DXB Stories part 2: Contradictions and hypocrisy in Dubai

Hello there and welcome to part two of my series from Dubai. Now I want to talk about one element of my trip there which I found contradictory on the surface but I shall attempt to explain it. Now you all know that the UAE is a very conservative Muslim countries, tourists are told that they must dress modestly - even men are reminded that they ought to cover their shoulders and knees. So a T-shirt is fine (as your shoulders are covered) but sleeveless tank tops are considered obscene and offensive, likewise if you wear shorts that cover your knees (remember how hot Dubai can be), that's fine but if you show your knees in public, that's not acceptable. And if you're a woman, those rules can be a lot stricter and there are signs in places like malls where visitors are reminded to be clothed modestly if they wish to enter - all this in a country where summer temperatures can hit a scorching 50 degrees in summer. These rules are strictly enforced if you want to visit a mosque for example, but if you're just walking around anywhere else in the city, then you might get some disapproving stares if you are not considered 'modest' enough but Dubai isn't like Saudi Arabia or Iran where women can get arrested for being immodest. Don't forget, I'm a gay man and gay sex is punishable by death in the UAE; I brought my husband along with me on this trip and I was quite careful about making sure I always requested for two single beds, that we're just two friends on this trip. That's just me of course, after all I was sent to Dubai by my employers, on business and so the last thing I wanted was to get into any kind of trouble thus I was extremely careful on this trip. But there were a few things that made me roll my eyes when I was in Dubai and I'd like to share them with you. 

The biggest blind spot in the world. 

Whilst I was so careful about covering up my knees and shoulders, there were plenty of women walking around town wearing very, very little. I even saw this young white woman in what I can only describe as transparent see-through lingerie outside a very expensive hotel and it was clear that she was a prostitute trying to snare her next customer there. We also visited the world's largest water theme park Aquaventure which was on the Palm Jumeirah, whilst there were very strict rules about how the men's shorts had to be modest and any form of nudity was strictly forbidden in the changing rooms, there were no equivalent rules for the women and I saw a woman with such a skimpy bikini going down a water slide that by the time she got to the bottom, let's just say everything was on show. She promptly rearranged herself and nobody said anything. When I was in Dubai Marina (a trendy, upmarket, expensive part of Dubai), you can't walk a few meters without seeing all these 'prostitute call cards' on the ground - these are all photos of white foreign women with a phone number. And wait, there's more. I love sharing my travel adventures on Instagram and I don't even have that many followers on my travel Instagram profile, yet the moment I shared photos of myself staying at an expensive hotel in Dubai - the prostitutes swooped in. One morning I turned on my phone to find over 50 messages from prostitutes offering my all kinds of services and this was through Instagram for crying out aloud. Is this how they find their customers? By looking at the latest posts of older businessmen in expensive Dubai hotels? I do regularly post stuff on Instagram when I travel to other countries of course but it was the sheer amount of attention I got from the prostitutes that shocked me. How is this legal in Dubai? More to the point, why is this ignored in Dubai if it is supposedly such a conservative, religious society? This is a far cry from Iran, where Mahsa Amini - a 22-year old Iranian woman was arrested and beaten to death by the morality police for not covering her hair. Boy, I would  like to see how the Iranian morality police try to do their job in Dubai by enforcing Dubai's very strict laws that are broken by so many people there. 

One set of rules for us, another set of rules for them.

I did this really touristy but super fun thing in Dubai - the desert safari. Oh it's highly recommended, the guide will take you out to the desert in small groups and you'll do various activities in the desert - I did this in the evening which included a dinner with entertainment. So I thought, how nice, good food in the desert and some local culture. Well the entertainment included a belly dance - technically speaking, this isn't from the local culture in the UAE. It is from Egypt and Turkey, a long way from Dubai. The belly dancer was wearing very little, it was the kind of costume that would make audiences blush in London or Paris but we were in Dubai. Oh it wasn't just what she was wearing, it was the kind of dace moves which involved thrusting her groin and bottom towards the audience in a way that was definitely not suitable for the children in the audience. It was nothing more than a sex show, a woman wearing very little gyrating her groin at the audience. As a gay man, I actually got quite bored with it as it was clearly aimed at the straight men in the audience but at least the food was good and I was happily eating away. In fact I ate so much that I felt I had to walk around a bit just to help with the digestion, so whilst the rest of the audience was happily watching the belly dance, I was took a little walk around the compound. This belly dancer then finished one of her routines and ran backstage for a quick costume change. I heard her giving instructions to her colleague backstage and they were speaking Russian (I speak Russian, of course). This belly dancer was a white Russian migrant worker, she was neither a local nor was she Muslim; by that token, the strict rules in the UAE don't really apply to her. The unspoken understanding is that if you're a foreigner, the authorities will close one eye and shut the other when it comes to what you do. As for gay people in Dubai, the rule I was told was never do anything with a local, never touch a Muslim, if you want to do something, do it with a non-Muslim foreigner behind closed doors and you would be left alone - there's a gay community in Dubai amongst the expatriates. 

