Saudi Cleric Pummeled On Twitter For Claiming Driving Damages Women's Ovaries

An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports, "Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan's widely derided remarks have gone viral ... 'If a woman drives a car,' Al-Loheidan told Saudi news website sabq.org. 'it could have a negative physiological impact. It would automatically affect a woman's ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.' ... 'We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems.' The controversial comments were widely interpreted throughout Saudi Arabia as an attempt to discourage women in the country from joining a popular online movement urging them to stage a demonstration by driving cars on October 26. 'This is his answer to the campaign,' Saudi women's rights activist Aziza Yousef told CNN. 'He's making a fool of himself. He shouldn't touch this field at all.' Al-Loheidan's words have been ridiculed mercilessly via social media. An Arabic Twitter hashtag called '#WomensDrivingAffectsOvariesAndPelvises' was quickly created to make fun of Al-Loheidan — underscoring just how widely the call for Saudi women to defy the driving ban has resonated thus far. And while numerous conservative voices have supported Al-Loheidan, many Saudis believe this was an extremely clumsy way of trying to counter the popularity of the October 26 campaign.'"

Comments

Where to start with this one...?

[Ragnarok89]

And driving is bad as opposed to sitting when: reading? eating? watching TV? listening to the radio? any of the other myriad of activities done while seated? What an idiot.

Re:Where to start with this one...?

[MetalliQaZ]

Don't forget the obvious: RIDING in the car, but not driving it, is apparently fine for the ovaries.
Try and wrap your head around that!

Re:Where to start with this one...?

[Sponge Bath]

He must be a liberal democrat!

His unscientific view of women's anatomy more closely resembles that of Republican Todd Akin, who claimed women have magic body parts that prevent conception when "legitimately" raped.

Re:Where to start with this one...?

[ninlilizi]

And its not dangerous at all for testicles.
Even though they're sat on, bounced around on. etc.

Re:Where to start with this one...?

[jandrese]

It's like rape. A woman's body knows and just shuts down when she's driving a car.

As crazy as this sounds, it's not too far off from what some ultraconservatives apparently believe.

Re:Where to start with this one...?

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only republican to agree with that philosophy.

Well, considering the backlash that former Rep Akin received from the Republican Party after making his ridiculous commentary, I'd say that Akin's in a small minority. His shockingly ignorant statements cost him his seat, so I'd say he paid a fair price.

Around the time that he made his commentary, I tried to understand what would make him want to believe such a thing that made no sense. What I think it boils down to is a basic conundrum for pro-lifers: You can't ban abortion in any effective fashion if you make an exception to the ban for rape and incest, because if you do, women who are seeking abortions will simply lie about the circumstances of their pregnancies in order to obtain legal abortions. Allow those exceptions, and you haven't outlawed anything. In order to address this loophole, it is necessary to outlaw all abortion for any reason (except, perhaps, if the mother will die if the pregnancy continues), but this position of eliminating the rape/incest exception is unpalatable to the American public.

Once you understand the issue from their perspective, it's easier to see how they could believe such a ridiculous notion, that a woman's body will somehow prevent a pregnancy from occurring if she is raped violently (for brevity, let's ignore the 'legitimate/forcible rape' issue). They need some way to close that loophole, and this is one such way to do it: a belief that if a pregnancy occurred, then she must not have been raped. If that bit of medical fiction were true, then we could know that the pregnancy was not the result of rape, so no exception would be granted.

So that's why such a theory is so seductive to some, in my estimation.

you know...

[buddyglass]

As crazy and wrong as this guy is, his claim isn't completely out of left field. One of my physics teachers in high school (who had worked as an engineer at Bell Helicopter) related the story that, apparently, some of the helicopters initially used in the Viet Nam conflict happened to vibrate at the resonant frequency of the human kidney, causing pilots to experience organ damage. They had to add material to the seats to cancel out the vibrations. Here's a page from the Canadian equivalent of the U.S.'s OSHA:

http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/vibration/vibration_intro.html

Re:Twitter is nerdy .... right?

[Nyder]

This is news for nerds because of Twitter! Twitter is all technical and stuff, with the computers and the social media buzz.

Seriously, WTF? What's next? Baseball scores?

Dude, it's football season.

Correlation != Causation

[RivenAleem]

You might be able to say that women who drive a car get damaged ovaries, but you missing the intermediate step where the woman is dragged from the car and beaten.

Re:You can't judge

[jmhobrien]

Perhaps you could enumerate these statements so that they can be chiseled onto stone tablets?