I think growing up Iranian in America is to have a complicated relationship with your own identity. Sometimes it feels like cultural schizophrenia. I think for me, personally, I always carried a sense of shame of being not quite American enough for my peers and not quite Iranian enough for my family. It was really only during the recent protests that I finally recognized myself as an Iranian woman and I think it is the responsibility of the diaspora to amplify the voices we are hearing in Iran.
I want to give some historical context to the ongoing protests in Iran, how the women of Iran got to be where they are today, and like any history it is a complicated one. We need to start during the Qajar dynasty which ruled Iran from 1794-1925. Briefly summarizing the Qajar rule: despots with despotism – without an army and without the capabilities to enforce power in the more tribal regions of Iran. This weakness allowed for tribal leaders and most significantly, the ulama (Muslim legal scholars) to increase their political base. While the tribal leaders were eventually disbanded by later dynasties, the ulama retained much of their power. During the Qajar era, female trauma existed mostly within isolated villages behind closed doors at home, prohibited from education, training and a social life – women were treated like infants, confined to housework and childbearing and considered slaves and servants to their husbands. Sex segregation was the prevailing policy of the Qajar dynasty with women ordered to walk on one of side of the street when allowed to leave their home. The use of veiled dressing requires a longer and more complicated discussion than we have time for today.
When I was researching violence against women in Iran, I found manifestations of violence in habitual speech – for instance, a common name for a wife was manzel which translates into “home” or pardehneshin “one who sat inside behind curtained windows.” These symbolic acts of violence turn the female body into an object, the ultimate purpose of which was to be given to sexual intercourse. During this period, women were generally fearful of giving birth to female babies which were considered a disappointment and sometimes buried alive inside walls of the home. The place of a woman was therefore that of an enclosure, imprisoned behind or within walls from which they could not easily escape.
From 1905-1911 there was a Constitutional Revolution where the intelligentsia, ulama, merchants and women fought together for their independence and rights (and later women’s suffrage) by revolting against a semi-colonialist state catalyzed by interference from Britain and Russia. Not surprisingly, after the revolution was a success the ulama did not support the women’s suffrage movement, they insisted that women could not reason on their own. Following this betrayal, women distanced themselves from the ulama. In the wake of the devastation to the Qajar throne, with British help, Reza Shah installed an anti-democratic but modernized government. Reza Shah was able to subdue the power of ulama and tribal leaders and enforce secular legal and educational systems and ended tribal autonomy. He dismantled the power of the land owners and transferred large portions of the land to himself (this was ultimately part of his undoing) but it contributed to the rise of a middle-class due mainly in part to the commercialization of agriculture. Simultaneously, women were allowed to join certain sectors of the public, family laws were modified, and unveiling was enforced in 1936. Persian scholars have theorized that around this time there was a move from private patriarchy to public patriarchy. Meaning, there existed a state sponsored oppression which served to reinforce trauma to women through the appropriation of feminism, the act of unveiling. For instance, under Reza Shah all independent women’s organizations were banned and replaced with a state-sponsored Ladies Center which was primarily for privileged women, effectively stifling any radical voices. The female body became a symbol of the nation-state, with Reza Shah using women to legitimize his goals of modernization against the clergy’s authority. Our bodies represented religious morality or modernity to enforce the state’s symbolic or systemic powers depending on which state you were dealing with. A lot of traditional language was re-written at this time and that is also a longer conversation that I will not be exploring here.
Enacted in 1967 and later abolished in 1979, The Family Protection Law established rules and restrictions on marriage, divorce, child-custody, and polygamy. The laws were a policy of a nation-state that attempted to use the body of women as the consolidation of state power. Reforms in the judicial system only slightly modified existing religious laws in marriage and divorce.
Reza Shah’s autocracy came to an end following World War I, when the Allies invaded Iran and removed him from power. The public did not resist the coup and Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah, was given control of the crown. During this period, there was a re-emergence and flourishing of political organizations and activities, but the clergy continued to fight against the women’s suffrage movement, blocking a bill for women’s rights to vote submitted by the Democratic Union of Women in 1944. I’m going to skip going into details on period of Mohammad Reza’s Shah’s power suffice to say it is a very conflicted period for a lot of Iranians and a hot topic, even today. His son, Reza Pahlavi, has taken a very active and, in my opinion, a very democratic position as one of the leaders outside of Iran during the current protests.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a revolution of morals and ethics. The re-establishment of gender roles was a primary concern for the newly elected Islamic regime and it was the growing public dissent of Mohammad Reza Shah’s regime that ultimately turned Iran into a theocratic state. Though land reforms by the Pahlavi’s had played a major role in the growing intolerance, it was mainly women’s emancipation that spurred Ayatollah Khomeni, who would become Iran’s first Supreme Leader, decision to launch a campaign against the Pahlavi dynasty. Thus, the Islamic Revolution was predominantly a sexual-counter revolution with postrevolutionary Iran’s imposition of restrictions on women, nullified and re-establishment of traditional legislation, and the resurgence of traditional Islamic values to uphold virtue and piety. During this period a clear division between veiled and unveiled women began to take form. The Islamic state thrived on binaries (veiled/unveiled, pious/impious, east/west). Whereas the Pahlavi dynasty privileged the bourgeois, the Islamic Revolution capitalized on lower income and uneducated religious women, using them as guerilla fighters, in street patrols and as agents of the military. These women were guardians of chastity and sanctity, purification served as pretense to patriarchy.