So do the rules actually apply? Only selectively. 

Indonesia made the headlines recently when they passed a new law criminalizing sex outside marriage and there was much talk about it in the news, but in the UAE, there have always been very strict laws concerning adultery. This was highlighted in the case when a Norwegian woman Marte Dalelv was raped by a colleague in 2013, but was then arrested and prosecuted for having sex with a man she was not married to under the UAE's strict adultery laws. Dalelv was treated very harshly by the UAE courts as she was drunk at the time of the rape - whilst it is legal for non-Muslims to consume alcohol in licensed venues in the UAE, it is frowned upon when a woman does so, especially if she gets drunk in the process. Of course, this case sparked a huge international outcry over the status of women in the UAE and it took the intervention of the Norwegian government to get Dalelv out of jail and back to Norway. Needless to say, the man who raped her got away with it and such is the attitude towards Western women who do not conform to the strict laws on modesty - ie. if you want to be a liberal western woman by wearing revealing costumes and getting drunk, don't expect us to step in and help you when you get into trouble because you're asking to be raped and if you are raped, then we shall make an example of you to warn others women to behave. Now all that seems to be in line with what one expects of a strict Islamic country, but the contradiction is that this law only applies very selectively. In the case of Dalelv, this case was brought to the attention of the authorities after she made a report of rape to the police and asked the police to arrest her rapist. If it had been a case of consensual sex that happened behind closed doors in a hotel room, then the adultery laws wouldn't have been used against her. In this case, Dalelv was punished for being a woman who got drunk in a society which does not condone women behaving like that - but let's not judge UAE society based on just this case. 

Meet Vince the American expat in Dubai.

I had a very interesting meeting in Dubai with a white American expatriate whom I shall call Vince (not his real name). Vince is a long-term resident of Dubai and over the years, he has worked with various government departments in Dubai before setting up his own company. Vince is the kind of guy known as a fixer - you want to do business in Dubai but can't wait six months for the government to issue the appropriate licenses? No worries, just call Vince and he will make sure that all the paperwork would get sorted by the end of the week after he makes a few phone calls to the right people. One thing he did tell me which surprised me was this, he has a wife and three kids but he also has his mistress. His wife is now older and pretty much a full time housewife taking care of their three children, whilst his younger Latina girlfriend is from Mexico and 21 years old. I asked him about adultery in the UAE since technically, that was a crime. Vince explained to me, "the rules are there, they exist but it's a question of enforcement. So the rules about adultery and gay sex is meant to show the world that they're such a religious state, but the truth is very few people actually get persecuted. There's a difference between having a mistress whom you visit discreetly and everything happens behind closed doors, nobody has any idea what the hell is going on. The authorities aren't going to break down every door to track every single citizen every hour of the day, that's not possible. So as long as they maintain this image to the outside world that they are so conservative and religious, you'll be amazed how many local Arab men regularly practice adultery, be it by having a mistress or three, or just regularly visiting prostitutes." I then asked about the women; after all, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, right? Vince looked perplexed as I don't think he has never contemplated that point before. "I don't know, I don't really think much about what the local Arab women get up to in that aspect. Not much I suppose - those more liberal women who don't like these very strict rules have probably left the UAE to live elsewhere." 

Censorship and VPNs in Dubai: window dressing?

So let's look at another example: censorship. In the UAE, you have fast internet but all adult content is banned, so you're not just talking about porn sites, you can't access dating sites like Tinder or Grindr. I can see why Grindr is blocked because gay sex is illegal in the UAE, but even Tinder is blocked as it was thought to encourage dating, promiscuity and even adultery. So what do most people do? They get a VPN to enable them to access such content on their phones and it's an open secret that most people do that, even those in government. So on this issue, Vince explained that no one is going to check your phone in the UAE, it's not like you're going to get a knock on the door when you're at home, minding your own business, only to find a team of police at your door demanding that you hand over your phone for a check. That may happen if you commit a crime, get arrested and part of the police's investigation may be to go through your phone but most people would never be in that kind of position in the first place and thus they are quite happily having forbidden or illegal content on their phones and laptops. But it is not like only criminals or those intent on viewing porn using VPNs in Dubai, you might know that you can only send Whatsapp messages and voice notes in the UAE but you cannot make or receive calls on Whatsapp there. that is because the telecoms market in the UAE is dominated by two major players (with significant government control) who would rather you paid for those calls on one of those networks rather than use your apps like Whatsapp to make calls - thus they just blocked that function on Whatsapp but guess what? You can get around that by using a VPN and that's so straight forward and easy that even children in the UAE are familiar with the use of VPNs. Thus on the surface, you have a government and society who are willing to block and censor content you can access on the internet in the UAE, but on the other hand, you have a society (including senior government figures) who are regularly using VPNs to dodge that censorship. This begs the question: why bother with that kind of censorship in the first place then if it is not effective and nearly impossible to enforce then? It is nothing more than window dressing. 

The law of unintended consequences.

