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202 Deborah Wheeler

even during open sessions, against the government. Yet simmering
beneath the surface is public fear of going too far in one’s discur-
sive activities. These narratives of “punishment” for speaking too
frankly, and too publicly, represent several examples, some minor,
some extreme, which police patterns of public behavior in random
ways. Kuwait is not a police state: it is rather a very small commu-
nity where every one is related in some way, and where strength of
the community is valued over the right of the individual to speak.
If corruption exists, which it does in every family, then sometimes
it’s best not to discuss it openly, so that from the outside, appear-
ances suggest that all is well. The status quo is valued over
change. Anyone daring to speak out for change has to be prepared
for a whole range of possible consequences.
Because voices are constrained by social sanctions against
speaking out, the majority of individuals in Kuwait will not feel
comfortable using the Internet to publish information which could
be used against them in the “social courts” policed by their neigh-
bors, relatives, employers, and friends. Cyberspace is an extension
of the realms of social practice and power relations in which users
are embedded. At times voice is liberated from gender restrictions,
like from within the cyber-relations enabled by IRC. But voice is
historically subjected to constraints based upon publicly enforced
notions of right and wrong in public discourse. The advent of new
fora for communication do not automatically liberate communica-
tors from the cultural vestiges which make every region particular
and which hold society together. In Kuwait, this means that women
are not likely to organize and to speak out against their husbands,
their brothers, their sons and fathers, their bosses; this would be to
publicly embarrass their patriarchs. It is more likely that voices
will be lifted in the privacy of an office with the door shut, or in the
living room during hours that many husbands are at work. In my
experiences, these voices will cut to the quick of the matter, will ex-
press a well-reasoned and culturally-seasoned opinion of women’s
lives in the conservative Gulf. These voices, if uttered by liberal
women, might stress that men in the Gulf are simply afraid of
women and their power, and are unlikely to yield to women’s de-
sires if overt and confrontational demands are made. These women
stress that women’s struggles for liberation in the Arab world re-
quire subtlety, and compromise, rather than all-out revolution. Se-
duction and charm are the best tools for carving out spaces for
women’s freedom. If the voices come from conservative Muslim
women, they are likely to point to the kinds of oppression women in