Ahead of yet another campaign urging women to defy Saudi Arabia’s dude-only driving rules in a protest drive on October 26, a conservative Saudi cleric has used his thoroughly medieval understanding of human organs to argue that women who drive cars risk damaging their ovaries and giving birth to children with clinical problems.


Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, one of the 21 members of Saudi Arabia’s Senior Council of Scholars capable of writing or religious edicts, as well as advising government officials, offered his thoughts about women driving during an interview Friday with sabq.org. Though the esteemed and self-righteous cleric has no medical background (you know, other than that Operation game he got for his eighth birthday when his parents still hoped he grow up to be a nice country physician and not a professional jerkoff), he was more than happy to explain that having ladyparts is not conducive to driving:

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. That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees.


My testicles fall asleep when I go on long drives — can Saleh al-Lohaidan’s brand of car science explain that, too? Because I’m sure losing blood circulation in that area isn’t great, but whatever, it’s not like I’m a car scientist specializing in effect of sitting down has on one’s junk.

The ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia has been a source of major debate in recent years, with more female activists calling on Saudi women to defy the country’s unofficial driving ban. Though there’s no law on the books saying explicitly that women can’t drive, only men can be given driver’s licenses, and driving without a license could earn a would-be woman motorist trouble with the law and even charges of political protest.

[Reuters]