I don't doubt this ends up happening in the de facto sense, but am I wrong in suggesting that it's much less accepted in Muslim Nigeria? (I am somewhat aware that it's bifurcated by religion) Which parts of North Africa and the Middle East are more likely to have this sort of social segregation? I'm pretty sure, for example, that this happens in Saudi Arabia, but probably less so in places like Lebanon or Iran... Regarding Nigeria being or not being a backwards third-world country, this provokes thoughts for me of what I've seen on my travels in the United States: there are parts of it that are not too far off from third-world; I know of at least one area in my own state that is like this. My point is that just because an area isn't part of the West doesn't mean objectionable shit isn't ingrained in an area, and that criticizing either Western or non-Western cultures seems to be limited to members of that culture (the locals see Boko Haram as extremists, as you said, but there are other cases where, for example, objectionable shit happens in other places, like forced marriage, FGM, killing albino children, and so on, and... frankly, that merits condemnation from everybody). And the West in many ways has much to clean in its own house. I know that. There's still hate crime against black people and gay people, there's still a lot of fallout from past periods of institutionalized discrimination, and there's a lot of other shit, but it would be folly to deny that there's a lot that's been resolved that in many ways places like the Middle East are dealing with now (I mean, for fuck's sake, Saudi Arabia is basically the biggest example here - they won't let women drive or go anywhere without a dude. Are you going to call me pointing that out Orientalism?) - and even within the West, Europe's got racism issues that looks an awful lot like ones the US has dealt with in the past and in turn Europe's dealt with things like gay marriage and universal healthcare that the US is still working out. Hell, it took Ireland and Malta a while to catch up with the rest of the world, both Western and non-Western, when they legalized divorce as recently as 1997 and sometime in the 2000s. And they still haven't gotten the news about reproductive rights, since women from those countries have to fly the coop to get an abortion. EDIT: As an aside, what the heck are we all supposed to do with this? If this isn't a concrete expose of something being severely rotten in that part of the world that is decidedly NOT really a thing in the West, I don't know what is...you're either naive or racist if you think people aren't dating and fucking their hearts out in every country of the world with whoever they choose.