Wednesday, June 21, 2006

A post about women

Women are at once the boldest and most unmanageable revolutionaries.
Eamon De Valera.

Amy Gahran over at Poynter Online posted news of an interesting story titled 'Saudi Women Bloggers Push Limits'.

Her post directed me to a Christian Science Monitor article about various Saudi women bloggers, like Saudi Eve, and the problems they're having with a group of conservative Saudi males who are policing the Net.

The thing that most amused me was that a woman can stand many things ... for years if she must ... but once you've turned her into a revolutionary who knows what remarkable things she will accomplish.

One female blogger said that she was stopped from using the Internet at home for several months after her conservative brothers grew suspicious about why she was spending so much time online.

"I've been blogging since April 2005. It's a way to vent out my frustrations and to write," said Jo, who asked only that her first name be used. "My family knows that I have a site, but they don't have a concept of what blogging is."


These women were bloggers, doing their thing, living their lives within the confines of normal for them and now they have the world's attention ... all because of some men who wanted to curtail one more female freedom.

1 comment:

Erin said...

Oh, I loved seeing that De Valera quote here; I'd never seen it. I discovered a new woman for my "wish I could have a coffee with" list while in Ireland - Countess Marcowicz, an upperclass protestant Irishwoman who led a brigade of (mostly) women in the 1916 Uprising...maybe I should post, its alot for here...
but wanted to cheer on this post, and add this, from Mary Robinson:

In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained, no man can be truly free. He may have power, but he will not have freedom.
Mary Robinson

who also said, when first elected President of a country that's now got a tradition of electing female presidents (named Mary :-)):

“I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system."

Systems will rock elsewhere, I've got to believe it...