The ideal image of the Islamic woman permeated within the capital of Iran, Tehran. Mehrangiz Kar, human rights lawyer and essayist, recounts the attacks on female mannequins in shop windows: “the mannequins were turned into role models for Iranian women.” Shop owners “detach[ed] the heads of mannequins from their bodies” in order to remove lips and eyes that were deemed to be too “stimulating” and breasts were replaced with “coils [that] displayed the mutilated gender of the mannequins.” These mannequins were the ideal feminine woman for the revolutionary fundamentalists – without “eyes to see, a tongue to speak, and legs to run away.” They symbolically managed to represent the lifeless objects that the mullahs considered women, without identity or agency unless they were bonded with the state, promoting the state’s power. In place of the Family Protection Law came the Islamic Punishment Law. I’ll spare you the details, but it’s pretty awful. During and after the Islamic Revolution, the mullahs heavily restricted poetry, lyrical music, cinema, writing and art – essentially anything that might promote a critical dialogue. Universities were closed for three years while the mullahs essentially re-wrote history. The aftermath of the Islamic Revolution split modern Iran into one of public adherence and private subversion. Of course this line is not exact, as one can spill into the other. The private is always under threat by the police forces, while the youth push traditional boundaries with their style and clothes.
After Khomeini’s death in 1989 until 1997, a regime of intolerance reigned. It was only in 1997, after the election of Khatami was able to secure his position – over 80% of the population voted him into office and while he managed to loosen some restrictions many were still disappointed. This was further fueled by a series of gruesome murders of political activities (including a prominent veteran politician and his wife) in 1998 alongside a burgeoning students movement, left many outraged and disillusioned. It was during this period, that I returned to Iran for highschool and attended the International School. I was lucky to be in Iran during this time, as I placed myself in a lot of very risky and precarious because having lived in the United States since I was five years old – I did not truly understand the consequences of my actions as a teenager in Iran. What we describe as normal here, is met with punishment in Iran. No dancing, no holding your boyfriends hand, no going to the mall as a woman without supervision. I will leave these stories for the q&a. It was around, I believe 2005, the Reformist party fell apart (due to complicated and violent state tactics) and led to the rise of the neo-conservatives. This was when Ahmadinejad, who utilized a neo-Khomeini populism to win over the common man, won over Rafsanjani. In short, it was giving Trump before Trump.
In 2009, a wave of protests over the recently held elections in Iran came as a response to Ahmadinejad’s re-election over popular opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Popularly referred to as the “Green Revolution,” or the “Twitter Revolution” based on protestor communications via the social-networking site, protestors clashed with both police and civilian neo-conservative forces. Student dorms were raided and protestors were violently beaten resulting in 36-72 deaths (the final number remains contested) with one – the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan caught on video. Neda was unarmed, accompanied by her father, and shot at from. The shocking footage of her death has been viewed millions of times on Youtube and aired on international news channels and resulted in calls for human rights watches in Iran. However, instances of abuse and rape continued to proliferate stories of protestors who were jailed or detained during the marches. As history often repeats itself, we see the same story playing out now across Instagram with the death of Mahsa Amini. Current uprisings have shown a resistance to the current theocratic regime of neo-conservative authoritarianism but because of the immense power structure of the government, it will not relinquish power. Therefore, the biggest thing asked by protestors inside Iran is to ensure that they are not silenced. That their stories continue to be told. That we hold our own politicians accountable and ask them not to recognize the Islamic Republic as a legitimate regime. To not make deals with them.
In Iran, religion is the leading force that binds gender politics, sexuality, and identity. Religion becomes violent because it is interwoven with patriarchy and allows for the exoneration of individuals of moral wrongdoing – it often excuses evil and overlooks justice. With this sort of clemency, it is hard to imagine the neo-conservatives changing in any meaningful way which is why reform is not an option. Now is the time for Revolution.
