Dear Queen of Sheba....

Forgive me. I tried to reply on Dhofari Gucci's blog but the allotted space for commenting was no sufficient, so here you go.




"Who are you to talk about this being all talk with no substance?"

The classic "Who are you…?" question. You must either come from here or be in the region too long."

"What substance, exactly, do you offer us?"
The experience to know that idle chatter on the internet with no basis other than "drawing attention" to a subject that already has organised campaigns usually does more harm than good: The road to hell being paved with good intentions.

"What is it that you would you like to see?"
I would like to see these two, obviously intelligent women, with quite a high blogosphere profile and exposure, go about doing what they do in a way that is more effective.
You see me as the aggressor, but what you fail to understand is that I have only been blogging my comments under this moniker for a few weeks now. There have been countless replies and advice over the past year given in a much more sedate way that have fallen on deaf ears so to speak.
If you pop over to my blog you will see that as soon as I made a more robust comment about the situation that the comment count jumped significantly. So while you may believe that I am some kind of cold-hearted bastard with no feelings for either woman, you have severely misconstrued my comments and failed to see them for what they actually are.

"Have you been to Dhofar, even briefly?"
Many times, and not just as a tourist in Salalah.

"Do you have any idea what the society here is like?"
Yes. I'm very familiar with it.
As a family, we have had a military connection with Dhofar for many years, and know the region and it's people intimately.

"The mere fact that Nadia and Mimi are actually WRITING publicly, as it is, about issues is astounding."
They are not writing publicly. They are, just like me, writing under an alias. Which is all well and good, but nothing to laud about.
I understand fully that freedom of expression is a matter of interpretation here in Oman. And therefore while I don't share your sentiment of how amazing it is to blog about sensitive issues under an assumed name, I do see the necessity to do it that way.

"how do you know that they are not doing it in Arabic as well, somewhere else?"
From what has been posted on both blogs, there is no evidence to suggest that they are.

"You are being ridiculous, because you feel that they are not proactive enough according to your own standards, which, might I remind you, have nothing in common with Omani standards"
Absolute rubbish. Standards are standards, and any system or culture that pretends to label nothing but the highest demonstration of it's kind has no place tagging it as such.
All too common a sight in Oman, are "standards" that fall way below the norm of what is globally acceptable.

"Did you ever stop to consider how this young woman indirectly told us through that story that the same has been done to her? How do you think that has affected her, you blabbering fool in trousers?"
Of course I have, and as I have said above, I am not in any way taking away from that. I have mentioned in my previous comments how barbaric and horrific FGM is.
The suggestion of "all talk and no trousers" is a figure of speech. Try to see that for what it is, rather than a suggestion of any kind of gender superiority.
In fact, if you read my posts and run them through more than one set of argumentative filters, you may see that I might not be as "ridiculous", "blabbering", "foolish", "absurd", "racially-fixated" or "double-standarding" as you think.

"Good Lord, where were Jessica's trousers and why did she only write about her ordeal on a blog, when she could have been in the front lines allowing medicine to experiment on her?"
Jessica's blog was indeed about her ordeal, however unlike my two fellow bloggers, she had a workable agenda to improve the quality of life of those around her, set up a charity organisation and went out there to make a difference. The evidence of that is there for the seeing.
Does she have more metaphorical trousers than the other two? Undoubtedly.
Would I have blogged about her if she was a dark-haired Arab girl? Yes, I would.
The fact that you went and played the race card on that comment raises an eyebrow with me. Was it you who on my blog post about her anonymously commented under the nickname "Wasp" about her being a "little white girl" or was that just someone of a similar ilk?

"I wonder what tune you'd be singing if there was a widespread problem involving MGM"
Who knows? It's a hypothetical suggestion at best, however, as I have empathised through comments with the plight of Mimi and Nadia before, I guess it would be fair to say that I would hold the same abhorrence and fear that they do, but I doubt that I would blog about it incessantly without at least having more effective and productive suggestions for change, rather than just saying "This is horrible. Change it!, but someone else should do it, not me!" A very typical Omani response to a problem. That is the "all talk and no trousers" that I am intimating at.

There are, as I said before, campaigns and organisations worldwide who are fighting the fight to stop this abominable nonsense. Their time and energy would be used to much greater effect if they liaised with the above.

And in relation to me having no trousers….again, we're into hypothesis and the more blanket judgments based on little fact. For all you know, I might not even be male at all, but what is that to stop a good rant, eh?
However, regardless of my gender, race or hair-colour, try not to see me as a black-hearted antagonist. I'm far from it. But while my methods of writing might upset or offend you, they do have a tendency to bring people a bit more out in the open.

Thank you for taking the time to write your comment. I hope that I have at least gone some way to explaining myself and answering your questions.


You may wish to take some time to reply to what I have said. Maybe this time, but not as it matters, you might be able to do it without adding a string of colourful labels to my character ;)

Lawrence