Anthropologists evaluate these situations quite differently because they understand that every culture is a long-term byproduct of a myriad parametres that have come together over long periods of time. It will be silly to judge customs of other countries based on our own. This is why, in the short period they are within a culture context, they make sure to learn the few perks that they have to follow in order to contact their business.

Anthropologists are scientists whose mission is to discover facts and formulate theories that correspond to reality. They expend effort to refrain from judgment for professional reasons.

Anna Muzychuk is obviously judging the matter from a western feminist point of view that deals with equality and respect. This line of thinking though is counter intuitive since as a feminist she should respect the cultural differences and not try to judge people based on the western cultural upbringing.

Feminism was all about changing status quo to begin with, although you could say that it is primarily the business of Saudi women themselves to improve their status in their culture.

In other words, she appears to look down on the differences of another culture, evaluating her own point as superior. This is exactly what racists do in her own country and I am sure she would disagree with them.

Racism is an ideology at the core of which is the belief that there are distinct human races, some of which are superior to the others. Everybody, not only racists consider their own point of view to be superior to that of others. Obviously, anti-racists consider their opinion of racism to be superior to that of racists.

She is not wrong because I say so. She is wrong because she is intellectually dishonest when it comes to her own values. In Africa she would have to be careful not to point to people because that's rude. We wouldn't want to walk into a Japanese house with our shoes on. Heck in japan they can choose not to hire someone based on the colour of their skin but most people don't care about this because, you know..Japan!. Russia is against homosexuality yet she visited plenty of times. I bet that anyone could find something "offensive" from another culture in order not to visit. Ukraine, her own country, has not been a model country with human rights either.

While it's wise to understand how cultures have evolved, understanding does not equate acceptance. Every culture has groups of differing status for reasons that might or might not be valid. If you ask the low status groups, particularly if they are discriminated against out a simple desire to exploit them, you may get a very different kinds of answers than if you asked the exploiters.

By the way, I agree with you in that she is not being completely fair in picking Saudi Arabia to boycott because she has played in plenty of other countries with human rights problems. And, indeed, understanding how a culture has evolved is instrumental in going about alleviating its human rights problems because blind actions may otherwise have unintended negative consequences.

One last thing. The very concept of human rights is a byproduct of the decentralization of power. In Medieval Europe, nobody gave a damn about human rights. People were ignorant, childish and quite bloodthirsty. But when the power pyramid started to flatten in earnest and the general level of education started to improve in much later times, the formulation of human rights became a central topic.