1-Women can't get out of the house without a chaperon: This is a very common misconception because the very conservative based on religious mathematics of their own believe it, however it has never been state policy, there are also clerics who gave Fatwas saying that women can't go out of the house without a male chaperon, this is not followed by any sort of law, and is not followed by about 90% of people either; this brings us to the second one.
2- Fatwas are automatically laws in KSA: This is a very dangerous misconception, because there are lots of cleric nutcases around who like to create controversy (Think mormons in the US etc.) so they say some really weird shit, while people usually in KSA look at the fatwa and laugh, western media raises alarm bills all around saying that this new "fatwa" is actually a new law, which does huuuuge amount of damage to KSA and Saudi people. For understandable reasons. This one basically encompasses as lot of misconceptions here, with a lot of accusations of things I find to be outright funny and comedic to even believe is true, most people believe it is actually true. Which brings to the important point of pointing out that Saudi Arabia is NOT a "theocracy", Iran is a theocracy ruled by the clergy, KSA is not, and it shows tremendously.
3- Women are required to wear a Burka in public: Ummm, no, not for the past 10 years they are not, while they ARE required to wear the Abaya, more liberal minded cities and regions like the Hijaz for example women in it wear it as a coat over their clothes, wither they wear it full or not is dependant on a variety of factors, laws is only a small insignificant part of it, Yemen was a socialist democracy for a long time and there is no law in it that require women to wear anything, however all women there dress more conservatively than Saudi women even, almost all western women wear the Abaya as a duster while wearing their regular clothes, women nurses and doctors don't even wear an Abaya they just wear scarfs and their lapcoats, scrubs etc. (I am a Doctor btw hence the example).
4- Honor killing and genitalia mutilations: Do I really have to explain why the hell this is so ridiculous? All my life there has been only one case of honor killing in KSA and it was closely followed by the media since it was (oh so weird and taboo), and genitalia mutilations is an Afrian culture thing, to see it time and again attributed to KSA is just down right both funny and depressing.
5- Wear clothes or make-up that "show off their beauty": There is nothing anyone or anything can do to a women if she decided to do so, the religious police has been thoroughly neutered in the past 15 years, and they can no longer even make arrests, and generally the entire population hate them and they know it, it is almost like they have disappeared actually, I only see their patrols now once ever 2 months or something, and there are always people who are waiting for any slip up from them or anything to destroy them in social media, there is a funny video of a women who was harassed by one of them, turned on her phone camera and told him to go fuck himself and what can he do, he walked away with his tail between his legs because he can't do anything. Things have changed, people have changed, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
6-Women are not allowed to Interact with men: After all of this so I even have to point out why this is a ridiculous misconception? I work in a hospital and if this was true the entire hospital would stand to a still in an instant.
7- Women receive harsher punishments than men: That is so wrong, and one of the things, and one of the things that was made up for the sole reason of propagating hate, as if KSA is out to get women in particular out of some deep hate and pure evilness, look at any record of crime and punishment in KSA, you will find men who typically commit more crimes get more sentences, it is just that sentences against women are more widely reported abroad, creating the illusion that only women are going to prison, executed, etc.
8- Saudi Arabia stones adulterers (Sometimes using the word stoning women to drum up more hate) and execute homosexuals: I want you to go and research up and down when was the last time Saudi Arabia sentenced anyone to stoning? To save you some time 24 years ago, and there hasn't been a single such sentence since then, and the sentence was done away with for a long time, KSA can't keep it off the books officially though (as with many other similar laws) because KSA is a big target for terrorism both from citizens and otherwise if they changed laws that were written in the Qur'an (With past experiences of thousands of people dying as far back as 1929 due to doing so), so if they can do away with a law without actually changing it officially KSA will do and has done so to many many laws. Where it only exists in the books sort to speak. Regarding executing homosexuals, while Iran did execute 2 teenagers (14-15) 3 weeks ago for homosexuality (Did you hear about that? No, you know why? Because hate is being directed at KSA squarely and this proves my point), KSA has NEVER EVER in its history executed people for homosexuality, you can look this up if you like, if you find ONE SINGLE case please bring it to my attention because I never heard of it, and didn't find any no matter how hard I tried.
9- Saudi Arabia sentences people to dismemberment all the time: The last case of cutting the hand of a thief was done in 1989 or 1990 I think, there was some controversy recently in 2012 about a judge passing a similar sentence, however all doctors refused to carry out the sentences citing the "Do no harm" oath, so in the end they ended up sentencing the man to a jail term instead, no other similar sentence progged since then.
10- The try on clothes while shopping one is just too damn none nonsensical to even be worth mentioning. The buying a barbie one made me laugh out loud, my 3 year old niece would have a lot to show the writer of that stupid article. Someone replied to me saying "You fuck little boys and are all paedophiles", just uugh. I mean come on, the mere act of expecting me to try and "PROVE" that in fact we are not all paedophiles is just too funny and depressing at the same time to even bother with.
There are a lot more like this, but this is what came out the top of my head, these misconceptions are reported as fact I think for political reasons, part of the west divorcing KSA for an alliance with Iran I think, where negative things against Iran almost disappeared all together but lies against KSA are screamed, in fact sometimes I think it is part of a dehumanization campaign in preparation for a massacre of the Arabian people (Arabian, not Arab, there is a difference), it sounds silly but it reminds me of the Nazi disinformation campaign against the Jews and dehumanizing them in preparation for the massacres. It sounds really silly but ask yourself with sooooooo much hate going on, if 3 Million Saudis were killed tomorrow most people who believe this bullshit are going to say "Eh, they had it coming".