Proving the Point?

This New York Times piece shows the lengths to which Saudi men will go to come into contact with that most rare creature - women.

The men fear the religious police, and with good reason. What they are doing could get them arrested or worse.

And NY Times reporter Kathrine Zoepf went undercover to report on the escapades, complete with putting on a disguise over her abaya.

I hadn’t met the boys before, but it was easy to pick them out: a half-dozen Saudi 18- and 19-year-olds shifting uncomfortably on two brocade sofas in the lobby of one of Riyadh’s grandest hotels, Al Faisaliah. The boys looked ill at ease among the marble pillars and elaborate flower arrangements, yet they’d insisted on meeting here. The Saudi religious police were unlikely to raid a luxury hotel, the boys felt, and since the evening activity we’d planned was illegal, it seemed best to take precautions.

Saudi society is strictly segregated along gender lines, and after several weeks spent interviewing Saudi teenage girls, I’d become very curious about life on the other side of the gender divide. I’d seen groups of young Saudi men out “numbering” - chasing cars containing young girls and trying to give the girls their phone numbers via Bluetooth, or by holding written phone numbers up to their car windows. When a Saudi girl I knew told me that her friend’s older brother would be willing to take me out numbering with his friends, I leaped at the chance.

The boys had brought clothes for me to wear over my abaya, and in a secluded corner of the hotel parking lot, we experimented with my disguise. Thamer, a 19-year-old political science student, handed me a knitted cap, and I stuffed my ponytail up underneath it. I zipped a hooded sweatshirt belonging to Mohamed, another of the boys, up over my billowing black cloak, and peered at my reflection in the tinted glass of Thamer’s S.U.V.

They go on to troll areas of Riyahd for the chance to meet girls.

Mostly, they end up driving around and palling around with friends.

In some respects, this isn't all that different than what kids did growing up in Brooklyn - driving around Bay Ridge and other parts of Brooklyn looking for an opportunity to chat up with girls their age. But kids in Brooklyn also knew that they could talk to girls at school without worrying about being arrested for that all too ordinary occurrence. So, the pressure to chase after cars with girls in them wasn't one that would result in police charges unless they were caught speeding or drag racing on major thoroughfares or other craziness.

In Saudi Arabia, those are mere slaps on the wrist compared to what could happen if the religious police caught these boys in action, to say nothing of a reporter engaging in such activities. She was putting her life in harm's way to get this story.

I don't quite think that readers in the US quite understand those risks involved since they don't live in a society where misogyny and forced separation of the sexes is not only mandatory but rigorously enforced.

The reporter could have found her in the clutches of the religious police and faced serious charges as a result of being found in the presence of men who were unrelated to her.