the_frat_god

One of my good friends is a 23 y/o girl from Saudi Arabia. She's extremely angry about how the Western media covered the story without understanding the cultural background and implications of removing it.

She has studied in America and is quite progressive. Her argument is that the app makes it easier for women to get approval, without needing to directly ask a relative face-to-face where they might say no. This flexibility made her life (and approval from her father to travel) much easier and allowed her to travel widely. Now that you're trying to lead a push to remove it, she fears the system will regress.

You seem to not understand that women don't have permission to travel without approval anyway and they ARE trapped. This app makes it easier for them to get approval.

I'm not saying that the system is right, it is deeply flawed, but do you actually think that removing this app is a net positive for Saudi women?

How would you respond to this?

Sure - and removing this app and the slow improvements in Saudi Arabia that it's made will be counter-productive. You are trying to apply Western values to a society that is completely different. It doesn't just magically work overnight.

Nobody's saying it's good. It's from bad to less bad. Morality is relative and easy for Westerners with no skin in the game to comment on.

Good intentions but I think you're misguided. Saudi Arabia is a completely different culture to western values. The reality is that this does improve the lives of women on the ground in Saudi currently. It isn't a zero-sum game and allowing the app to remain functional isn't mutually-exclusive to dialogue about changing the system.

Like they’re not monitored 24/7 already? How is this an improvement?