When you block and ban so many things on the internet, you force a lot of the activities into areas where they really shouldn't be. A good example of that is prostitution: in a city like London, there are adult websites and apps where you can arrange to meet a prostitute and no one is going to accidentally stumble unto such a website unless you specifically would like meet a prostitute and use their services. However, I was not at all looking for services like that in Dubai - I am a gay man for crying out aloud but I was bombarded with ads from pimps and prostitutes in Dubai because I was posting pictures of myself staying at an expensive Dubai hotel. Instagram is not banned nor censored in the UAE, but this meant that many of these more adult content for prostitutes and their services was forced onto a more mainstream platform that everyone could access with ease in Dubai. Now I'm no prude, I simply roll my eyes and delete the many messages that I received everyday in Dubai from the prostitutes and pimps - I treat it like a minor inconvenience but really, I don't think the UAE authorities had anticipated this as they had forced sex workers onto Instagram. Now that's something that wouldn't happen at all in a place like London, sure there are plenty of prostitutes in London too but they don't try to use Instagram to try to find customers. At least it is kept a G-rated, child-friendly social media platform where you will not be bombarded with messages from prostitutes all the time. Thus even those who are not looking to pay for sex in Dubai are exposed to this all the time if they happen to use Instagram. Likewise, the streets around Dubai Marina are full of sex workers' call cards. These were so common in London back in the 1990s but nowadays they have mostly disappeared as it's all done online but a young child could walk down the street in Dubai Marina and quite easily pick up one of these prostitutes' call cards - that is at least something that's far less likely to happen in London. The irony is that Dubai is the city with all these strict, draconian laws but you are far more likely to stumble upon things like that there than in London.

Amsterdam vs Dubai: same but different

Allow me to compare Amsterdam to Dubai - I picked Amsterdam as it is probably the most liberal city in Europe (possibly the world) when it comes to all matters regarding sex and sexuality. At least the laws there reflect that, you pay tax when you consume the legal drugs and the prostitutes have to submit a tax return on their income. There's no contradiction or hypocrisy when it comes to the way the Dutch are liberal. The government and the people are on the same page in Holland - a liberal society elected a liberal government and thus the laws reflect that relationship. In the UAE, it is very different - there is no democracy, no elections. On top of that, 89% of the population there are expatriates (like American Vince) who bring with them their values and social norms from another country. People like American Vince have no intention of changing his way of life in Dubai, he is just going to find ways and means to bend and break the rules there. So it is not even like the 11% of local UAE population get to vote for a party that may alter the status quo by introducing more liberal laws, they don't even get a say in the way they are governed and most just accept that if they don't like the way things are in the country, they can always leave as changing the status quo is next to impossible. Thus you have this bizarre situation where the rulers of the country impose these really strict rules that most people find a way of avoiding and the authorities are quite happy to look the other way in many cases. On one hand, I find the contradictions all too hypocritical but on the other hand, these bizarre contradictions on the ground is at least far better than the situation in places like Iran where a woman can be arrested and beaten to death by the police for not covering her hair properly, that will never happen in Dubai where women can wear what they want in public as if they were in Europe or America. So no, it is not perfect, but it could be a lot worse. But what do you think of these contradictions? So am I judging Dubai unfairly, or do I simply not understand how their society works? Please do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.  

Epilogue: American Vince's sleazy story about his 21 year old mistress

I do get to meet some very unusual people on my travels but Vince has got to be one of the more larger than life characters. He's an American guy in his mid-50s, he's loud and brash, he brags about his wealth and his connections, he even talks about his 21 year old mistress. I found this all rather unnerving of course - look, I can assure you that I'm no prude, I'm a gay man but I never talk about my personal life when at work. It is called being professional - I believe in keeping work and play separate. But why did Vince steer the conversation in this direction then and risk making me feel uncomfortable talking about it? Did he perhaps think, "I'm so rich and influential, I can talk about all these things and you're supposed to just smile, nod politely rather than pass any judgment because you need my help to do business in Dubai!" Well if he did that, then there's an element of him showing of, it is a display of his dominance in that business relationship. It is a rather nasty thing to do, it was nothing short of him farting or picking his nose to make me feel uncomfortable and see if I would react. The other possibility was that he might have sensed that I am a gay man (I never hide my sexuality, I just didn't raise the topic when I was in Dubai but I would never lie about it). Thus perhaps that was his way of saying, "I have just divulged something that is very personal because I do trust you, so that's your cue to tell me something personal in return by admitting to me that you're gay, then we can take our trust to the next level. If we are going to do business together in Dubai, then we need to trust each other." But no, I didn't take the bait because I wasn't sure that was his intention. At that moment, I just wasn't sure what he was trying to achieve by sharing that information about his mistress in Dubai and it wasn't the kind of topic one would normally discuss in a business meeting. So I simply asked him if he has learnt any Spanish from his Mexican girlfriend and Vince said no, "she speaks English very well." I then said, "well you shouldn't squander this great opportunity to learn some Spanish from her, especially if you're going to be working with a Latin American company like us." He just smiled and said, "okay Alex I'll certainly bear that in mind."