Thread by @monaeltahawy

I wrote this soon after #LoujainAlHathloul (sentenced to ~6yrs) and other women’s rights activists were arrested in 2018. The absolute monarchy in #Saudi Arabia is punishing them because the regime does not want people to think feminist activism works google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…

Feminism terrifies authoritarians. The absolute monarchy in #Saudi Arabia is punishing #LoujainAlHathloul because her activism works. She and other women’s rights activists are the reason the driving ban was lifted. The regime wants us to believe that freedom is given not taken.

The #Saudi regime wants to make it clear that it was not the courageous advocacy of those feminists that led to lifting the ban on women’s driving, but rather the grace of a crown prince engaged in ferocious revisionism. #LoujainAlHathloul #FreeLoujain

To allow feminists to celebrate what is, in all regards, a victory of their years of activism would nurture the idea that activism works — a truism that authoritarians hate.

The arrests in May 2018 of leaders of an older generation of feminists, as well as younger ones such as #LoujainAlHathloul add up to an attempt to erase cross-generational feminist activism.

For years, the royal family & ultraconservative clerics who gave it legitimacy denigrated feminism & women who challenged what I call gender apartheid as “Western” and “foreign.” But those detained activists, defamed as “traitors” in pro-government media, are nothing of the sort.

They are upstanding #Saudi citizens. Among them have also been some men. In fact, among those
detained in May 2018 were at least three men — lawyers and activists for women’s rights.