It would appear that the Gulf States Cooperative Council are considering a Kuwaiti proposal to carry out sex tests on immigrants wishing to work there with the intention of preventing entry by transgender people.
I do wonder if I came to the wrong planet because I was seeking one with intelligent life forms!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/11/gulf-countries-...
I wonder if you can spot my comment? (no prizes).
Comments
I Have Some Experience
Of the Gulf Countries and I cannot conceive why anyone who is TG or in any way gay would want to go and live/work there. These are the countries where normal women are discriminated against as a matter of course. The burqa is the rule, not the exception, even in the so-called enlightened Emirates,
Joanne
Completely daft
Not to mention some sources are also claiming they've got a medical test to detect gay people and prohibit them from entering either - first broken in Gulf News, then picked up by the Daily Mail, shared on social networks by George Takei then blogged here.
It'll be interesting to see what becomes of this, and whether the Gulf States do impose a ban on either gays, TGs or anyone they consider as LGBT*...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Not sure ...
..but CustosCustodum made a sensible point so could be you :) There's also a comment by nuisverige about intersex people who, I believe from previous contributions BTL, is also intersexed.
My sister worked for a while in the Gulf states in the British Embassy when her partner was working for a UK company installing air conditioning equipment on a big commercial project. She had to change her name to his so they could claim to be married to avoid breaking the law on extra-maritial sex. She also noted the hypocrisy prevalent in restrictive societies. Under the all enveloping burquas of the wealthy women were designer outfits which were revealed once they got on the planes to the UK to go shopping and the alcohol consumption began.
btw there's a lovely picture of a a hibernating dormouse in the main paper this morning. Not sure if it's in the on-line edition.
Robi
I've worked in several Middle
I've worked in several Middle Eastern countries over the years. I always got some amusement when flying out of Riyahd to the UK when as soon as the flight cleared Saudi Airspace a procession of Black Clad women would head to the toilets to get 'changed' into western clothes. If you were flying BA then you had the pleasure of watching this fashion show with a glass of wine in ones hand.
I'm off to Amman at the end of the month. There are a huge number of high fashion outlets in the various malls around the city. I know the new airport in Amman very well (I wrote a lot of the software that runs the airport) and there simply isn't anywhere they could put these Gay Detectors. Several terminals at Dubai are the same. With the new Haj terminal at Jeddah, there might be a possibility of changing the design to incorporate such devices as is it still being built. I'm waiting for the JED Airport people to ask if we can incorporate an LGBT detection system into the airport.
AFAIK will be impossible to 'detect' all Gays entering the various Gulf States. The numbers of people flying through places like Dubai make it statisticlally impossible to detect LGBT people. I also know that Gulf Air and Emirates employ openly gay people.
The problem with the ME is that you really have no idea if the person you are talking to or working with is a radical/fundamentalist. If they are, then in many places and you are 'found out' then your life could be at risk and the authourities will simply ignore any pleas to help from you. you are the worst Infidel possible.
What happens if these 'Detectors' discover that a high ranking Gov Minister is Gay?
That's exactly ...
... what my sister said. It must 30 years since she was there so things may have changed but I doubt it.
btw I didn't intend to imply the women 'were' expensive clothes, merely that they 'wore' them :) Don't know how that typo slipped in, I'm not from the NE of England
Robi
...
Yesterday the Gays, today the Transsexuals, who will it be tomorrow I wonder?
This would be hilarious if only it wasn't true.
Whoever gave these barbarians the contract for the 2022 World Cup should offer their resignation.
(And which comment is yours? I don't see "Angharad" or a Dormouse anywhere.)
Cat People!
So Don't not go there!
And I think the Fae better stay away too!
*tries to pretend to be a bird nor Fairy as she quickly flies across the region* :p
*strafes them with pixie dust hoping they will lighten up*
~Hypatia >i< ..:::
PS. Seriously tho :( bad real bad.
...
