New information: women shouldn’t drive because driving bends their ovaries and that makes their babies come out broken.
It’s a Saudi cleric who discovered this, via research he hasn’t mentioned yet.
“If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards,” Sheikh Lohaidan told the news website Sabq.org.
“That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees.”
Sheikh Lohaidan is reported to be opposed to reform more generally and granting women more rights in the kingdom.
Maybe if Saudi women did yoga as well as driving, they’d be all right.
Update: illustration by Gnu Atheism.
So if driving affects women’s ovaries and pelvis, then what horrible things is it doing to penises and testicles. And those parts are not even internal and protected. Of course, these kind of people are immune to logic
In other news: Really Smart Scientists say that train travel over 30mph will cause passengers to suffocate.
(Same stupid, just without the sexism).
Clearly women should not be passengers in cars either.
Or if it’s working the pedals that causes the problems, then no penis-less persons can play the piano, organ, harpsichord, or drum kits.
Let’s play it safe: no more chairs, ladies. You must stay either fully upright or completely horizontal. God’s spokesman hath spoken.
Aw, comeon! Everone knows you cannot play the organ without the … organ.
That’s about the silliest nonsense I have heard in a long time. And not only is it plain wrong, it also does not prove the Sheikh’s point. IF driving a car were dangerous to women and their unborn offspring (big if!), it would not be an argument against female drivers, but an argument for designing better cars.
“If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity…”
I gather that pure necessity makes some physiological difference, so as long as women need to drive their cars, they should be all right. Now, supposing a women needed to drive somewhere, she would continue in good physiological order until Sheikh L decided that she didn’t need after all, when she would be found to have suffered from all the ills of sitting down, until such time as some other cleric overruled him, at which point she would be found not to have suffered any damage whatever. I think I’m getting it…I suppose it must be God.
Had already linked yesterday to the MSN version of this story, but yours is better: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=659771247374673&l=4dfd65cdd0
The medical studies were published in the same journal where Todd Akin learned how pregnancy works.
Actually, I find this very interesting, because apparently not even the cleric himself believes that the argument “don’t drive, because Allah doesn’t like it” is convincing enough 🙂