These perceptions breed a sort of contempt tinged with fascination that I experienced myself during my stay in Saudi Arabia. Kept away from the opposite sex, men both desire and hate women for their ability to lure them towards sin, and women both need men for protection and despise them for their fixation on sex.
Not that she is pleading for ‘laissez faire’; Western society in that sense is only a limited example, which is not surprising given the sexualization of women in the public sphere:
There needs to be a balance struck between the way people interact in countries like Canada and the cultural norms one finds upon setting foot in Saudi Arabia. For all of the separate male-female bank branches and the prohibitions against driving for women and the men selling everything, including gauzy bits of lingerie, something seems a little off about the people there. Call it a cultural hang-up of mine if you will, but it strikes me that the Saudi obsession with modesty has ironically bred a hyper-sexualized society that will ultimately do them in.