Whether they purrsecute catfolk or not, I won't be going there until they start having gay pride marches.
Need a scare
There needs to be a very good, well placed rumor that Israel with the help of the US has developed a gay virus that causes men to turn gay. The virus mainly targets middle eastern men, maybe religious leader in particular, so they turn the quickest.
The rumored reason behind the virus would be something to distract them from targeting Israel and the west.
Their only hope for a good life is to renounce their religion, embrace western ideals and get to a good salon along with a good clothing store for a complete make over.
They would tear themselves apart from the inside looking to root out infected men. It would probably end up like the famous witch trails of centuries past. Unfortunate, but needed to head off stupid things like testing for gayness or sex.
If done right, it would take years to root out the truth.
But, in keeping with some of the stories here and elsewhere, the virus might be a gender morphing virus that causes men and women to change sex. While that would be a more interesting effect to watch, lack of evidence would soon squish that rumor.
=D
Absolute genius. Now I want to have your babies...
They haven't changed at all...
It's a shame we can't ban the stupidity and hypocrisy of the ones making rules like this. I've been to the middle east and found the people in that area of the world (most of them anyway) are intolerant hypocrites. Over 30 years ago I thought about taking a job like that when the economy in the US tanked, but I decided not to because of their intolerance and hypocrisies. I see they haven't changed in any way for the better.
You Did, Angharad !
As a Zoggan, an Intellignt Being from the planet Zogg, I can assure you that there is no genuinely intelligent life on the planet Earth, apart from a very small number of Observers from Elsewhere. We have detected signs of the early stirrings of true sapience, in several parts of the planet, but the dominant life form, a mostly naked bipedal Primate Mammal, only shows occasional signs of true sapience. The languages it has developed, all by its self, looked promising, but they evolved during the years when these creatures inhabited naturally formed caves, and were for signalling belonging to each particular band or troop of their species, so that the guard individuals could distinguish between those that should be welcomed home, preferably with a good catch or gathering of roots and berries, and those that were likely to raid their band or troop and carry off their females and food reserves !
Storytelling, they developed from singing soothing sounds in order to calm the children at night when the big cats were on the prowl outside. It was Storytelling that set them off to develop their imaginations and invent things. With a sound or word for "man" and another for "green", they discovered that if they put the two together, they could invent a being called a "Green Man", which never exsted really, but did in their imaginations. Soon they were inventing all kinds of things and beings, including even Intersex ones.
The species was for quite a long time looking very promising and about to break through into evolving true sapience, but alas it has been sidelined into being far too engaged in spreading strange myths about imaginary magical extra-terrestrials, designated "gods", and then quarrelling among the various tribes over whose god or gods are the real ones, whom they imagine created everything, and recently all they have done is discover new ways to kill even larger numbers of the other tribes in one go, and we have an estimated a 90 % probability of self destruction along with their entire planet within the lifetimes of some of those alive today.
When most of them talk about "thinking", what they mostly do is to repeat slogans they have heard. Only rare individuals have orginal ideas. You are one of these exceptional beings, who in fact are more common among the individuals with more than usual numbers of characterists they normally assign to both rather than to just one gender. The majority, that still seem to be infected with mind parasite viruses they call religions, are so heavily parasitised that they have no cells free for any logical thought.
We Zoggi find the whole species upsetting, and it is hard for us sent to observe them to adhere to our strict rule not to interfere in any way with their development or decline.
I just hope to get safely off the planet before the End comes ! I also hope to get approval to bring some of the best individuals with me.
:)
Briar
Whatif
Have you considered the possibility that talk such as this is rhetoric by the more reasonable politicians to convince their more fundamentalist supporters that they are addressing their concerns so that they do not try to oust them and replace them with people who would give someone 50 lashes for not being at the mosque on a friday and behead someone for calling out to his friend Mohammed.
Hugs
Cat
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You can't choose your relatives but you can choose your family.