"They just messed with the wrong woman."

I got a lot of flack for being critical of the gender segregation and inequity when I was in Saudi.  I was seeing things through Western eyes, the boys told me.  It's just the way things are.  Some Saudis argued change was happening, and it was just happening slowly.  Partially true, but like most initiatives imposed from the top-down, actual practice differed from the letter of the law.

The Guardian ran an interview with Manal al-Sharif, who gained fame by defying Saudi law and drove while railing against the inequalities and ridiculous rules in the repressive kingdom that make women second-class citizens.

Manal behind the wheel.

Her spin around the streets of Khobar was captured on a friend's phone and posted on YouTube.  Shortly after, she was arrested and jailed for over a week for "incitement to public disorder."

According to the Guardian, she used her infamy to draw attention to the misogyny in Saudi society and press for real change.  She led mass "protest drives," in which she and other women would drive around; filed lawsuits against the Kingdom's traffic laws, and started an advocacy organization called My Right to Dignity.

"I'm a single mother and I'm 33 but it's hard to even rent my own apartment without getting my father to sign a piece of paper saying he gives me permission," she says.  "I went to renew my passport the other day and they told me to come back with my male guardian.  That is life, for a Saudi woman; wherever we go, whatever we achieve, we are the property of a man."

A Saudi woman who is beaten or raped by her husband and goes to the police must bring that husband along to formally "identify" her, she adds.  Saudi women are forbidden from playing competitive sports and are not due to get the vote until 2015.

...

Her life changed, almost overnight, on 9/11, orchestrated by her countryman Osama bin Laden. "The extremists told us it was God's punishment to America," she recalls. But on the news that evening, she was sickened by footage of office workers jumping from the twin towers. "I said to myself, 'something is wrong. There is no religion on earth that can accept such mercilessness, such cruelty.'"

Ms Sharif began questioning literalist aspects of her faith. "I realized it is impossible to live with the rules they give Saudi women," she says. "Just impossible. You trying to do everything by the book but you can never stay pure."

This year, she was fired from her job at Aramco for her activism.  She refuses to give up and refuses to accept the status quo.  Her actions, and the actions of her fellow activists, should give pause to those who argued to me the current "reforms" are enough.

Because that's just an excuse.  And a load of crap.