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weak, easily led astray, emotional, illogical. Deaver, who presumably
would be distressed if she were denied tenure at her university on
the grounds that women are too emotional and illogical to be good
scholars, would like us to view these personality ascriptions, trans–
posed to Saudi Arabia, as "complementary" and not as discriminatory
to women. They don't necessarily imply, she asserts, that men are
superior, no; weak and strong, logical and illogical are simply differ–
ent kinds of traits. Next comes the question of social power. Women
in Saudi Arabia, as even the most benevolent eye cannot fail to ob–
serve, are completely banned from the public sphere. Their sexual–
ity is a matter of obsessive concern, and Deaver gives examples of
"honor killings," some of them perpetrated against the innocent vic–
tims of circumstantial evidence. Honor, Deaver observes in this con–
text, is a male characteristic; shame is a female one. Men control
women by restricting their freedom of movement. Society is male.
Having said this much, Deaver is hard put to defend her second hy–
pothesis. This is how she manages : at social gatherings, she acknowl–
edges, women are always excluded. However, they prepare the food
for the men. Therefore, by preparing the food well or badly, they
can affect the reputation as a host that their man (husband, brother)
has. Therefore, they exercise a degree of power over male society.
(My own hypothesis is that Deaver, if someone told her that Ameri–
can women should stay at home and exercise power over their hus–
bands' careers by ironing their shirts well or badly, would be less
than pleased.)
Deaver is so intent on avoiding critical thoughts that she even
ignores clear statements by the Saudis themselves. She reports, for
example, that "Saudi men boast about the power they have over
women." But Deaver overrides this. "Male and female," she con–
cludes, "are different types of people" and cannot be compared. Imag–
ine this statement out of the pen of a Western liberal and referring to
racial apartheid in South Africa, "Just different types of people ."
The abstention from criticism has as its second aspect a kind of
counterinsurgency commandment. Anthropologists are not to make
women dissatisfied with their culture; enough of the Third WorId
has been paved over by secondhand Western consumer trash. There
is, of course, a lot to be said for this argument. As it is being applied
in this case, however, there are two problems with it. First, it is sus–
piciously selective. Health clinics, vaccination programs, literacy
campaigns, agricultural training programs, none of these are being
rejected per se. The tacit assumption is that it is all right for men to
